It’s Darth Vader versus Mama Grizzly in the battle of the right wing titans: Sarah Palin: It’s a ‘Shame’ About Dick Cheney.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Tuesday that it’s a “shame” former Vice President Dick Cheney considers her vice presidential selection a misfire, but she might be joining Cheney in skipping the Republican National Convention.

“Well, seeing as how Dick — excuse me, Vice President Cheney — never misfires, then evidently, he’s quite convinced that what he had evidently read about me by the lamestream media — having been written what I believe is a false narrative over the last four years — evidently, Dick Cheney believes that stuff, and that’s a shame,” Palin said on Fox News’s “On The Record with Greta Van Susteren.”

Read the whole article here.

Arizona won’t be banning abortions at 20 weeks, at least not yet.

In a brief order today, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency request by foes of the law to keep it from taking effect while they appeal a lower court ruling which said the law is constitutional.

The judges gave no reason for their order.

Today’s ruling means at least a two month delay — if not more.

The court gave opponents of the law until Sept. 4 to file formal briefs on why they believe it is illegal. Supporters, so far led by Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, then have until Oct. 3 to respond.

And the court gave the foes another two weeks after that to reply.

The law, approved earlier this year, was designed to supersede existing Arizona legislation which bans abortion at the point of fetal viability, considered to be from 22 to 24 weeks.

[…]

The stay is good, because a few days ago, this was the situation:

A federal judge today refused to stop a new law limiting abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy from going into effect on Thursday.

Judge James Teilborg acknowledged that prior U.S. Supreme Court rulings have said states may not ban abortion outright before a fetus is considered viable. That is generally considered to be in the 22-24 week range.

But Teilborg said SB 2036 ‘does not impose a substantial obstacle to previability abortions.’ Instead, the judge wrote, the law only limits abortion between 20 weeks and the point of viability.

The judge also rejected arguments that the cutoff — beyond which abortions would be allowed only in case of the mother’s death or serious injury — will not deny women the right to abort a deformed fetus.

In his ruling, Teilborg said evidence submitted by one of the doctors ‘stops short of claiming that there are any conditions that could only by diagnosed after 20 weeks that could not have been found before that time.’ Instead, he cited the statement of a witness for the defense of the law.

‘The court finds that it would be extremely rare to find a condition that could be diagnosed after 20 weeks that could not have been diagnosed earlier,’ he wrote.

[…]

Now it’s up to the 9th Circuit.

Drought via Shutterstock

Environmental scientist Robert J. Brulle has an op-ed in the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, calling for the environmental movement to redouble its efforts to move climate change onto the presidential agenda, and criticizing the irresponsible behavior of both candidates as the climate continues to heat up: Conspiracy of Silence: The Irresponsible Politics of Climate Change.

In a summer dominated by heat waves and a devastating nationwide drought, it would seem that climate change would be a major issue in the US presidential campaign. However, quite the opposite is happening. Neither President Barack Obama nor the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, has focused any attention on this critical issue. In a recent speech on the Senate floor, Senator John Kerry characterized the political discourse in the United States as a “conspiracy of silence … a story of disgraceful denial, back-pedaling, and delay that has brought us perilously close to a climate change catastrophe.” This silence means that we can expect further delays in addressing climate change, delays that we cannot afford.

A very sobering passage on where the problem already stands, and what’s at stake if the inaction continues:

The consequence of this inattention is an irreversible commitment to dangerous climate change. Twenty years ago, the United States signed, and the Senate ratified, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The objective of this treaty was to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” which was defined in the Copenhagen Accord of 2009 as limiting the overall temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius. There are three reasons why that goal is now unobtainable. First, even if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere could be held steady at 2005 levels, scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have calculated that global temperature would rise by 2.4 degrees Celsius if not for the air pollution that is masking the warming by blocking some of the sun’s rays. Second, as a 2011 paper by British climate researchers explains, emissions reductions that are constrained to levels thought to be compatible with economic growth are not sufficient to stay below 2 degrees Celsius. Only a period of planned austerity and an intensive effort to build a carbon-free energy system could now achieve the goal of avoiding dangerous climate change. Finally, the International Energy Agency has estimated that the carbon-emitting energy infrastructure that will push global temperature rise beyond 2 degrees Celsius is already 80 percent complete, and will be fully installed by 2017. This will lock in future emissions unless capital equipment is retired earlier than anticipated. The best we can now hope for is to avoid catastrophic global warming in excess of 4 degrees Celsius, which will require an aggressive response by governments around the world.

