Pennsylvania: Richard Mellon Scaife

Yawn.

Aw, geez. We gotta do this again?

From one of today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorials:
By destroying the myth that state control of alcohol sales ameliorates societal harm, a new Commonwealth Foundation report bolsters the case for ending Pennsylvania's archaic status quo.

"Government-Run Liquor Stores: The Social Impact of Privatization" (available at CommonwealthFoundation.org) says privatizing sales lowers per-capita consumption and DUI-related fatality rates and doesn't increase underage drinking.

It concludes: "Evidence from 48 states over time shows no link between market controls and ... social goals."

The Reason Foundation estimates Pennsylvania could sell its wholesale and retail liquor operations for $1.7 billion. And, Commonwealth's Nathan Benefield estimates, annual alcohol sales tax revenue would remain close to its existing level.

This week's Midweek Briefing:
Newsmax.com's Chris Ruddy says what a growing number of War on Terror watchers are saying -- it's time to reduce our troop presence in Afghanistan. And he favors a plan put forth by Vice President Joe Biden "that involves keeping a smaller force (there) and focusing it on counterterrorism," especially against those nasty al-Qaida cells in neighboring Pakistan. It's likely the best way to better prepare us to handle the growing Iranian threat.
Same old same old. Newsmax is partially owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Want proof? In an article from October 2008 at the

I think they're just playing with my head this time. This is just too easy.

Take a look at today's "Sunday Pops." It ends with this:
Rocco Landesman, president of the taxpayer teat-suckling National Endowment for the Arts, says "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." Given that the president handpicked Mr. Landesman, can a revival of the term "bootlicker" be far behind?
First let's start off saying that they're spinning the quote into something it isn't. Here's a far more reliable source (Fox "News") with the fuller quotation:

Putting the president in the pantheon with such pencil-pushing powerhouses as the man who was, literally, the Czar of all Czars, Landesman said that since Obama "actually writes his own books," he's the most powerful man to be a true writer in the 2,000 years since Caesar strode the narrow earth.

Scaife's Brain Trust just can't (as I've written elsewhere) help themselves. In a shockingly shoddy display of reporting (ironically about shoddy science), Richard Mellon Scaife's editorial board gets it wrong again. Let's begin at the end and trace our way back to reality.

The Trib, today:

Reports that a key research institution destroyed its original climate data set, which was used by global-warming soothsayers, reveal at the minimum a horrendously sloppy scientific method.

At worst, it challenges the very premise upon which this "science" is based.

Data compiled by the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) have been used as the primary reference for the U.