TailOverTeaKettle.com

Not content to simply discourage automakers from selling cars in California by threatening to sue them over global warming, it was reported today that California Democrat Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is proposing legislation which would ban incandescent lightbulbs in California.

The “How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act” would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

“Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications,” California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine said on Tuesday.

“Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light.”

Levine is expected to introduce the legislation this week, his office said.

I’m not against anyone using fluorescent lightbulbs in their home - either because they want to save the environment or because they find their use to actually give them an appreciable savings on their electric bill.

But if it were such a “no-brainer” decision… a lawmaker would not have to legislate it.

No word on what the penalty will be for using a contraband Incandescent bulb smuggled in from Nevada.

              

Michelle Malkin has a new column up today: A CBS Story “Too Important to Ignore”.

She describes the condemnation of the use of unnamed sources in news reports when it involved unsubstaniated claims about Barack Obama, but not when applied to things like the reports from Iraq or the Jamil Hussein/ Jamil Gholaiem Hussein / Jamail Hussein / Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim controversy.

She notes:

Let us contemplate some wisdom from a media ethics expert quoted by The New York Times this week:

“To most journalists, the notion of anonymous reporters relying on anonymous sources is a red flag. ‘If you want to talk about a business model that is designed to manufacture mischief in large volume, that would be it,’ said Ralph Whitehead Jr., a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts.”

CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier, left, addresses colleagues at CBS News headquarters, in New York Monday Jan. 29, 2007, exactly eight months after a car bomb in Baghdad severely injured her and killed her two CBS News crew members. CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus, second left, joined those welcoming Dozier back for her first visit. (AP Photo/Craig Blankenhorn, CBS) No, he wasn’t talking about the Associated Press’ (and the Washington Post’s and the Los Angeles Times’ and the New York Times’) anonymous stringers relying on unnamed and unreliable sources reporting (or rather, rumor-mongering) on the war in Iraq.

No, he wasn’t talking about the anonymous reporter identified only as “an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Najaf” in three stories just this week, which quoted various unnamed Iraqi clerics, residents and officials.

No, Professor Whitehead was talking about the swiftly and widely discredited InsightMag.com story about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., attending a madrassa as a child. Fox News Channel (for which I am a contributor — see, transparency’s not so hard) took a pounding for picking up the inaccurate story. The liberal media pile-on continues despite the network’s immediate acknowledgement of error in repeating the false charges and despite the fact that Fox didn’t originate the story.

Unlike, say, CBS News, Dan Rather and the faked National Guard memos.

She also describes the stories about an unaired CBS piece (only released via the web) by Lara Logan which appears to include unattributed video footage identical to that released by al Qaeda propagandists, although that charge has been denied as coincidence by CBS. You can read more about that at Michelle’s blog.

Dan Rather’s cry of ‘Fake but Accurate’ may indeed be the slogan that ends all credibility that media news sources have built up over the years. And anonymous ’sources’, regardless of the message they supposedly bring, are losing their trustworthiness.