*sigh* it is becoming appallingly clear to even the average non-programmer lay person exactly why the CRU has been refusing to release their "data" and their "code":

Climategate: hide the decline – codified

All you have to do is read the comments.  They can't release the datasets because anyone trying to use them would get different results due to the fact that they have been artificailly removing individual data items from them, artificially modifying them, etc. and so they would be exposed.  They can't release the code because, well, that would expose their artifical manipulations as well.

This is science?  Not by a long shot.  If there are legitimate reasons for these manipulations then they should be documented and scrutinized, not illegally witheld from FOIA requests.  The science stands on it's own and doesn't need to be covered up.  If they are right then the methods and results will speak for themselves.  Transparency is key to legitimacy in science and these people are anything BUT being transparent.

Meta: This post is a serious comment.

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist :

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

The guy murders, mutilates four security guards, drags their bodies through the city, and hangs the bodies on a bridge for propaganda purposes, and now the SEALs are facing charges for a punch?  Even assuming the punch wasn't tecnically necessary, I mean, really?

Watch out guys, Obama is right behind you ... and he's got a knife pointed right at you back.  Pathetic.  Is there any doubt that Obama is on the terrorist's side here?  Public trials in NYC... Filing charges against the people capturing them ...

<Shakes Head in Disbelief>

Meta: This post is a serious comment.

Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.

...

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

...

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

...

But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.

...

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

Climate change data dumped

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation.

The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

...

What more can I say?  This kind of speaks for itself.  What real scientists act like this?  What real scientists "throw away" their raw data?  It's ludicrous.

Bottom line, the CRU climate record is now useless and completely discredited.  They now admit that they made "adjustments" to their raw figures and everything else is based on those results.  Of course no one can say how or what changes were actually made, or verify that they were made correctly because there is no way to compare the raw data to the "adjusted data".  They may as well have made up the entire underlying dataset as far as anyone can confirm.

Of course the skeptics were skeptical all along because the alarmists refused to allow their results to be properly reviewed by independent sources, preferring instead of game the system by insuring that only their friends were used as reviewers.  How convenient.

Meta: This post is a serious comment.

 the case to build a bigger tent, if they would focus on less regulation for small business and economic issues.

 But...... in order to do so, they would have to embrace health insurance reform. If nothing is done about the costs of insurance and the rising cost of health care, it will consume 100% of your income in due time. How is it fiscally responsible to not embrace cost controls for health insurance?