illusory tenant

Butler, J., dissents (opinion filed)

2009-12-10T12:36:00.009-06:00

Bill Lueders — Justice for Forest Shomberg

Remember him? Because I do.

The defense in this matter was that someone other than the defendant committed these offenses, and that Shomberg was mistakenly identified as the perpetrator. Relying on established scientific research, the expert testimony that he sought to introduce would have addressed factors that have a significant bearing on a witness's ability to identify a stranger, as well as explained how these factors impact the accuracy of a witness's recollection. Notwithstanding the cross-examination of the eyewitnesses and jury instructions, expert testimony would still have assisted the trier of fact. This testimony would certainly have had a tendency to make the existence of each witness's identification of Shomberg as the perpetrator less probable than it would have been without it, and therefore relevant to his innocence.

State v. Forest Shomberg, 2006 WI 9, 72 (Butler, J., dissenting).

"The people of Wisconsin deserve better." — F. James Sensenbrenner

Ol' F. James is not right about much, now is he.

Decisions, decisions

2009-12-10T12:07:00.011-06:00

Denializer must choose between ignorance and dishonesty

Apparently Willis Eschenbach's chicanery really spooked Megan McArdle and some duffer at the Volokh Conspiracy. Golly gee.

And: Death threats. What is it they say ... "stay classy."

Prof. Esenberg remains in climate denial

2009-12-10T10:29:00.022-06:00

Combining two different measurements and pretending they are the same thing and mischaracterizing what data show has not been limited to tree ring data. — Prof. Richard Esenberg

Sure sounds like a pretty devastating indictment, don't it.

Only problem is, that is not at all what was done.

Page 2 of 12:

"Front cover: Northern Hemisphere temperatures were reconstructed for the past 1000 years (up to 1999) using palaeoclimatic records (tree rings, corals, ice cores, lake sediments, etc.), along with historical and long instrumental records. The data are shown as 50-year smoothed differences from the 1961–1990 normal. Uncertainties are greater in the early part of the millennium (see page 4 for further information). For more details, readers are referred to the PAGES newsletter (Vol. 7, No. 1: March 1999, also available at http://www.pages.unibe.ch) and the National Geophysical Data Center (http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov)."

Page 4 of 12:

"Our knowledge of pre-20th century temperature variations in the Northern Hemisphere has increased dramatically in recent years. The availability of natural archives of past temperature such as tree rings, banded corals, ice cores and lake sediments, in addition to historical and long instrumental records, has enabled [Northern Hemisphere] temperature variations to be reconstructed for the last 1000 years at an annual resolution. It is not yet possible to do the same for the Southern Hemisphere due to the lack of adequate palaeoclimatic records. Despite their different emphases on annual or extended summer seasonal temperatures and their different geographical biases, all the reconstructions (shown on the front cover as 50-year smoothed differences from the 1961–1990 normal) indicate that against the background of the millenium as a whole, the 20th century was unusually warm."

Emphases added.

The only person pretending and mischaracterizing here is Prof. Esenberg. Why he chooses these hills to die on is anybody's guess.

Jim Sensenbrenner funnies

2009-12-10T08:08:00.015-06:00

I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do and our lunar, our rovers on Mars have indicated that there has been a slight warming in the atmosphere of Mars and that certainly was not caused by the internal combustion engine.

— Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Concours Motors)

There have been claims that warming on Mars and Pluto are proof that the recent warming on Earth is caused by an increase in solar activity, and not by greenhouse gases. But we can say with certainty that, even if Mars, Pluto or any other planets have warmed in recent years, it is not due to changes in solar activity.

The Sun's energy output has not increased since direct measurements began in 1978.

— New Scientist

Never mind that. What counts is Sensenbrenner's "personal belief."

Congressprimate Sensenbrenner (R-Cabela's) is correct, however, that the Mars Rover has no small-block V8 under the hood.

And now we’re going to see a metaphorical shootout, on the high ground of twenty-first-century atmospheric physics, between the likes of Inhofe-Barton-Boehner-Sensenbrenner & Co. and Hansen-Schmidt-Lacis-Chu-Holdren-Karl etc. on the issue of the radiative forcing due to greenhouse gases?

There are some highly amusing clips of a news conference featuring Sensenbrenner and Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, at the link.

