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Days after The New York Times newest columnist wrote apiececautioning against shutting down reasonable debate on climate change,liberals in the media and elsewhere are still railing against the paper for publishing a dissenting view from its typical climate alarmism.

Bret Stephens column on Friday quoted former NYT environmental reporter Andrew Revkin who wrote last year,I saw a widening gap between what scientists had been learning about global warming and what advocates were claiming as they pushed ever harder to pass climate legislation.

Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong, Stephens, a Never Trump conservative hired away from the Wall Street Journal, argued. (RELATED: The New York Times Affirms Elitist Bent With Latest Hire)

Stephens column prompted furious left-wingers to threaten to cancel their subscriptions. Days later, liberals are still bitterly complaining aboutthe NYTs decision to publish Stephens column.

Liberal website Slate ran an article Sunday calling Stephens column classic climate change denialism. The column declared it not actually true that reasonable people can be skeptical about the dangers of climate change. The author, Susan Matthews, appeared to suggest that the liberal paper can no longer be trusted on account of the article, concluding: Stephens may be wrong about most things but he was right about onesome institutions no longer deserve to be trusted.

Theres nothing conservative (or liberal) about the Stephens column, data journalist Nate Silver complainedon Sunday. The issue is about evidence vs. bullshit. He doesnt know his subject.

Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple called Stephens column a dreadfully argued piece in his second piece complaining about it. Wemple claimed that speaking of climate change as a future problem shortchanges the entire issue.

Penn State professor Michael Mann said the NYT can win him and other readers back by owning [the] debacle and convincing us theyre not adopting editorial stance of false balance on climate.

Some of my more intemperate critics are doing an awfully good job of proving the point about the column, Stephens noted in a statement on Sunday.

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

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Days Later Liberals Are Still Melting Down Over Bret Stephens' First NYT Column - The Daily Caller

Veteran South Australian MP Duncan McFetridge will quit the Liberal Party after losing pre-selection in his seat for the 2018 state election.

Dr McFetridge has confirmed the move and says he will make a statement to parliament next week.

He has held the suburban seat of Morphett since 2002, but recently lost pre-selection to former Collingwood footballer and local mayor Stephen Patterson.

Dr McFetridge says he is now taking a few days break ahead of parliament's return on Tuesday.

He previously held a range of opposition front bench positions, but was dumped as a shadow minister by leader Steven Marshall in January.

He retained Morphett in 2014 with a near 13 per cent margin, but that was reduced to an estimated 7.7 per cent in the 2016 redistribution of electoral boundaries.

It remains unclear if Dr McFetridge will contest the next election in March as an independent.

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SA MP to quit the Liberals - NEWS.com.au

Our friends on The Left, especially The Professional Left, use emotional arguments to win hearts and minds. We conservatives are typically not very good at storytelling, which puts us at a disadvantage when trying to win debates over public policy. This disadvantage becomes more pronounced when we fail to counter the false premises of The Left. When we let an underlying premise go unchallenged, we have already lost the argument.

Too many Republicans, and even too many conservatives (not necessarily the same thing), fall into the trap of The Professional Left every single time. They'll meet the Democrats on their turf, leaving their false premises unchallenged in an attempt not to look like a typically mean Republican. When we use the language of The Left to try to beat them, the referee might as well declare a TKO before we even enter the ring. If we conservatives permanently want to change the arguments over taxes, budgets, health care, immigration, abortion, and any number of a host of public policies, we must first learn to recognize the false premises of The Left and call them out for what they are. As Napoleon learned at Waterloo, it never works out when you fight your enemy on their home turf. Reclaim the battlefield, and you claim the battle.

Here are Eight False Premises of The Left. Learn to recognize and counter them, and the argument will flow your way every time (at least until you're called Hitler, invoking Godwin's Law). Which false premise of The Left drives you craziest?

1. Mass shootings are on the rise! If we could just get rid of all the guns, people wouldn't be so violent!

This argument bears all the hallmarks of a False Premise of The Left. Take a crisis, blow it out of proportion, and demand emergency action. Voila! Rights revoked, and everybody feels better! This is the classic argument of the advocates of gun control. This argument presupposes that humans aren't naturally predisposed toward violence to assert their dominance in a dispute.

In order to defeat this argument, one must know the freely available stats on the rates of violent crime. Every outlet you can find, left-leaning, right-leaning, government stats, whatever is out there -- they all show a dramatic drop in violent crime since its peak in the early '90s. This article from National Review gives a good overview. The upshot is that as funding for police increases, violent crime decreases. About those mass shootings? According to John Lott, France had more deaths from mass shootings in 2015 than the U.S. had in all eight years of the Obama administration. This is not a uniquely American problem, and the frequency of attacks is a mere 0.078 per million people. Statistically, the chance of dying in a mass shooting event is roughly equivalent to dying in a severe weather event. Is it awful? Of course. Should we do more? Absolutely. Should we trample the rights of law-abiding gun owners? What do you think?

Originally posted here:
Eight False Pretenses Liberals Use to Frame an Argument - PJ Media

HALIFAX Nova Scotia's premier did his best to laugh off a gaffe apparently revealing the provincial election date, after a campaign video was posted to the Liberal party's website Friday.

The video, which was quickly taken down, showed Premier Stephen McNeil next to a campaign slogan and the message "on May 30th vote Liberal."

