Archive for June, 2011

God bless Texas. As Americans continue to face near-record high gas prices, recent interest in vast oil shale deposits in the Lone Star State could be a boon to domestic production and significantly lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Of course, this assumes that bureaucrats stay out of the way; one Texas-size assumption

According to a story published by The New York Times late last month, the area known as Eagle Ford in South Texas and other deposits around the state, could generate as many as 420,000 barrels per day by 2015. This represents possibly two or three times as much oil as in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska – the largest oil field in the nation – and could boost domestic production by as much as 25 percent. One oil expert interviewed by the Times noted this would be “like adding another Venezuela or Kuwait by 2020, except these tight oil fields are in the United States.”

Certainly, the hope of extracting the estimated three billion barrels of this valuable natural …

Continue reading Environmentalists Target Texas Oil »

Everyone’s favorite foreign policy expert, Sarah Palin, is finally showing some movement towards making a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. She has bought a large house in Arizona, apparently forsaking her home state of Alaska as insufficiently mainstream as a base from which to mount a presidential bid. And, she has launched a bus tour of the northeast United States.

Most importantly, perhaps, however, is the fact that Palin began her bus tour by popping in on a motorcycle gathering; and hitching a ride on a Harley-Davidson from the Pentagon to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial over the Memorial Day weekend. The motorcycle gig made a great deal more sense than launching her “One Nation Tour” in Washington — Ground Zero for the massive federal bureaucracy that is strangling America’s economy and its future.

It has been widely speculated the former vice-presidential nominee and reality TV star would join the lackluster 2012 Republican field. While she …

Continue reading A Palin-Harley Davidson Ticket? »

While they are essential to keeping the public safe and investigating crimes, police officers do not like to be told they are wrong. What’s more, they often react badly when their mistakes are exposed publicly; especially on the internet.

Back in February, Mark Fiorino, a Philadelphia resident — and apparently a law-abiding one — was walking to a store and minding his own business, only to be stopped by two police officers because he was wearing a holstered firearm on his hip. Fiorino has explained that the reason he open-carries a firearm is because several of his friends had been mugged.

What should have been a legitimate query by a police officer, quickly resolved by a civil question and answer, instead morphed into an ugly incident that nearly turned fatal.

In the profanity-laced recording of the incident, you can hear how quickly the situation escalated. Within seconds of police asking Fiorino, “Yo, Junior, what are you doing,” they were pointing a gun at him, …

Continue reading Embarrassing The Police Can Be Hazardous To Your Health »