Considerettes

In one of the McCain/Obama debates, candidate Obama promised this:

So there are some — some things that we’ve got to do structurally to make sure that we can compete in this global economy. We can’t shortchange those things. We’ve got to eliminate programs that don’t work, and we’ve got to make sure that the programs that we do have are more efficient and cost less.

OK then, how about the Head-Start program?  Does it work?  Not according to HHS.

“Head Start,” the flagship pre-kindergarten program introduced in 1965, has been a $166 billion failure. That’s the upshot of a sophisticated multi-year study just released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

An earlier iteration of the study, published in 2005, had found a few modest improvements in the language skills of participating students while they were enrolled in the program. But by the end of the first grade, even those few effects have disappeared, according to the follow-up released this month. Out of 44 separate cognitive tests given to former Head Start students at the end of the first grade, only two showed even marginally significant effects. The other 42 showed no statistically significant effect at all.

But even that overstates the case for Head Start. That’s because, on each of the 44 separate tests, there is a 1 in 10 chance of a false positive: a test result that appears to show a positive impact but is really just a random fluke. With so many test results, we’d expect to see at least a few false positives. Statisticians have ways to control for this problem, and when the authors themselves applied such a control, they found that the two apparently “significant” effects vanished.

What’s more, this applies to all the non-cognitive tests administered to students as well. After controlling for the likelihood of false positives, the study’s authors found no “socio-emotional” benefits and no “parenting practice” benefits either. No benefits to Head Start of any kind at the end of first grade. None.

Government education programs just give liberals the warm fuzzies, but we’ve spent half a century dumping money down this particular drain and no Democrat worth his NEA card would dare touch it.  Certainly President Obama won’t; he increased funding by more than a full one-third last year, and he shows no sign of stopping.

We’re not getting our money’s worth with Head Start, so how about funding another program that shows demonstrable results?

But President Obama and Congress have already had a golden opportunity to show that they will heed their own scientific evidence, supporting what works and what is efficient: the D.C. private school voucher program. The latest Department of Education study revealed that after attending private schools for three years, voucher-receiving students were reading more than two grade levels ahead of the randomized control group who had remained in public schools. What’s more, the average voucher value was a mere $6,600, compared to D.C. per-pupil education spending of over $28,000.

What did Congress do to the program that has proven itself dramatically more effective and many times more efficient than D.C.’s public system? They decided to sunset its funding, effectively killing it. What did President Obama do to save it? Nothing. He let it die despite having previously said that “if there was any argument for vouchers it was, ‘Let’s see if the experiment works.’ And if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what’s best for kids.”

Or not.

Don’t listen to what they say, watch what they do.  Democrats kill education programs that work and pour money into those that don’t.  The voucher program is a classic conservative, free-market approach to education, and it works.  We need more policies like it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

What if I told you that we’re spending as much on defense now as we were when Jimmy Carter was President?  Yeah, I’d laugh, too.  But the Cato Institute notes that, as a percentage of the gross domestic product, defense spending is indeed at late-1970s levels.

What’s also interesting to see is that non-defense spending, by the same measure, having stayed at about the same percentage of GDP for 30 years or so, has skyrocketed under Obama.

(Click on the image for the accompanying article.)

Defense spending, a constitutional role of government, is really not the problem when it comes to our national debt.  Just an FYI.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Democrats carped over the big spending of the Bush administration.  (True conservatives did, too, by the way.)  But when they got the reins, both the White House and Congress, Democrats made Republican spending look positively thrifty.

When they have lots of money, Democrats spend money on all sorts of government programs.  And when we have less money, as in this recession, Democrats spend money on all sorts of government programs.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the House majority whip, said that trying to find greater savings in the budget, which was released by President Barack Obama this morning, wouldn’t help alleviate the recession.
“We’ve got to make some decisions here as to what’s in the best interests of our country going forward,” Clyburn said during an appearance on Fox News. “And I think the best interest is to invest in education, control these deficits, while at the same time trying to get people back to work.”

“We’re not going to save our way out of this recession,” the majority whip added. “We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.”

But Chuck Bentley, CEO of Crown Financial Ministries, has a different take on the issue.

The government is almost insolvent already because it borrows more money than it takes in. The government is trying to spend its way out of economic trouble.

Washington is not spending cash reserves, its spending borrowed money. We’re borrowing money to solve a problem caused by borrowing too much money. We’re borrowing from foreign sources. Spending is out of control. The only way to fund it is to raise taxes, borrow, or print money. None of those strategies will lead to economic health.

