On Monday, June 21, the demented state legislature in Albany passed a bill increasing cigarette taxes.  A pack of smokes will average $9.60 across the state, and will be $11 a pack -  $11 for a single pack of cigarettes - in New York City.

This is not only pro-smuggling, it is pro-terrorist.  Who do you think runs the most lucrative cigarette smuggling operations from Virginia and the South into New York?  Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.  The higher taxes will mean higher profits for them, which they will use to kill Israelis and Americans in Afghanistan.

The state legislators who voted for the taxes should be tried for aiding and abetting terrorism for this alone.  But the consequences could be vastly worse.  New York's new tobacco tax law is an example of the Law of Unintended Consequences run amok.  It's the coming nightmare of Crack Nicotine.

Hear that wonderfully melodious sound?  It's the crack-up of Global Warming, the Left's crazed attempt to seize global power after the failure of Marxism crashing and burning.  2008 is starting off just right.

A tip off that it's over for the eco-wackos was the announcement of the Pantone color mavens that green is passé for 2008, that the hip color is blue - as in blue skies, no clouds, no rain, just sunshine and deep blue sky.

Then on New Years Day, the liberal bastion itself, the New York Times, scandalously ridiculed glowarmers, calling them "availability entrepreneurs," sneering at them as

"the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels."

When the New York Times laughs at glowarmers - well, it's like Global Warming is so over.   So it's time to start celebrating CO2.  I have a really good suggestion on how to do so.

My entire professional life has been devoted to saving and enhancing lives. Thus, the thought of abortion for the sake of convenience does not appeal to me. I have personally met several people who have told me that their mothers had considered abortion, but happily decided against it.

Most of us instinctively want to protect helpless creatures and sometimes go to great lengths to do so. The television commercials about abused animals are very poignant and as a society, we sometimes delay or cancel large construction projects to protect an "endangered" insect, amphibian or fish.

Yet many of us turn a blind eye to the wanton slaughter of millions of helpless human babies who are much more sophisticated than some of the other creatures, when nothing is at stake other than the convenience of one or both parents. I am not saying that we should abandon our efforts to save baby seals and a host of other animals.

Rather I am saying shouldn't we consider adding human fetuses and babies to the list?

[This commencement address was originally published five years ago. We  rerun it annually at college graduation time. Feel quite free to send this to any recent college graduate you may know.]

Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Board of Regents, Members of the Faculty, Honored Graduates, Families and Friends:

It's funny that they call this ceremony a Commencement, for you've all reached the finish line:  college, goodbye, we're outta here.  Yet of course, "commencement" means a beginning, not an end.

But one is supposed to at least start - commence - a talk such as this by saying funny things.  So I'll start by talking about Clark Gable movies.  If you've heard of Clark Gable at all, you know he was the biggest movie star in Hollywood a long time ago.  His most famous movie was Gone With The Wind.

He made a movie in 1955 called The Tall Men with Jane Russell as his girlfriend and Robert Ryan as the heavy.  It's a pretty ordinary Western flick with outlaws and cowboys and Indians - and at the end, Ryan, the bad guy, and his henchmen get the drop on Gable, the good guy, and all seems lost.  Suddenly, surprise, Gable outfoxes Ryan and triumphs.  Gable makes his exit, and after he does, Ryan delivers a line that I want you to never forget.

Serendipity is funny, a very funny thing, finding something where you least expect it.  Out of the blue, out of a movie awash with pedestrian dialogue, comes a line so profound it detonates inside your brain. Ryan turns to his men and says:

For many conservatives, the most infuriating outrage of the Bush Presidency has been the prosecution and imprisonment of two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler in the ass.

It is the drug smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, and the federal prosecutor, Johnny Sutton, who belong in jail, not them.

For defending our border from mass foreign invasion, Ramos and Compean will be spending Christmas in solitary confinement, rather than with their families.

It's hard to think of a more Christian, a more pro-American thing you could do this Christmas than send them a message of support and a donation to their wives and children.

Here's how: