Federal offices were ordered to remain closed in Washington last Tuesday while road crews tried to dig the nation's capital out from under what was billed as "one of the worst snowfalls in decades."

This news brings back memories of some previous years when the global warming crowds scheduled major meetings in Washington, D.C. about this time of the year and were sometimes snowed out. There was no word of that happening this year, so maybe they have learned that global warming often forgets the District of Columbia.

Actually, this year global warming forgot the whole Northeastern section of the United States. As sometimes happens, after a couple moderate winters, the average annual snowfall statistics bounced back to normal with one big dump.

As far as we could find, only CNN was crass enough to run a global warming article last week. But, if we wait a while, some bright light in that misguided movement will somehow blame the Presidents Day snowstorm of '03 on global warming. They'll try, anyway.

Last week's storm dumped on a wide area of the Northeast. For instance: Garrett County, MD got 49 inches; Seven Springs Ski Resort, PA, 40; Berkeley Springs, W.VA, 37; Linden, VA, 35; Winchester, VA, 30; Monroe, NY, 30; Red Lion, PA, 30; Upper Strasburg, PA, 29; Boston, 27.5; West Milford, NJ, 26; Westchester County, NY, 26; and the Baltimore-Washington Airport was hit with 26 inches of snow.

According to the National Weather Service, West Virginia's Berkeley County was hit with 37 inches of new snow. The monitor in New York City's Central Park recorded 19.8 inches.

There's an interesting fact about New York City, which thinks of itself as the financial capital of the world: City government officials immediately started whining that snow removal there costs a million bucks an inch. So, of course, the world's financial capital is asking for federal money to help pay for digging out of the snow emergency.

Interesting that. New York City seems to be the hometown of a disproportional number of global warming activists. Massive cold fronts and huge snow storms, it would seem, is exactly what these groups must want. Which means, they should also be willing to pay for their own snow removal.

Unfortunately, as so often happens, there were at least 35 deaths directly attributed to the snow storms. Also, more than 250,000 homes and businesses went without power for a day or more.

Nonetheless, there is still a vocal faction out there attempting to show that man is warming the earth to dangerous levels. It doesn't seem to matter that, statistically, there has been little (if any) significant change in the average annual participation or temperature within the United States as a whole for as long as records are available.

Some groups would have us return to an Ice Age, it seems. Problem is, Mother Nature has other ideas. We are still coming out of the last Ice Age and nothing man can do will change that.

Even if we could, are huge snowstorms and artic winds what we want every winter? Perhaps this might be a good time to present that question to our friends and relatives living in our nation's Northeast states.

Except for providing an endless amount of humor for late-night monologs, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is seeming more useless every day. The Air Marshal program has had major problems from its inception and the idiocy of many airport passenger screeners is almost legendary.

As part of the Homeland Security bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, TSA (1) was ordered to implement an affirmative program to arm any and all passenger airliner pilots wishing to participate in the program. There were to be no limits on participation. That is, each pilot of a passenger airliner that passes the screening and training will be allowed to carry a firearm on the flight deck. The passenger airlines will not be allowed to 'opt out' of the program. Participation in the program was to be an individual decision that each pilot will make independent of his or her employer.

One problem is that the Transportation Security Administration bureaucrats want to be the big fish in that little security pond. Air Marshals on board an aircraft means that the TSA actually "commands" the aircraft. The "captain" then becomes relegated to being a driver, rather then the senior officer.

Which means, TSA bureaucrats were totally against arming those folks in the cockpit charged with the safe operation commercial aircraft -- and all of the lives of the people aboard.

At this point we might also insert that a great many commercial airline pilots are prior military people. Which means, they already have significant experience with a vast array of weapons, ranging from handguns to fully armed war-planes. Furthermore, a large number of commercial airline pilots have been to war and successfully (obviously) completed their missions.

Even so, TSA bureaucrats are doing everything in their power to ensure that few, if any, commercial airline pilots are armed. A TSA attorney clearly told a member of the Airline Pilots' Security Alliance (APSA), that the TSA intends to make the program so difficult, intimidating and burdensome that no pilot will volunteer. And, so they are.

According to APSA (2), the application demanded by TSA includes a lengthy and probing application and resume'. A government administered psychological exam will be necessary to assure pilots can follow procedures and laws. Then comes a one-on-one "interview" with a TSA psychiatrist to ensure armed pilots will conduct themselves with regard to the safety and security of all aboard the aircraft. Next there will be a probing background investigation in which family, friends, neighbors and coworkers will be interviewed. Of course each pilot wishing to be armed will also need yet another medical evaluation (they already get two a year). And, as part of the program, TSA agents will evaluate pilots-in-training to ensure they have the proper mindset to carry a weapon on the job.