McIlheran funnies

2009-12-10T07:47:00.008-06:00

Reliable sources:

Dad29 notes what a little extra carbon will do for crops ...
P. McIlheran, 12/07/09

None of the original data exists anymore ...
Dad29, 11/29/09

Yes the data exists.
Dad29, 12/07/09

Seriously. "Dad29" is apparently some guy with a modem* in a basement in Brookfield. Patrick McIlheran is a member of the editorial board at the biggest daily newspaper in Wisconsin.

He tells us he's a journalist.

* The anti-science contingent finds atomic theory convenient enough, despite never having observed an electron or a muon neutrino.

Palin, victim of e-mail hack, lauds e-mail hack

2009-12-09T23:57:00.011-06:00

But doesn't understand them either.

I don't think conservatives realize how much they're damaging their credibility* — such as it is — through their efforts in this "climategate" affair. They depend on ignorance and lies to gain political power.

It's grotesque.

* At the same time, they've managed to lower the bar of credibility itself, to where all it means is, "an attribute of not lying."

Fox News hides the decline

2009-12-09T23:33:00.007-06:00

Genius.

Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation

2009-12-09T23:08:00.008-06:00

The legendary tractatus at long last emerges:*

I think it is not a coincidence that people who are atheists or evolutionists frequently have a wicked lifestyle or at least a lifestyle against the plain teachings of the Bible. Therefore, evolution is an easy way for them to justify their lifestyle. The problem is one of philosophy, not one of science. They don't want there to be a God because of their wicked lifestyle. That is their real problem.

Follow the logic.

One hundred and two pages of similarly vacuous effluvia (.pdf).

I think they still show Hovind's "creation science" videos to this day on WVCY, a Milwaukee teevee station.

* Hovind himself doesn't emerge until 2015.

When will Patrick McIlheran stop lying?

2009-12-09T21:44:00.013-06:00

Ever? I see McIlheran made "Jerk of the Week" in the Shepherd Express today. Indubitably, there was none more deserving.

Rep. Sensenbrenner is every bit the embarrassment.

Richard Lindzen, for his part, charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled "Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus," was underwritten by OPEC.

Harper's

More comic BS from McIlheran

2009-12-09T12:56:00.027-06:00

Patrick McIlheran, the only fully credentialed dendroclimatologist on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board, his "climategate" "journalism" since revealed as an embarrassing bust, retreats to more comfortable, familiar territory today, comparing science to a totalitarian regime and portraying scientists as totalitarian actors.

Well, in the sense that physical laws and observations impel the science, science is a totalitarian regime. Where totalitarianism is defined as "subordination of the individual to the state," so is science "subordination of the theory to the fact."

It must be noted here that in that latter sense, Patrick McIlheran's own failures are frequently spectacular. (And, wouldn't you just know it, yet another follows presently.)

But of course that is not the impression McIlheran, who doesn't know the difference between an instrument and a proxy temperature measurement, is hoping to convey. Rather, it's McIlheran's literary equivalent of daubing a portrait of Obama with a Hitler moustache.

Indeed, the WSJ op-ed that is the object of McIlheran's ardor is decorated with a photo of V.I. Lenin and invokes "Stalinism."

And, typically, McIlheran's most compelling sources of "journalism" contain laughable errors of fact. This one jumps out:

Never mind that none of these scenarios has any basis in some kind of observable reality (sea levels around the Maldives have been stable for decades) ...

The latter claim originates with the peculiar ravings of one Nils Axel-Morner, a retired Swedish seismologist better known for advertising the effectiveness of — get ready for this — dowsing.

And if you go here, then you can read all about Nils Axel-Morner's fraud and incompetence along with the debunking of the WSJ author's clueless pronouncement, upon which his "argument" is premised.

As is clearly demonstrated, it's not for no good reasons that serious people dismiss crackpots for what they are: crackpots.

Wouldn't a "journalist" want to know that? Yes, I think so.

Remarkably, this is the garbage an actual member of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board is feeding its readers. Why?

About those "declining" temperatures

2009-12-09T11:18:00.011-06:00

You know, the "hidden" ones:

The Met Office also confirmed today that the first decade of this century has been by far the warmest decade on record. New figures released in Copenhagen show that — while 1998 was the warmest individual year — the last ten years have been the warmest period in the 160-year-old record of global surface temperatures.

The Met Office said that the figures show that the world continues to see global temperatures rise and demonstrates that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed.

In a separate announcement, the World Meteorological Organization said that 2009 is expected to become the fifth warmest year on record.

