CLIMATEGATE RESEARCHER Dr. Phil Jones, late of the East Anglia CRU, tries to transfer the burden of proof to skeptics by attacking critics for “hijacking the peer-review process… Why don’t they do their own [temperature] reconstructions? If they want to criticise, they should write their own papers.”

Hey, Phil, you’re the one arguing in favor of global warming. The burden of proof is on you. Just because you believe there is a black cat locked in the windowless basement at midnight on a moonless night doesn’t mean I should have to prove it isn’t there.

Ed Morrissey agrees: “[B]ecause we’re not the people advancing extraordinary claims about man-made influence on global weather patterns.... This must be some new, previously unknown tenet of the Scientific Method, wherein people who point out errors, bias, bad process, and unsubstantiated claims from scientists are somehow required to disprove their unsupported hypotheses. It’s apparently no longer incumbent on Jones and his colleagues to substantiate their own conjectures with actual science,”

Instapundit recalls a similar case. Attacking the critics didn’t work then, either.

IF THE GOP cannot find some way to align itself with the Tea Party and its ethos, then it will be swept away.

I will hope the Republicans are smart enough to avoid self-immolation, but if the Tea Party rises from the ashes all will not be lost.

THE DALLAS TEA PARTY invites the White People of MSNBC to come to the protest.

Link via Instapundit.

Heh.

THE MOUNT VERNON STATEMENT: the conservative establishment’s call for action.

Instapundit senses a libertarian shift on the part of the right.

My own sense is that GOP success or failure in the 2010 and 2012 elections depends on how well the Republicans can blend Constitutional conservatism with Tea Party activism. I hope they succeed.

FUTURE FORMER DEMOCRAT STRATEGIST. Democratic political strategist Pat Caddell gets fired for “speaking truth to power”.

Caddell responds.

TEA PARTY ACTIVISTS craft 'Contract from America'. The idea is simple: use the internet, develop a 'Contract from America,' and have politicians – of whatever stripe - sign on. Signers get grass-roots Tea Party support; non-signers do not.

"You are going to be held accountable by us," said conservative activist Ryan Hecker, offering a preview of what Tea Party activists are going to tell congressional candidates later this year. "We have a plan - a proactive reform plan - for you to follow and not the other way around."

You can influence the Contract from America at its website here.

And Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has an interview with Hecker here (registration required).

OBAMAVILLE. Chris Muir named them, the New York Times reported them, and Don Surber has the video.

Hat tip to Instapundit for the reminder.

BUT, BUT, BUT ... she’s not one of us.

Dorothy Rabinowitz explains why “it's impossible to imagine the Sarah Palin known to the world today as their leader.”

In truth, Ms. Rabinowitz does an excellent job of explaining why the media has been – and is still being – so defensive about President Obama and his Democrat supporters; her column oozes smug oil.

The day is rapidly approaching when the self-anointed discover that American wisdom is not confined to lower Manhattan.

OBAMA’S $1.5 BILLION FINANCING PLAN would help ‘struggling homeowners’ in 5 (of Obama’s 57) states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan and Florida.

A cynic observes that “cash that was once going to buy up troubled assets but is now just a slush fund for politically motivated deficit spending from the executive branch ... the president’s political rainy day fund.”

UNGOVERNABLE? Charles Krauthammer says no: “Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them the political mandate and legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country… That's not a structural defect. That's a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself -- despite the special interests -- through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.”

IF THE SPECIAL COMMISSION INCLUDES cuts in government spending, one can rest assured it will fail in Congress.

The American people will stand for it; Congress will not.

AMERICA’S NEXT GREAT PUNDIT misses again.

As a parent of school-age children, I can join the amen chorus when Obama calls for more nutritious school meals, comprehensible food labels, helpful tips from pediatricians and changing the 1950s-era presidential physical fitness standards.

Young Mr. Huffman might not realize it, but it was his side, the progressive left, that in the 60’s lobbied to remove PE requirements from high schools and colleges; imposed building codes on kid’s tree houses and backyard forts; removed trampolines and jungle gyms (and dodge balls!) from schools; discouraged pick-up ball games in the vacant lot down the street; and on and on....

As a parent of a school-age child, why doesn’t Mr. Huffman get personally involved:

Make his child’s own school lunches (after reading the nutrition labels); my mother did.

Act on his own pediatrician's advice; I did for my kids.

And – say – walk his child to school; my daughter-in-law does for my granddaughter.

It’s Mr. Huffman’s responsibility to take care of his own – not mine.

GLENN BECK ADDRESSES CPAC: It’s “not enough to not suck as much as the other side.”

The quote is at 16:30 in an address (with chalkboard) that lasts just over an hour.

NOW THAT OBAMACARE is in its death throes, supporters are backpedaling furiously.

For much of the past year, President Obama lavished praise on a few select hospitals like the Mayo Clinic for delivering high-quality care at low costs, but a pointed analysis published Wednesday in an influential medical journal suggests that the president’s praise may be unwarranted.

Mr. Obama received his information about the hospitals from a widely cited analysis called the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, produced by the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. An article in The New Yorker magazine last year written by Dr. Atul Gawande that used the Dartmouth Atlas as its organizing principle became required reading in the White House last year.

But an analysis written in The New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Peter B. Bach, a physician and epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, suggests that much of the Dartmouth Atlas is flawed and that it should not be used to compare the relative efficiency of hospitals.

Even the authors of the Dartmouth Atlas are backing away. Dr. Elliott Fisher, director of the Center for Health Policy Research said that “he and his colleagues should not be held responsible for the misinterpretation of their data.”

IT’S THE UNCERTAINTY, STUPID

It’s obvious to me that the Obama administration has no grasp on what their ‘flavor of the day’ tax and regulatory proposals do to business decision making, but perhaps I can summarize for them:

“No investment means no hiring and no new tax revenues. It’s the uncertainty, stupid.”

Businesses won’t start breathing easy until one particular American loses his job on January 20, 2013.

HELP WANTED -- 'Arrogant Americans' need not apply.

What I find amusing is the faux outrage on the part of the Left. Had it been written as “Help Wanted – ‘Culturally-sensitive Americans’ only”, it would have been lauded as an example of the progressive vision.

MORE LIBERAL STUPIDITY.

Washington’s snowstorms were brought to you by global warming.

Washington’s snowstorms were brought to you by global weirding.

Harvard-educated, Oxford-educated. Journalists, both. I would add “idiots” but that would be redundant.

Try on the hair shirt first, big guys, before you go around fitting the rest of us. Friedman, you first.

GEORGE WILL on Sarah Palin and populism. He might even be correct were not the “pointy-headed intellectuals” so ruinously inept.

Instapundit comments here and reader Brian Gates takes him to task.

A BABY LOTTERY? Michael Barone thinks she’s kidding. I’m not so sure.

But I am sure that if Rachel Gurstein has kids, the lottery wouldn’t apply to her.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: Peggy Noonan on the Obama presidency.