It is the strongest hint yet that an election will be called in the coming days, although McNeil refused to confirm anything.

"You saw an ad that was a mock-up of an ad, I wouldn't read too much into it," McNeil told reporters at the legislature.

"As you can tell it didn't go through the spell check or anything. There is a number of stuff the campaign is doing, but I wouldn't read too much into it."

The campaign video alsomisspells the party's slogan "Building on a Stronger Nova Scotia" spelling it as "Bulding."

The Elections Nova Scotia website says an election period is "not less than 30 days" from the date the writ drops.

The Liberal government would have to call an election by this Sunday in order for Nova Scotians to go to the polls May 30.

On the heels of aweeks-long spending spree, the provincial government tableda balanced budget Thursday, further fuelling speculation that an election is around the corner.

Still, McNeil chose to remain coy when asked whether he was denying there was going to be an election on May 30.

"There will be an election at some point in the future and I'm looking forward to that," said McNeil, who added he would be spending his Saturday night at a church dinner in his home riding.

McNeil was again asked whether someone had jumped the gun and pre-empted an announcement that is usually made by the premier.

"Well there's no campaign," he laughed.

Progressive Conservative Leader Jamie Baillie said he didn't see what happened as being funny.

Baillie said the episode looks bad on the government, and how it has handled the run-up to what seems to be an imminent election call.

"It just shows that we've got to get away from this style of leadership where you pretend you're presenting a real budget and really you are planning an election," he said. "That's why I've been in favour of fixed election dates and this is probably the strongest argument yet."

Nova Scotia is the only province in Canada without a fixed election date.

Keith Doucette, The Canadian Press

Read more:
Nova Scotia's governing Liberals pull campaign ad suggesting May 30 election - rdnewsnow.com

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The only thing anyone is allowed to hear on campus is a slogan. Thinking is so 20th century (and early 20th century at that). The adults paid to be in charge have retreated to a safe place, where never is heard an encouraging word and the skies are cloudy all day.

The First Amendment has been under the latest assault for months, and this week Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont and onetime chairman of the Democratic Party, finally said out loud what certain prominent Democrats have hinted at and alluded to, that free speech does not necessarily include extending it to anyone who disagrees with them.

This poison spread, like so much of the toxic stuff polluting the body politic, from the campuses of the elite. Particularly the University of California at Berkeley, where visiting speakers with something to say cant say it because it might offend the sophomore class. Cowardice rules in the university presidents office and ignorance rules in Sproul Plaza. A speech by Ann Coulter, the firebrand columnist, was canceled because everyone was afraid of what she might say.

Miss Coulter, a slender woman who might weigh 90 pounds stepping out of a shower, was eager to take her chances facing down the mob to say her piece, whatever that piece might have been, but the Berkeley cops, the university administration, the sponsoring Young Americas Foundation and the College Republicans, all trembled, looked one way and then the other, and took a powder lest the hooded brownshirts dressed in black with robbers masks, actually disrupt the tranquility of the campus.

The editors of National Review magazine observed with a bit of acid that Janet Napolitano, the president of the University of California System, was Barack Obamas Director of Homeland Security and was responsible for keeping al Qaeda out of New York and Washington, but she cant secure a lecture hall on a California college campus.

But even in defending free speech and all that free speech means, the editors prefaced their condemnation of cowardice and outrage at Berkeley with something of an apology for defending Miss Coulter: We have had our differences with Ann Coulter over the years, differences that led to our eventually declining to continue publishing her work. She is charming and funny and sometimes brilliant. She is also a glib and irresponsible self-promoter. We suspect that she will not like having that written about her. We suspect that she might write something in reply. But the editors think it is nevertheless wrong, or at least inappropriate, to chase her off the campus. Probably.

Howard Dean likes free speech and the First Amendment well enough, but with appropriate edits and the proper emendations. He looked at the work of the Founding Fathers with a physicians eye and saw that the guarantee was not absolute, as the Founding Fathers thought it was. The amendment does not protect hate speech, which he thinks is anything unpleasant for a good fellow like him to hear.

The Founding Fathers thought they succeeded in writing the guarantee in stark, plain English so plain and so clear, in fact, that even a lawyer could understand it: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. No ifs, ands, or buts, and not a single whereas. Nothing there about hate speech, exclusions, preclusions or exceptions.

This gives some people palpitations. Its no mystery why such people are invariably at the likes of Berkeley and Yale and Middlebury. Youre not as likely to see or hear proposed footnotes to the First Amendment at the likes of Southeast North Dakota State, Utah A&M or Ouachita Baptist College.

In First Amendment law, says Glenn Harlan Reynolds, the distinguished professor of constitutional law at the University of Tennessee, the term hate speech is meaningless. All speech is equally protected whether its hateful or cheerful. It doesnt matter if its racist, sexist or in poor taste, unless speech falls into a few very narrow categories like true threats, which have to address a specific individual, or incitement, which must constitute an immediate and intentional encouragement to imminent lawless action its protected.

Theres a reason why the Founders put the First Amendment first. Its the most important part of the Constitution, and as important as the rest of the Bill of Rights is, the First Amendment is the most important. With free speech, the people are armed to protect all other rights. Without it, the people are disarmed, and tyrants, the vile and ignorant like the students on certain campuses among us, rule. We allow that at our deadly peril.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief emeritus of The Times.

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First Amendment under attack by liberals - Washington Times