Listening to the presidential campaign, you would be hard pressed to find any inkling of this situation. The official statements still maintain that there is no reason for alarm, and that we can still avoid dangerous climate change. While ignoring climate change might be a good political strategy, both the Obama and Romney approaches are intellectually disingenuous and morally irresponsible. Romney’s position is ridiculous, as it ignores the enormous scientific literature on anthropogenic climate change. But is Obama’s position any better? Any delay increases the probability of reaching a tipping point beyond which mitigation measures will be too little and too late to avoid catastrophic consequences. Yet the Obama administration has ignored this threat, offering instead a thin and uncompelling case for developing clean energy.

Dealing effectively with greenhouse gas emissions will require substantial transformations of both our economic and energy systems, and adoption of politically unpopular measures such as a carbon tax. Rather than attempting to build a public consensus to address climate change, the Obama administration is perpetuating the cultural delusion that we can continue business as usual, and that climate change does not require substantial and politically painful actions. While this strategy might prove to be advantageous in the short term, it saddles future administrations and generations with a heavy political, economic, and environmental burden. Even if Obama wins, he will have built no mandate for action during his second term.

Texas Republicans voted yesterday in a primary election to replace long-time Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison with former Solicitor General of Texas Ted Cruz, who believes George Soros is plotting with the United Nations to eliminate golf courses in the US, and believes “Shariah law is an enormous problem.” Among other crazy Tea Party delusions: Five Things Everyone Should Know About GOP Senate Candidate Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz Believes George Soros Leads A United Nations Conspiracy To Eliminate Golf: In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined the leaders of 177 other nations in endorsing a non-binding UN document known as Agenda 21. This twenty year-old document largely speaks at a very high level of generality about reducing poverty and building sustainable living environments. Nevertheless, Cruz published an article on his campaign website claiming that this non-binding document is actually a nefarious plot to “abolish ‘unsustainable’ environments, including golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads.” To top it off, Cruz lays the blame for this global anti-golf conspiracy at the feet of a well-known Tea Party boogieman — “The originator of this grand scheme is George Soros.” …

Ted Cruz Campaigned On How He Helped Texas Kill A Mexican: Cruz’s very first campaign ad encouraged GOP primary voters to support him because he helped make it easier for Texas to kill an “illegal alien.” According to the ad, “Cruz fought all the way to the Supreme Court” after “the UN and World Court overruled a Texas jury’s verdict to execute an illegal alien.” In reality, the case Cruz won had nothing to do with whether Texas had the authority to kill this man. Rather, it concerned whether Texas could defy a treaty requiring it to inform foreign nationals who are arrested of their right “to request assistance from the consul of his own state.” Even North Korea honored this treaty that Cruz fought to undermine.

The latest Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times poll of swing states shows that Barack Obama has a strong lead over Mitt Romney: Obama Hits 50% In Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times Swing State Poll Finds.

President Barack Obama hits the magic 50 percent mark against Gov. Mitt Romney among likely voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, with wide support for his plan to hike federal income taxes on upper-income voters, according to a Quinnipiac University/ CBS News/New York Times Swing State Poll released today.

This is the first measure of likely voters in these swing states and cannot be compared with earlier surveys of registered voters. Matching Obama against Romney in each of these key states - no one has won the White House since 1960 without taking at least two of them - shows:

• Florida: Obama edges Romney 51- 45 percent;
• Ohio: Obama over Romney by a slim 50 - 44 percent;
• Pennsylvania: Obama tops Romney 53 - 42 percent.