The Democrats are looking at the ends and forgetting all about the means they’re using to achieve them.  Indeed, Obama’s new budget spends a record $3.8 trillion dollars.

The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year’s stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.

The budget paints a remarkably dire picture of a federal government that will have to borrow one-third of what it spends next year as it runs a deficit that still would total some $1.3 trillion.

This from the guy who says he’s trying to reduce deficits.
Please read all of Chuck Bentley’s article.  He goes over his 5 predicted trends for 2009 (which were all very much on the money, so to speak), and he goes over his 5 trend predictions for 2010.  It’s very likely we’re not out of the woods yet, and government isn’t really helping.

Chuck’s advice to Americans, and America’s government, is the same; get your financial house in order first.  Maxing out your credit cards when you’re already deeply in debt, on the assumption that things are going to get better, is a risky bet.  Just ask banks that bought those (now) toxic home mortgage securities.  Here’s his #5 trend prediction:

The mid-term elections will be a pivotal moment for the economic direction of our country. I don’t want to get into politics, but the problem is the U.S. is increasing its debt while people are trying to get out of debt. There are big differences in what people see as the solution. The population is trying to get its house in order while the government tries to spend its way out of trouble. The U.S. dollar has lost value because of government’s fiscal irresponsibility. The government can only get money by taxing, borrowing, and printing money. More programs mean more money is needed to fund them. That means government will print more money and further devalue the dollar. You can’t become prosperous through government spending. Elected officials from both parties treat the dollar as if it were Monopoly money. When taxing and borrowing isn’t bringing in enough money, government will print it. That will lower the value of the dollar, and devalue your savings. Our elected leaders are living foolishly. We should vote for those seeking office who pledge to be good stewards of the money the people supply the government through taxes. They should act as trustees that are committed to protect the people by making sure the government lives within its means. Work with all your power to get the government to live within its means. The mid-term elections will indicate the direction of the country. If we’re not successful in electing good stewards, a very painful correction is coming.

If that correction comes, be sure government will misread the reasons.  Just get educated yourself.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Yup, the much-reviled (by the Left) program to teach kids to refrain from sex before marriage, rather than just avoiding pregnancy, seems to work.

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can persuade a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for U.S. efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

Only about a third of sixth- and seventh-graders who completed an abstinence-focused program started having sex within the next two years, researchers found. Nearly half of the students who attended other classes, including ones that combined information about abstinence and contraception, became sexually active.

The findings are the first clear evidence that an abstinence program could work.

"I think we’ve written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."

Critics do have a point.

Several critics of an abstinence-only approach said that the curriculum tested did not represent most abstinence programs. It did not take a moralistic tone, as many abstinence programs do. Most notably, the sessions encouraged children to delay sex until they are ready, not necessarily until married; did not portray sex outside marriage as never appropriate; and did not disparage condoms.

"There is no data in this study to support the ‘abstain until marriage’ programs, which research proved ineffective during the Bush administration," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.

However, this is certainly a step in the right direction.  As Rush Limbaugh has often said, abstinence works every time it’s tried, and the more this message gets to the kids, the better.  The moral reasons for it can be left to the parents.

Popularity: 1% [?]

I have Multiple Sclerosis, and have had it for a bit over 23 years.  The first episode I had numbed the left half of my body from the shoulder to the foot.  With medication it went almost entirely away, with just some slight lingering numbness in my left hand that I could handle.  Other smaller episodes of it coming and going occurred for some years after that, but then it left for about 10 years (again, with those initial leftovers being the only hint of it) until 2006, when I had a larger episode.  I recounted that time in a previous blog post.

As I said back then, the treatment in 2006 was much different than in 1986, and I got back most of the feeling in my right arm.  This still left some numbness in my right hand, which, while more so that what was in my left hand, still allowed me to touch-type (and being a programmer, typing is essential).  I also had numbness in my feet and lower legs, but the treatment removed most of that as well.

