The IPCC was created in 1988 to periodically review the state of climate change science. It has has issued four reports so far, with a fifth in the works. Governments based their programs and policies on its findings solely because it was considered the "final word" on the state of the planet's climate. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, its reputation for accuracy and fairness, to a large degree, was responsible for building a consensus around the world that global warming was both real and a potentially devastating phenomenon largely caused by man.

Earlier this month, families opened their mail to another stark reminder of why we need to reform our broken health insurance system.
In California, beneficiaries of an insurance company owned by WellPoint called Anthem Blue Cross received letters announcing that their premiums would rise as much as 39 percent, meaning a family paying $1,193 a month will now owe $5,580 more on its annual bill.
Even more infuriating for the people receiving these letters, this increase didn’t happen because WellPoint had fallen on hard times. WellPoint recently announced more than $2.7 billion in profits from the most recent quarter alone.
It’s outrageous that insurance companies are reaping huge profits on the backs of working families who are already struggling to make ends meet. It’s also all too familiar.
Even as a recent report showed that America’s five largest insurers made over $12 billion in profits last year with their CEOs taking home up to $24 million each, some of those same companies have requested significant premium hikes.
In the last year alone, insurance companies have requested premium increases of 56 percent in Michigan, 24 percent in Connecticut, 23 percent in Maine, 20 percent in Oregon and 16 percent in Rhode Island.
Now, families in Georgia are wondering if they’re next in line to see their premiums rise.
This is unacceptable. Last week, I wrote WellPoint a letter asking them to justify their extreme premium increases in California.
Their response showed us just how out of touch they are with middle-class families. They argued, for example, that other insurers were making even bigger profits and that their consumers were free to choose a different policy.
But families know that in these difficult times, a choice between higher bills and weaker benefits is no choice at all. We deserve better.
I will continue to encourage insurance commissioners around the country to scrutinize and, when legally possible, rein in these exorbitant and unfair premium hikes. After we spoke out, Anthem Blue Cross offered some temporary relief by delaying its planned rate increases by two months.
But delays and temporary relief are not enough. We need to fix the system that makes these kinds of actions possible.
Right now, our health insurance system works well for insurance companies. They can raise your premiums or slash your coverage, knowing it’s hard to find another plan.
In most states, they can turn you away if you have a pre-existing condition like high blood pressure. They can even cancel your coverage when you get sick. All they have to do is find one error in your paperwork.
Meanwhile, families get a raw deal. They usually have very few plans to choose from. Often, the choice is between one plan they can’t afford and another plan that offers threadbare coverage. That’s assuming families make it through all the fine print to actually find out what a plan does and doesn’t cover.
For too many Americans today, the way they learn about their plan’s benefits is when their doctor says, “we can do the operation we talked about, but your insurance company won’t cover it.”
The reason President Barack Obama started working on health insurance reform early last year was to put these families and their doctors and nurses back in charge of health care decisions. Throughout this process, we’ve been driven by a few simple goals.
First, we need to slow the growth of rising health care costs for families, businesses, and government, so that workers can start getting raises again, companies can start growing, and we can finally start bringing down the deficit.
Second, we need to strengthen insurance for the Americans who already have it. That means creating new rules for insurance companies to stop them from putting an artificial cap on your benefits or canceling your policy when you get sick.
Third, we need to make affordable coverage available to every American. Markets work, but only when there’s competition and real choices. So we need to create a health insurance market where every American has quality, affordable options.
With those basic principles guiding their efforts, both houses of Congress have made history by passing reform bills for the first time ever. But until a final bill reaches the president’s desk, Americans will continue to see rising premiums and shrinking security.
That’s why, later this month, the president has invited Democrats and Republicans together for a meeting to share ideas about how we can finish the job with health insurance reform. The meeting will be televised live so that the American people can watch the discussion.
When Americans are getting 39 percent premium increases piled on top of all their other worries, we need every good idea we can get, no matter who it comes from.
But there’s no room for scoring political points or deliberate stalling. The longer we go without reform, the more families in Georgia and across the country will open up letters saying things like “your premiums are going up 30 percent,” “your cancer screening isn’t covered,” or “We’re not paying the bill because we just cancelled your insurance.”
The premium hikes in California and across the country are a wake-up call. It’s time for Congress to pass reform and hand control over health care decisions back to American families and their doctors.
Kathleen Sebelius is secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