So, why are leading conservative Republican figureheads lying?

This has been a public service from the U.S. Department of Rhetorical Questions

Guess the speaker

2009-12-09T00:06:00.008-06:00

"The leaked e-mails involved in Climategate expose the unscientific behavior of leading climate scientists who deliberately destroyed records to block information requests [FALSE],* manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures [COMICALLY FALSE], and conspired to silence the critics of man-made global warming [FALSE]."

Tough one, I know. Could be almost any Republican.

* Here is Keith Briffa, who compiled probably the most contentious data implicated in the entire "Climategate" "scandal," sharing his tree ring series around with people he doesn't know from Adam.

In Copenhagen, curiously well-informed

2009-12-09T00:01:00.012-06:00

Sounds almost like a ... conspiracy

The other thing that continues to muddy the picture is the unabated journalistic interest in the email story, and the apparent acceptance that its outbreak, mere weeks before the climate conference, was somehow a coincidence. When the story broke and people like Marc Morano* from the denial site ClimateDepot.com and Myron Ebell** from the Competitive Enterprise Institute offered themselves out for instant interviews, no one asked how these curiously well-informed commentators came to know so much about the stolen emails — or whether they knew anything about how they came to be public. No one seems to have asked the Cato Institute's oil-soaked Pat Michaels*** how he was ready with his money quote ("This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.") when the New York Times' Andrew Revkin called for a reaction.

Richard Littlemore.

* A Milwaukee Tea Party academic fellow of distinction. Another Milwaukee tea festival ceremonialist was Willie Soon.

** "His main job is to provide material to the media in the form of quotes to newspaper reporters and participation in live interviews on the subject of climate change. He also digs out countervailing facts from the scientific literature that can be used by other pundits."

In other words, the quote-miner in chief.

*** The Galileo of Our Times.

Not so fast, McIlheran

2009-12-07T20:27:00.046-06:00

I've just completed P-Mac's fact-trick to hide the plurality.

On a theory of reality being subordinate to a good polemic, the journalist and dendroclimatologist Patrick McIlheran informs us:

The state supremes recently ruled that justices can't be bounced off cases solely because of legal campaign contributions or ads made on a justice's behalf by outside groups.

How do you say, "Dead in the water at the moment." At least, that's how Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson (who is truly in the proverbial understanding reminiscent of Job) put it this afternoon.

In fact the authors of the proposed rules of judicial conduct, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association, brought inconsistencies of language to the justices' attention last month, and Justice Prosser today rescinded his vote to approve the originally submitted rule provisions "verbatim."

Tough to "rule" with fewer than four justices. So for the time being the due process rights of litigating parties before the courts have yet to be displaced by the First Amendment rights of judges to solicit and receive political campaign contributions. Which is as it should be.

Alternatively, Mr. McIlheran could try reading his own paper.

Also today, Justice Roggensack helped give some indication that a completed per curiam opinion and possibly more may be imminent in at least one of several motions currently before the court, requesting the recusal of Michael Gableman in criminal appeals.

What's certain: There are some frayed nerves and thus some snarky attitudes on that court. It's fascinating to observe but disturbing too.

eta: McIlheran's latest routine.

Saudis join ranks of Inhofe, Palin

2009-12-07T17:06:00.003-06:00

"It appears from the details of the [e-mail] scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," said the kingdom's lead climate negotiator.

:facepalm:, :headdesk:, and so forth.

h/t Climate Progress.

This week's Con Law puzzler

2009-12-07T13:04:00.014-06:00

Comes from Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack:

[W]hen a citizen votes in a judicial election, he or she exercises a right guaranteed under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Q: Exercises which First Amendment right? Successful responses may assume either that the year is 1791, 1870, Dec. 12, 2000, or 2009.

Weak positive responders still react as expected*

2009-12-07T12:59:00.013-06:00

There is, say [bloggers like illusory tenant], nothing to see here and "wing nuts" who say other things are so stupid — not at all like us smart people.

Obviously I have never made either of those claims. Of course there are always plenty of things to see, everywhere, all the time.

And, in reality, what I have strongly suggested is that if even people as stupid as me can read and understand the relevant scientific literature, then there's no excuse for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel to publish "wing nut" propaganda. Which is what it has been doing.

* D'Arrigo et al, 2007.

Musicians demand retraction of positive review

2009-12-07T10:24:00.001-06:00

From Glenn Beck.

