Blog Heap of Links for the day 11 March 2011

In his Friday press conference to discuss gas prices, President Obama was rather defensive, straining to counter the notion that his administration has been unfriendly to oil drilling, something most people would like to see a lot more of these days. Where do people get that notion?

"Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, 'No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square.'" ... Unfortunately for him and us, Barack Obama is president of the United States. That job brings with it certain special responsibilities. It's a tough job—maybe tougher than being president of China. But Barack Obama ran for president of the United States. Maybe he should start behaving as one.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier had said that U.S. Air Force "assets" had delivered "some really important coolant" to a Japanese nuclear power plant. One U.S. official said he believed Clinton was told Japan had requested the material, that the United States had agreed to provide it, and that an operation to do so was under way.

Most of what a modern university teaches is untrue, but not every university is so cruel to its fellow citizens.

Obama eligibility researcher and genealogist discusses his research on Obama's purported newspaper birth announcements.

By Deconstructing Obama page by page -- and piece by piece -- Cashill brings the reader to understand that in 2008 "Barak Obama" wasn't a candidate but a carefully created myth. The leftist mainstream media bought that myth, which is why they blew off Cashill and his overwhelming amount of evidence that so much about Obama was fraudulent.

A year-long Department of Homeland Security undercover operation targeting prospective "sex tourists" was torpedoed last month after a blogger unwittingly stumbled upon a sleazy web site set up by federal agents and engineered a reverse sting on investigators she mistook for pedophiles

The author of a book on the Oklahoma City bombing says a man arrested in Quincy after a street fight is the same man she wrote about in her book, "The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing."

The House overwhelmingly approved a bill Wednesday that would ban abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.If the law wins approval in the Senate and is signed into law — both of which appear likely — Oklahoma would be the second state to restrict abortions on the basis of fetal pain.

Japanese officials may only have hours to cool reactors that have been disabled by Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami or face a nuclear meltdown....

A dam in Japan's northeast Fukushima prefecture broke and homes were washed away, Kyodo news reported on Saturday, after the biggest earthquake in the nation's history wreaked death and havoc.

Two seismologists quoted in an article on the website Life's Little Mysteries (a sister site of Space.com) said that just as the moon's gravity has an effect on Earth tides, it can also have a minimal effect on the land in what is known as "land tides" or "solid Earth tides." Ultimately, ocean tides and land tides can have an effect upon seismic activity. [Wow, gravity of a body in close proximity and 1/6th the size of our planet might tug on the delicate, cracked, plates and sub-plates floating on the core of our world, which might even trigger some event that was about to pop anyway? WHAT A SURPRISE!]

TV weatherman John Kettley said: "A moon can't cause a geological event like an earthquake, but it will cause a difference to the tide. If that combines with certain weather conditions then that could cause a few problems for coastal areas." [WHAT? NO EFFECT? WADR, you asked a WEATHERMAN? Let's ask some seismic specialists instead!]

largest in the country's recorded history - and the fifth-largest to hit the world since 1900. It triggered a giant tsunami in the Pacific Ocean, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people. At least 60 people have been confirmed dead as of Friday morning, and the entire U.S. West Coast braces for the aftershocks of the disaster.

Most astonishing was footage of a tsunami rolling in, swamping the land and causing boats to smack into an overpass. ... a wall of water put at 10 to 13 feet high, rushing in... death toll in one village alone was 300... boat with 100 aboard had been reported swept away.... scenes of refinery fires, shaken offices, shattered glass, cracked walls and stranded passengers... another disaster could be looming because the area around a nuclear power plant had been evacuated and that a leak was possible... "Most nuclear power plants in Japan … are able to withstand an earthquake of about 7 or 7.2," she said. "Something this big, an 8.9, even an 8.9 offshore, that certainly is going to raise some alarms." She said that was the "gray zone" of what a nuclear plant could withstand. ... the rate of earthquakes around the world could increase because such a large quake causes distress in the Earth's crust. ...Japan will feel earthquakes for years and decades to come because the fault line could be 400 miles long.

* One train is derailed and another missing in Miyagi prefecture, Kyodo says. - Up to 300 bodies found in Sendai city, domestic news agency Jiji says. - Some 3,000 residents living near a nuclear plant in Fukushima prefecture, north of Tokyo, have been told to evacuate the area, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano tells reporters. - Government says no radiation leaking; evacuation is precaution after reactor cooling malfunction. - Bank of Japan to hold policy meeting on Monday, will announce decision same day, cutting short scheduled Monday-Tuesday meeting. - First signs of tsunami begin to appear on shores of Hawaii.

Japanese refiners Cosmo Oil and JX Nippon Oil and Energy shut their refineries in the eastern part of the country following a massive earthquake that struck the area on Friday afternoon. Several power plants and ports in the Tokyo Bay area were also closed... Japan's Tohoku Electric Power Company shut its three nuclear reactors at its Onagawa power plant while a Tokyo Electric Power Company spokesman said it had shut seven units at two of its nuclear power plants in Fukushima prefecture... Key ports in the Tokyo Bay area also suspended operations... The quake unleashed a 10 meter-high tsunami that tossed ships inland and sparked fears that destructive waves could hit across the Pacific Ocean...

The quake that hit Japan was a magnitude 8.9, the biggest earthquake to hit the country since officials began keeping records in the late 1800s, and one of the biggest ever recorded in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake struck at a depth of six miles, about 80 miles off the eastern coast, the agency said. The area is 240 miles northeast of Tokyo. A tsunami warning was extended to a number of Pacific, Southeast Asian and Latin American nations, including Japan, Russia, Indonesia, New Zealand and Chile. In the Philippines, authorities ordered an evacuation of coastal communities.

One of Indonesia's most active volcanos has erupted, sending lava and searing gas clouds tumbling down its slopes... hours after a massive earthquake in Japan that triggered a Pacific-wide tsunami... 5,853-foot (1,784-meter) mountain is located on Siau, part of the Sulawesi island chain. It last erupted in August, killing four people...

Thousands of protesters pushed past security, climbed through windows and flooded the Wisconsin Capitol on Wednesday night after Senate Republicans pushed through a plan to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights. [We've gone to mob action. Yup, that's how I learned in grade school that American politics is supposed to work. Now LET'S GET A ROPE!... oh, wait...]

France is the first country to formally recognise the legitimacy of Libya's rebel National Transitional Council and will open an embassy in Benghazi, the government announced after meeting with NTC representatives in Paris Thursday.

The top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee says Thursday's hearing on Islamic radicalism could be used by terrorists to inspire a new generation of suicide bombers. [PC has reached its zenith! Now we can't speak of opposing murderers lest we inspire murder! OH boy!]

It remains unclear why it took 10 years for authorities to discover that the children were missing.

The keys were left with the teens so they could listen to the radio, he said. One girl went to the casino while the daughter stayed behind and began huffing compressed air from a can, O'Mara said. The girl told deputies she was circling the parking lot in the van when she blacked out. The van jumped three curbs, hit a security car and then hit the casino building about 3 p.m., O'Mara said. No one was injured, he said. The girl who drove the van told deputies that she had taken an unknown number of prescription pills, not knowing what effect the pills would have

Inhofe called the administration's $556 billion proposal for the next rewrite of the nation's massive transportation bill the most unusual budget request for highways he has seen in his 20-plus years in Congress. "What is unusual is that it ignores the fact that there is no money to fund it," the Oklahoma Republican said.

The West is now home to the four fastest-growing states - Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho - and has surpassed the Midwest in population, according to 2010 figures. California and Texas added to the southwestern population tilt, making up more than one-fourth of the nation's total gains since 2000.