That's when Bishop drew a gun and opened fire, Ng said. He heard a "pop-pop-pop" of a 9-millimeter handgun — it sounded like a Chinese firecracker, he'd later say — just before the room descended into a panic.
Bishop was targeting faculty members sitting closest to her, Ng said. As his injured colleagues went down, he and other survivors dived under the conference room table.
Then, within seconds, the shooting stopped, because her weapon had apparently jammed.
The lull gave the survivors an opportunity. Debra Moriarity, a biochemistry professor, scrambled toward Bishop and urged her to stop shooting, Ng said. Bishop aimed the gun directly at her and pulled the trigger, but it failed to shoot, he said.
Moriarity then led the charge that forced Bishop out the door.
"Moriarity was probably the one that saved our lives. She was the one that initiated the rush," Ng said. "It took a lot of guts to just go up to her."
The faculty members propped up the conference room table against the door and called authorities. Then they braced for her to return, but Bishop never came back — and Ng still isn't quite sure why.
"She could have killed everyone in the room," said Ng. "It could have been much worse."

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Rep. John Murtha cannot be sued for accusing U.S. Marines of murdering Iraqi civilians "in cold blood," remarks that sparked outrage among conservative commentators.
The appeals court in Washington dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by a Marine who led the squad in the attack. The judges agreed with Murtha that he was immune from the lawsuit because he was acting in his official role as a lawmaker when he made the comments to reporters.
Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich of Meriden, Conn., claimed Murtha damaged his reputation by saying the squad he was leading engaged in "cold-blooded murder and war crimes" in Haditha, Iraq, on Nov. 19, 2005.
At a Capitol Hill news conference in May 2006, Murtha predicted that a Pentagon war crimes investigation would show the Marines killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha.
- Newsmax article

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran rose Monday after the Obama Administration quietly increased the capability of land and sea-based missile defenses in several Gulf nations to protect American allies against a potential Iranian strike.
Administration officials said over the weekend that the U.S. was speeding up arms sales to a number of Gulf Arab states and that it had also deployed warships capable of knocking down hostile missiles in flight to the region.

The Obama administration is considering several steps that would review the legality of the controversial Bowl Championship Series, the Justice Department said in a letter Friday to a senator who had asked for an antitrust review.

After years in which global warming activists had lectured everyone about the overwhelming nature of the scientific evidence, it turned out that the most prestigious agencies in the global warming movement were breaking laws, hiding data, and making inflated, bogus claims resting on, in some cases, no scientific basis at all. This latest story in the London Times is yet another shocker; the IPCC’s claims that the rainforests were going to disappear as a result of global warming are as bogus and fraudulent as its claims that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. It seems as if a scare story could grab a headline, the IPCC simply didn’t care about whether it was reality-based.

The numbers tell a bleak story. In 1996, California had 21 percent of the nation’s welfare cases. Today, 32 percent of all welfare cases in the United States are in California, even though we only represent 12 percent of the total U.S. population. Consider this troubling comparison; California is nearly twice as big as New York state, but we have five times as many welfare cases.
Despite being a state famous for opportunity and promise, California lags much of the nation when it comes to moving people from welfare to work, according to the federal government. Only 22 percent of welfare recipients in California who are required to meet federal work minimums are working. According to the Public Policy Institute of California, our state is one of only nine that does not unconditionally enforce the federal government’s five-year lifetime limit on cash welfare assistance. These flaws in our welfare system, coupled with a monthly cash check that is almost 70 percent higher than the national average, work against the goal of helping more welfare recipients leave welfare for a life of greater independence and dignity.