"We're focusing on their ability to be a good federal law enforcement officer in a crisis situation at 48,000 feet," TSA spokesman Robert Johnson told the Associated Press.

Well then, here's a thought: Subject every person in TSA to the same scrutiny. Better yet, every person in federal law enforcement.

Obviously, the TSA has no intention of following the law and quickly arming as many commercial airline pilots as possible. Based on these and other reports, it is becoming clear that the Bush administration should consider summarily dismissing all those in TSA supervisory positions. They have become a lot more trouble than they are worth.

1. <http://www.tsa.gov>

2. <http://www.secure-skies.org/>

3. And, for your viewing pleasure:

<http://www.whoohoo.net/pilot/index.htm>

When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson took a little editorial liberty with the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Consequently, if we modern Americans are to fully understand our own personal rights and liberties, this requires a little explanation.

Back in the days of the Founding Fathers, every family was said to have two well studied books in their library. The most important best seller around 1775, of course, was "The Bible." The second best seller in the Colonies was "Blackstone's Commentaries on The Law," then a new three volume set on English common law.

For the Founding Fathers, "Blackstone's Commentaries" was the law book of the day. Of course, the writings of John Locke and others were freely quoted too. But, they were theory. "Blackstone's" was an accurately written description of our Common Law. Since then, "Blackstone's Commentaries" has been used for over two-hundred years in every English speaking law school in the world. Even today, a well read copy of "Blackstone's" can be found in any American law library.

Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin all studied "Blackstone's" at length, as did all of the Founders. That is very obvious in their writings. They quote and paraphrase the text extensively.

So, it is no surprise that the phrase written by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence originated in Chapter One of Book One of Blackstone's, titled "Absolute Rights of Individuals." Blackstone describes the absolute rights of individuals as being our right to life, liberty and property. Jefferson took the editorial liberty of changing "property" to "pursuit of happiness," knowing full well that all Colonial Americans would understand exactly what was meant.

It is us, today's Americans, who seem to have a problem with that meaning. We Americans have lost the concept of true freedom because we no longer know exactly what our rights are. In today's United States, the word "rights" has been corrupted so completely that few Americans any longer know the difference between the terms procedural rights and civil rights, and our unalienable rights and liberties. However, the basics can be learned in less than a minute, so let's examine a little of Blackstone's original text.

Sir William Blackstone defines our absolute rights as "those which are so in their primary and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it." These rights have also been called natural rights by some.

Blackstone then breaks these rights down into three basic categories:

LIFE -- The Right of Personal Security: "This right consists of a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health and his reputation." Herein can also be found your right of self defense.

LIBERTY -- The Right of Personal Liberty: "This consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, of moving one's person to whatever place one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by course of law." We find this right protected, to a limited extent, within the body of our Constitution, and further guaranteed within the Bill of Rights.

PROPERTY -- The Right of Private Property: "This is the third absolute right, and consists in the free use, enjoyment and disposal by a man of all his acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land."

Our Founding Fathers called these absolute rights "unalienable" -- incapable of being given up, taken away, or transferred to another. In Jefferson's first draft of The Declaration of Independence, the word was conventionally spelled inalienable.

However, the newspaper editor among them, Benjamin Franklin, thought unalienable sounded stronger. And, as they say, the rest is history.

Thus, the protection of Life, Liberty and Property -- our natural, absolute and unalienable rights -- became the underlying reason our country was formed.

There is, of course, a caveat here: As members of society, we are also required to respect these rights in all others. Therefore, the most important reason we empower governments to make and enforce laws is to insure that everyone respects the rights of others.

Towards this end, the body of our Constitution was carefully crafted by the Founding Fathers to allow the central government only certain enumerated powers. Although it may not seem like it today -- with our hundreds of thousands of pages of imposing laws, rules and regulations -- the powers of the federal government were designed to be few, and the freedoms of citizens were intended to be many.

Because of the lack of vigilance on the part of the American public, this ratio of government powers to personal freedom has recently reversed. We can probably recoup many of our unalienable rights again. But folks, it's going to take some effort from all of us. Bureaucrats are not about to relinquish their control over us without a lot of kicking and screaming.

What do you think the Founding Fathers would say about the oppressive legislation, rules, regulations, and executive orders emanating from today's federal government? Luckily, in The Federalist Papers No. 78, Alexander Hamilton gives us a pretty good idea:

"There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid."

Strong stuff! "No legislative act, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid." Hamilton may have been a lawyer and a politician, but there is certainly no equivocation there! That is quite a concept, especially coming from a man who actively participated in the Convention that wrote our Constitution.

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