That's got to be a first.

Minority type thing was not glamorous

2009-12-07T09:18:00.021-06:00

Then as now, in pursuit of serious academics

"Hawaii was a little too perfect," Palin [better known as Lynn Vincent] writes. "Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls." Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home."

— The New Yorker

McIlheran proves warming seems to have halted

2009-12-06T22:53:00.028-06:00

I've just completed P-Mac's journalism trick to ignore all of reality.

Having reviewed the scientific literature, ace reporter and right-wing climatologist guy Patrick McIlheran summarizes his findings:

[The Hadley Centre e-mails reveal] experts who wrote the doom narrative, discussing among themselves how to manipulate data to make observations fit their predictions. One telling message from the unit's head is about how to "hide the decline" in observed temperatures, as global warming seems to have halted about a decade ago, something their models are unable to explain.

Have any of these tedious wing-nuts bothered to find out what was meant by "hide the decline"? It was not a decline in "observed" temperature (temperature is measured, not observed).

Measured temperatures rose.*

The best:

Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.

Yes, the same Hadley Centre Patrick McIlheran just got done accusing of "hiding the decline in observed temperatures."

And yes, that is from McIlheran's own link to Der Spiegel. What's not so well hidden is the decline in the right-wing guy's credibility, which is less easy to measure,** but a constant amusement to observe.

* Remarkably, McIlheran has since adopted the position that the question of whether temperatures are rising or not rising is simply "a subtlety" that he somehow overlooked. If you can believe that.

** Plus or minus 1.5 micrometers from zero.

Holy Spirit credited with choosing gay bishop

2009-12-06T20:40:00.004-06:00

"I believe the people of the diocese, by the grace and power and influence of the Holy Spirit, went beneath skin deep, went beneath the superficial characteristics and boxes into which we put people to really look at individual people," said the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55.

Others would dispute whether these are the appropriate attentions and dispositions of the Holy Spirit. But since nobody's ever caught one and stuck it in a bottle, there's little point to bringing it up.

The sentence reads just as well, if not better:

"I believe the people of the diocese went beneath the superficial characteristics and boxes into which we put people to really look at individual people," said Glasspool.

Yeah it's old

2009-12-06T19:27:00.002-06:00

Still funny though.

Jesus made county government to punish Evil

2009-12-06T10:18:00.013-06:00

Civil government was God's idea. The first several verses of Romans 13 tell us He established government and that people in authority are ministers of God assigned to promote good and punish evil.

From Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke's officially endorsed message to police officers at mandatory events.

Clarke also "announced that he would be making upcoming promotions to the rank of Captain and distributed written material that included a quotation from the Bible. The handouts listed the qualities a leader should look for in his inner circle — one of which was 'people of faith.'"

That's the worst of it, actually. Pat Tillman need not apply. One of these days the offensive notion that not being a "person of faith" implies a lack of other positive qualities needs to be gotten rid of.

Milwaukee Deputy Sheriff's Ass'n v. Clarke (.pdf; 14 pgs.)

A Seventh Circuit panel affirmed the federal district court,* which found that Sheriff Clarke violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution despite Clarke's free speech argument that he was "compelled" to admit a Christian proselytizing outfit to meetings of the police requiring mandatory attendance.

h/t Religion Clause.

* Where the plaintiff officers were awarded one dollar, the attorneys $38,687.41, a more tangible dichotomy than "good vs. evil."

Bopp forgets who client is

2009-12-06T00:01:00.014-06:00

A real piece of work:

Bopp said he never said anything disparaging the right to counsel and that the State Bar was hypocritical because his comments came as part of his defense of Gableman.

"They are criticizing me for the zealousness of my representation," he said.

When you are speaking for a justice of the Supreme Court it does not diminish the zealousness of one's defense of him to refrain from disparaging the justice system itself. On the contrary.

There are many strategies, all at least equally zealous, which do not include for presenting a justice of the Supreme Court as harboring animosity against a certain class of defendants and their counsel.

You'd think this would be self-evident.

TN mayor goes Facebook nuts

2009-12-05T23:49:00.013-06:00

We sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load ... try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation* ... you obama people need to move to a muslim country ... oh wait, that's America ... pitiful.

Ye gods. Should be a shoo-in for a House seat next year, right?

* And that's just a few prefatory remarks about Osiris and Mithra.