MS comes in two forms; the kind that comes rather swiftly and then goes away with treatment, and the kind that continue to creep slowly through the body.  I’d always had the former.  However, after the 2006 episode, it seems I had some of the creeping kind.  I noticed, after the treatment, that if I walked for too long, perhaps a couple of miles or so at a stretch, that my right leg would start to drag, as though the nerves telling it to move were keeping the signal from getting there easily.  A bit of a rest — 15 minutes or so — and I’d be back going again.  Imperceptibly, however, this distance before the leg started to drag began to shrink.  It never seemed to be a big deal until I realized that how far I could walk during a few different annual events (camp outs, quiz meets, those sorts of things) was noticeably different if I remembered how I was the previous year.  When I thought of it this way, I could see that things were indeed getting worse.  I could go no more than a quarter of a mile, and sometimes not even that, before the leg started dragging.  (After a long drive with some of the youth, in a van where the cruise control wasn’t working, my leg was immediately useless upon exiting the van.)

One of the things I’ve considered on and off over the years was asking God to heal me.  I was a little hesitant, however, because, as I noted in the other post, God had already made it very clear to me that He could do it, He just wasn’t doing it at the time.  Fair enough; I could live with that.  And in living with that, I got the idea that I shouldn’t pursue that, other than the occasional requests for healing at our church.  I would be prayed over, but I never really expected something instantaneous because I figured He’d do it when and if He wanted.  And indeed, nothing much ever happened.

But this summer, I began to get this desire to really pursue a healing from God.  Part of it was realizing that I was really unable to participate in my older son’s Boy Scout events, and that my younger son was hitting his Cub Scout Webelos years.  Part of it was I was just plain tired of the whole MS thing.  But a big part of it was that I came to the realization that God didn’t necessarily want this for me either.  He could certainly work through it, and He had.  (God’s hands are not tied because of mere sickness.)  But I felt now that He wanted me to really pursue Him and a healing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 1% [?]

That’s what writer Keith Baldrey is asking.

Is health care becoming the mortal enemy of our country’s education system?

I don’t pose this question facetiously. When we’re discussing public services, it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, everything comes down to money.

And it is obvious that health care is increasingly getting that money at the apparent expense of other public services - most notably education.

In fact, our health-care system’s voracious and unending appetite for tax dollars is crowding out spending in all sorts of other areas.

That’s a fair question.  We don’t yet have a system like Canada’s, for example, but we do have tax dollars that do go into heath care.  But is it really that bad?  Is there really that much of an issue of having to decide either health care or education?

We no, not really.  As James Taranto notes:

If only we had a single-payer system like Canada’s . . . Oh, wait! Baldrey’s article is about Canada’s system. It appears in the Surrey (British Columbia) Now.

And be thankful that it won’t be.

Popularity: 1% [?]

From Rick McKee (click for a larger image):

The censorship that the Left supposedly hates so much only applies, apparently, to issues they support. When they’re against it, censorship is okey dokey.

Popularity: 1% [?]

From James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” column, a must-read column:

How did Barack Obama manage to kick off his presidency by making exactly the same disastrous mistake Bill Clinton made 16 years earlier? One answer is that Obama thought Clinton’s health-care errors were tactical rather than strategic, and that correcting these–by letting Congress write the bill, or by cutting deals with industry groups in exchange for their support–would be sufficient to ensure success.

But if Rep. Marion Berry is right, the answer may be as simple as sheer hubris. Berry, an Arkansas Democrat first elected in 1996, announced over the weekend that he won’t seek re-election. In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, reprinted by Politico, Berry, who was an “aye” in the House’s 220-215 vote for ObamaCare Nov. 7, recounts his unsuccessful efforts to persuade the White House to pursue more moderate policies:

Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ‘94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”

“You’ve got me.” In fairness, one can see why Obama might have been overly impressed with himself. Here’s a guy who became president of the United States just four years out of the Illinois Senate, and along the way developed a cultlike following. It sounds as though Obama became a follower as well as figurehead of his own cult of personality. He overestimated the degree to which he was special as opposed to lucky–a very human failing.

Indeed, he’s only human.  His followers, however, bought into the image hook, line, sinker and fishing pole.  It was willful blindness, as they couched their ignorance in the heady thought of electing the first African-American President.  It was all about feeling good about what you were doing, rather than about policies and programs and party planks.  And now the Democrats are paying the price for promoting it.

As it turns out, Berry understated the peril in which Obama was placing Democrats–not just in a conservative area like the First District of Arkansas (where John McCain topped Obama, 59% to 38%), but even in Massachusetts (Obama 62%, McCain 36%), where last week the Democrats could not hold Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat. Even observers who have thought for some time that ObamaCare was bad news for Democrats were surprised that it was this bad.

