This week, thousands of Haitians will be the beneficiaries of Pat Robertson.  In fact, long before the horrific earthquake struck on Tuesday, when many of the more fashionable humanitarians who always flock to every tragedy probably would have been hard-pressed to find the island of Hispaniola on a map, Robertson’s Operation Blessing was already hard at work, helping to address the centuries-old tragedy that is Haitian poverty.  Many Haitian bellies have been filled in the past, and undoubtedly many more Haitians will live and be fed in the coming days, because of Robertson and his organization, which has given more than $500 million in aid to suffering people since it began in 1978.

Just a little thought worth bearing in mind about Robertson while watching this clip of his High Moral Majesty, Keith Olbermann, discuss damning him to hell:

Of course, Olbermann is also outraged by Rush Limbaugh (Olbermann is always outraged by Rush Limbaugh), but Rush’s deliberate tweaking of the left by using the words of their own party’s leader in the Senate doesn’t need any defense from me, nor does the irony of Olbermann attacking his political rival while people are still dying in Haiti need any further exploration. (more…)

Please click for Part II and Part III.

How a tiny blog and a collective of climate enthusiasts broke the biggest story in the history of global warming science – but not without a gatekeeper of the climate establishment trying to halt its proliferation.

It was triggered at the most unlikely of places. Not in the pages of a prominent science publication, or by an experienced muckraker. It was triggered at a tiny blog – a bit down the list of popular skeptic sites. With a small group of followers, a blog of this size could only start a media firestorm if seeded with just the right morsel of information, and found by just the right people. Yet it was at this location that the most lethal weapon against the global warming establishment was unleashed.

The blog was the Air Vent. The information was a link to a Russian server that contained 61 MB of files now known as Climategate. Within two weeks of the file’s introduction, the story appeared on 28,400,000 web pages.

Not entirely the “death of global warming” as many have claimed – what happened with Climategate is much more nuanced and exponentially more interesting than the headlines convey. What was triggered at this blog was the death of unconditional trust in the scientific peer review process, and the maturing of a new movement – that of peer-to-peer review. (more…)