Press Release

Briefly Noted: July 2008

In the year since Al Gore began trying to make his home more energy-efficient, the global warming crusader’s home energy use spiked more than 10%, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research reports. Over the last year, the former U.S. vice president’s home used up 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, which is enough for 232 average American households for a month. "Al Gore is a hypocrite and a fraud when it comes to his commitment to the environment, judging by his home energy consumption," said Drew Johnson, president of the Nashville-based think tank.

Obama Corps is coming to your town. Barack Obama’s campaign is planning to mobilize 3,600 volunteers for six weeks of political work in 17 states, and it’s calling the campaign jobs "Obama Organizing Fellowships." In exchange for working on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign, fellows are promised training in community organizing techniques, which is code for leftist political agitation. The campaign claimed more than 10,000 people applied for the temporary gigs.

George Soros’s largesse helped make possible Boumediene v. Bush, last month’s Supreme Court ruling that gave America’s terrorist enemies unprecedented access to our civilian court system. Soros’s Open Society Institute has given the anti-American law firm Center for Constitutional Rights, co-counsel in the case, as much as $200,000 in grants. CCR is headed by Michael Ratner, who wrote a book praising mass murderer Che Guevara, and was profiled by Matthew Vadum in the September 2006 Organization Trends.

With barely a whimper a few weeks after its big launch, David Brock’s much-hyped Progressive Media USA has collapsed, thrown under the bus by Team Obama. In May the ambitious 501(c)(4) group, which vowed to spend $400 million trashing GOP presidential candidate John McCain, quietly announced it would "dramatically scale back its efforts in deference to the wishes of the [Democratic] party’s presumptive nominee," the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza reports. So much for Brock’s claim that the Soros-sponsored group would be independent and nonpartisan.

Conservatives are more honest than liberals, Peter Schweizer writes in a Washington Examiner op-ed. He notes that a Pew Research study found 86% of conservatives believed it was "morally wrong" to cheat on taxes, compared to only 68% of liberals. More conservatives understood that individuals must take personal responsibility to prevent government from taking their earnings. In another survey 49% of progressives said if they were unemployed and were offered a job that paid cash under-the-table allowing them to continue collecting unemployment benefits, they would take it, compared to just 21% of conservatives in the same situation. Schweizer is author of the new book, Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less...And Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals (Doubleday).

Washington Legal Foundation, a national non-profit public interest law and policy center, argues in a new report that the federal government has effectively criminalized the conduct of free enterprise in America. The report, Federal Erosion of Business Civil Liberties, details the increasingly unwarranted use by the Department of Justice and agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency of criminal prosecution of regulatory offenses when administrative or civil remedies would be more appropriate. With a foreword by former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, the report is available at www.wlf.org.