If ignorance is truly bliss, then green-blogger Brendan DeMelle has got to be one the happiest people on the face of the earth. Attempting to ridicule the Heartland Institutes’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, set to kick off in Chicago this Sunday, DeMelle relied on tired arguments that might otherwise be persuasive if they were either: a) relevant, or b) accurate. The following pretty much sums up DeMelle’s take:

…this denial-a-palooza fest is dripping with oil money and represents a blatant industry effort to greenwash oil and coal while simultaneously attacking the credibility of climate scientists.

The entire conference can therefore be dismissed out of hand. Nothing to see here except a bunch of posers on the take, right? Had he been blogging during the Renaissance, no doubt DeMelle would have advanced the same kind of argument to defend the accepted version of “settled science” back then:

Pay no attention of that fraud Galileo. You know he’s part of the Accademia dei Lincei, right? And you know that group is funded by that rich aristocrat Federico Cesi, right? How can you believe a guy with those connections? How can the Pope and all those Cardinals possibly be wrong?

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This past week marked one of the strangest periods of my life.  And yes, the arrest of my friend and colleague James O’Keefe had a lot to do with it. James found himself, once again, in the middle of a raging media battle all because he wanted to shine a little light on public corruption.  Let me tell you something, he certainly rang in the New Year with this one.  As James said:

My goal is to expose corruption and lack of concern for citizens by government and other institutions…

Target: Mary Landrieu. Why: she’s been taking legal “bribes” in the form of the “Louisiana Purchase” in exchange for her vote on Sen. Harry Reid’s healthcare bill, and ignoring phone calls from her outraged constituents.  Bold, dirty, rude politics at its finest.

Putting his head down, and plowing ahead, James was off to New Orleans working on a new project.  A project that would hopefully raise questions, demand answers, and spur people to action. (more…)