Correction, please!

Warming to a Radical Task

ITEM: British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced "ambitious new targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and urged industrialized countries to redouble their efforts to tackle global warming," reported Agence France-Presse for February 25th. "Blair pledged to slash Britain's output of greenhouse gases by 60 percent by 2050, going far beyond the country's target of a 12.5 percent reduction agreed upon in the 1997 Kyoto global warming treaty." It "is clear," said Blair, "Kyoto is not radical enough."

ITEM: The prime minister, reported the Guardian (U.K) for February 25th, would "also challenge the U.S., the biggest energy consumer on earth, to do more to cut consumption. He will challenge claims that cuts in emissions threaten economic growth...."

CORRECTION: Adopting the Kyoto Protocols would be disastrous. A study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, for example, estimates that implementing Kyoto would bump gasoline prices by as much as 66 cents per gallon by 2010; increase electricity prices by up to 86 percent; and cost the American economy $400 billion annually.

Indeed, the potential harm to America was a driving force for U.S. competitors. To Europeans, this treaty "is about the United States' 'unfair tax competition,' its government consistently refusing to match the Europeans' zeal for taxing energy use to modify behaviour, particularly repressing automobile use and population," noted Christopher Homer in Canada's National Post.

Nevertheless, even if every signatory fully complied with Kyoto, the reduction in the global surface temperature would be a meager 0.07[degrees]C by the year 2050, according to the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Education Funds Explode

ITEM: Students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison were among those taking part "in a boisterous rally organized as part of the nationwide 'Books Not Bombs' demonstration, coordinated by Washington D.C.-based National Youth & Student Peace Coalition," reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for March 6th. "Some students waved signs that read 'Drop Tuition, Not Bombs' and chanted that government should invest in education rather than the military."

CORRECTION: Obviously, these students are not constitutional scholars. While defending the nation is a federal responsibility, buying schoolbooks is not. Under the 10th Amendment, education "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Of course, most congressmen pay little heed to the Constitution. The unconstitutional Department of Education has ballooned from $14.5 billion in 1979 to $47.6 billion in 2002. In fact, according to the House Education and Workforce Committee, by 2002 there were more than 760 education-related programs in 39 separate agencies, costing $120 billion.

When It Raines, It Pours

ITEM: Accepting an award from the National Press Foundation as editor of the year, New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines said the greatest accomplishment of his profession was the development "of a news reporting craft that is truly non-partisan, and non-ideological...." Raines urged his colleagues, as broadcast over C-SPAN2 on February 20th, to be "aware of the energetic effort" to identify them as "ideologues." This, he claimed, "is an exercise of in disinformation, of alarming proportions."

CORRECTION: There's one thing most liberal journalists don't like to admit: the blatant left-wing prejudice in newsrooms. Yet CBS insider Bernard Goldberg was merely stating the obvious when he wrote that "the networks and other media elites have a liberal bias," a point fleshed out in his best-seller Bias. Anchor Dan Rather, however, railed at his longtime colleague for positing those views in the "conservative" Wall Street Journal. To Rather, keep in mind, the New York Times is "middle of the road." Never mind that the Times, as Goldberg noted, "has taken the liberal side of every important social issue of our time...."

Raines himself acknowledged how the Times had "editorially supported virtually every aspect" of Bill Clinton's program. Concerning medical care, Raines said, the Times was "particularly evangelical." He has gushed over the "huge political talent" of Clinton, who presided over the "greatest prosperity in human history," and held onto the "principles of social justice" (as quoted by Media Research Center).

Raines' campaign against the all-male membership of the Augusta National Golf Club has been particularly telling. After more than 40 stories and editorials on the relatively minor issue, Times staffers began balking in public. Raines even spiked mildly dissenting columns. Pat Buchanan, for one, delighted in the reports of a rebellion among some staffers, "who believe that Raines, a Southern liberal frozen in a '60s mindset" is "fast converting the paper into a battering ram of the left. They see the Times as being prostituted to Raines' ideology, and made an object of mockery...."

Nevertheless, there's one thing Raines won't ever be found guilty of -- delusions of humility.

WILLIAM P. HOAR