If you Google "coyote hunting," you'll get 2,790,000 hits.  It's a popular sport among outdoorsmen, and a necessary one.  As one hunter puts it:

Coyote populations across the country are exploding and taking an unprecedented toll on wildlife. Zero predator control by state and federal agencies and low fur prices have kept trapping to a minimum, hence predator populations are booming. The opportunity to add some prime coyote pelts to your trophy collection and reduce the predator pressure on the local game and bird populations have never been better.

Coyotes are pests, varmints, hated not only by cattle and sheep ranchers, but by anyone with a regard for all the wildlife they kill.  In many states, they can be shot on sight with no permit required in a year-round open season.  Ed Boggess, Minnesota's Department of Natural Resources fish and wildlife policy chief explains:

Coyotes are an unprotected species and can be taken at any time of year, in any quantity, by almost any methods.

It's time this perspective is applied to human coyotes - for "coyote" is what smugglers of illegal aliens from Mexico into the US are called.

On the heels of record freezing weather in Europe, there was a story this week (carried by the Drudge Report and WorldNetDaily so you may have seen it) about a Russian scientist predicting global cooling.

Russian astronomer Khabibulo Absudamatov expects a “decrease in the flow of the Sun’s radiation,” over the next several years which will lead to cooling, not continued warming of the planet.

While his prediction may be right, he is wrong about the cause. As discussed in Solar Warming last September, it’s not the sun’s heat radiation causing a warmer earth, it’s the sun’s magnetic activity.

In Solar Warming, we discussed the cost-free solution to global warming: Let the world’s airlines use high-sulfur jet fuel while flying at cruise altitude.

The solution to global cooling is the mirror image of this: Have international jetliners burn their fuel “rich” at altitude. Give them a tax credit as an inducement.

Less than 100 days before the US presidential elections, the Obama administration is openly denying Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem. Can this be a vote-getter? 

The Emergency Committee for Israel released an ad titled, "O, Jerusalem." The commercial shows administration officials squirming when asked to name the capital of Israel, and highlighted the recent refusals of White House and State Department spokespeople to acknowledge that Jerusalem is Israel's capital city. The underlying message of the ad is that the administration's policy is out of step with the views of the majority of Americans.

As Republicans repeat traditional positions, the Democrats are rendering conventional statements of amity with the Jewish state controversial. It is the Obama White House and its surrogates who are attacking those (like Mitt Romney) who recognize Israel's capital as diplomatic flamethrowers. It is the Democrats who are demonizing American supporters of Israel (like Republicans) as disloyal.

What has changed? Why are Obama and his surrogates now highlighting Obama's hostility? Why are they making opposition to Israel a partisan issue and attacking Republicans for being pro-Israel?  The answer is clear:  Obama has given up on the pro-Israel vote. He's going for the anti-Israel vote and the indifferent-to-Israel vote. He thinks that's the way to win in November.

We call To The Point "The Oasis for Rational Conservatives."  We've gotten a flood of emails this week asking if articles on certain websites claiming that George Bush has "a secret plan to abolish American sovereignty" are being pushed by Irrational Conservatives.

The answer is yes.  We all focus so much on the moonbats of the left - barking mad hairshirts like Algore, Moveon.org folks driven treasonously insane by Bush Derangement Syndrome - that it's important to recognize there are moonbats of the right.

For some weird reason which has to do with psychology rather than reality, a small but loud subset of conservatives easily falls prey to conspiracy theories about cabals of powerful people meeting in secret to take over the world:  the Bilderbergers, the Trilaterialists, the Council on Foreign Relations, or some such.

The world headquarters of this subset of conservatives is on a grassy knoll in downtown Dallas. 

If it hasn't already arrived in your community, it will be there soon:  the nightmare of addiction to methamphetamine.  Supplanting cocaine in drug use, it's much easier and cheaper to make than coke.  A "meth lab" requires only simple equipment like bottles and tubing, easily acquired ingredients, and can be set up in a small space in most any building.

Not only is it cheaper than coke, the high the addict gets from meth is far more intense - and thus far more addictive.  Meth users get a sudden rush of pleasure lasting several minutes, followed by a euphoric high that continues for up to 12 hours.  It leaves cocaine in the dust.

Both cocaine and meth cause the excessive release of the brain chemical or neurotransmitter that controls pleasure called dopamine.  Having sex raises dopamine levels in the brain to about 200 units.  Cocaine spikes dopamine levels to 350 units.  Methamphetamine spikes at 1,250 - more than 12 times the base level of 100.

[This is the full text of Mitt Romney's speech in Warsaw yesterday (7/31).  As inspirational as it was to the Polish people, it is also a call for Americans to be inspired by the Poles to have the courage to be free and to prosper. -JW]

Thank you all very much for the warm welcome to this great city.

It has been a privilege to meet with President Komorowski, Prime Minister Tusk, Foreign Minister Sikorski, and Former President Walesa.

This is a nation with an extraordinary heritage that is crafting a remarkable future. At a time of widespread economic slowdown and stagnation, your economy last year outperformed all other nations in Europe.

I began this trip in Britain and end it here in Poland: the two bookends of NATO, history's greatest military alliance that has kept the peace for over half a century. While at 10 Downing Street I thought back to the days of Winston Churchill, the man who first spoke of the Iron Curtain that had descended across Europe.

What an honor to stand in Poland, among the men and women who helped lift that Iron Curtain.

Here’s a question: Would you go shopping for shoes at a grocery store?

Why not? Oh, yes, grocery stores don’t sell shoes. You only go to a particular store because it’s selling what you want to buy. You don’t go to a store that doesn’t sell what you want to buy. Right, boys and girls?

This Kindergarten lesson came to mind when I saw the Democrats over at the Library of Congress yesterday (January 18) ostentatiously signing what they called their “Declaration of Honest Leadership and Open Government.”