Blog Heap of Links for the day 15 February 2009

In what legislators are calling a first, one-fifth of the Oklahoma House voted Feb. 11 to strike from the record a prayer offered on the chamber floor by the Rev. Scott H. Jones, pastor of Cathedral of Hope UCC-Oklahoma City. ... Jones is a constituent of McAffrey's Oklahoma City district. ...believe the objection was raised because of their sexuality. Jones leads the largest predominantly LGBT congregation in Oklahoma City and is himself gay. McAffrey is Oklahoma's only openly gay legislator.

Climate alarmists declare that man's energy use is increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate warming (one degree Fahrenheit over the last century). They further project that Earth's temperature will increase dramatically in the near future and lead to world catastrophe. Worldwide warming of this magnitude would be a radical and unlikely deviation from the previous century and has little scientific merit. Temperature proxy measurements going back hundreds of thousands of years through many ice ages and warm periods indicate atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to be a result of temperature change and not a cause.

Marijuana is California's largest cash crop. It's valued at $14 billion annually, or nearly twice the value of the state's grape and vegetable crops combined, according to government statistics. Indeed, a recent report pegged marijuana as two-thirds of the economy of Mendocino County, a ganja hotbed north of San Francisco. That's not surprising—it costs $400 to grow a pound of pot that can sell for $6,000 on the street. But the state doesn't receive any revenue from its cash cow. Instead, it spends billions of dollars enforcing laws pegged at shutting down the industry and inhibiting marijuana's adherents. Of course, there's a reason for that. Marijuana's social costs may include addiction and rehabilitation treatment and lost productivity. Yet these are minute compared with the extensive social costs of alcohol or tobacco.

Baby-faced Alfie, who is 13 but looks more like eight, became a father four days ago when his girlfriend Chantelle Steadman gave birth to 7lb 3oz Maisie Roxanne. He told how he and Chantelle, 15, decided against an abortion after discovering she was pregnant.

The world's biggest record companies sued college students, a 12-year-old girl and a dead woman and still failed to stamp out music piracy. Now they're turning to Internet service providers. Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp., EMI Group and Sony Music Entertainment have gained leverage through court and government actions to pressure ISPs into warning customers not to steal music -- in some cases with a threat to cut service. Crowded networks are helping to soften U.S. and European access providers' resistance to working with record companies.