Welcome to the real world, where even liberals are getting the idea that government is doing too much to try to “fix” things, many of which aren’t broken, and many of which the private sector can handle.  (Yes, those are poll results from last September, and they can certainly change, but the trend lines are really veering away from the “big government” mindset.)

Believing your own press is the worst thing that can afflict a politician, and Obama seems to have soaked it up.  This is why a liberal media can, indeed, sometimes hurt a Democrat; they butter him up with good press, and don’t reflect what the people think.  (It another proof that indeed the media lean liberal, causing this to happen.)  Then a Republican replaces Ted Kennedy and they’re shocked.

Good morning Democrats.  This your wake-up call.

Popularity: 1% [?]

From Michael Ramirez (click for a larger version):

Oh look, a squirrel….

Popularity: 2% [?]

Presented here with no other commentary than a hearty, “Amen!”  James Taranto:

“The majority is deeply wrong on the law,” according to a critic of yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC . “Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money.”

Whose opinion is this? We don’t know exactly, because it is not attributed to any individual. It is an unsigned editorial in the New York Times. That is to say, it reflects the collective opinion of the Times editorial board, a division of the New York Times Co., a corporation that exists to make money.

It’s lucky for the New York Times Co. that the Supreme Court upheld its First Amendment rights. Otherwise, it could not have exercised its First Amendment right to denounce the court for upholding its First Amendment rights. Right?

Not quite. As Justice Anthony Kennedy noted in his opinion, the McCain-Feingold “campaign finance” law–which until yesterday’s ruling made it a felony for corporations to engage in certain political speech–exempted “media companies” like the New York Times Co. (and News Corp., publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site) from this restriction.

McCain-Feingold, in other words, granted a small group of companies, including the New York Times Co., the privilege to speak freely about politics, while denying it to all other corporations–not only “companies . . . that exist to make money,” but also taxable nonprofits that exist to represent a point of view, including the advocacy arms of the Sierra Club, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

The editorial published by the New York Times Co. includes no mention of the special privilege the New York Times Co. enjoyed under McCain-Feingold–a privilege that creates at least the appearance of a journalistic conflict of interest. Is not the failure to disclose the New York Times Co.’s interest in McCain-Feingold a serious violation of journalistic ethics?

The Times’s opinion is wrongheaded as well. Under the paper’s cramped view of the First Amendment, the privilege the New York Times Co. enjoyed under McCain-Feingold was just that: a privilege, not a right. The First Amendment does not say “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech of media corporations.” If the Constitution doesn’t protect corporations, it doesn’t protect the New York Times Co. And if Congress had the power to grant an exemption to media companies, it also had the power to take it away.As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in McConnell v. FEC (2003), such reasoning would permit “outright regulation of the press.” Some on the far left, complaining about “corporate domination” of the media, would like to see just that.

In past generations, the New York Times Co. had a proud tradition as a defender of free expression. It was the prevailing litigant in two landmark Supreme Court cases expanding and vindicating First Amendment rights, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) and New York Times Co. v. U.S. (1971). The former case, by the way, involved a political advertisement.

What a shame it is to see a once-great media corporation become a fair-weather friend of free expression.

Popularity: 2% [?]

From Instapundit yesterday:

HAITI RELIEF? Soldiers told to stop handing out food. “Food handouts were shut off Tuesday to thousands of people at a tent city here when the main U.S. aid agency said the Army should not be distributing the packages. It was not known whether the action reflected a high-level policy decision at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or confusion in a city where dozens of entities are involved in aid efforts.”

One is likely to assume that the lack of a cohesive government down there and logistical problems would be to blame.  However, one of Glenn’s readers replied with his first-hand experiences.

The “aid” agencies did the same thing in Afghanistan. Being a logistics specialist, I volunteered to help an American NGO with rebuilding schools, and was on the ground in Kabul in January of ‘02. (I later ended up in charge of UNICEF’s warehouse/distribution operation for all of the new school supplies…leaving me with a complete and total disdain for all things UN-related.)

For the NGO community, to be seen co-operating with the US military was the kiss of death. NGO co-ordination meetings specifically warned against co-operation with the US military, as opposed to UN agencies. The supposed reason was that they wanted a clear line between the “killers” and those that were “there to help”.

Hey folks, get over it.  Stereotyping the military in this way does no one any good.  How many NGOs have facilities to desalinate ocean water and provide food as much as an aircraft carrier does?  Yeah, thought so.  America is using it’s vast resources to help and all you can do is this:

They would actually COMPLAIN that the military was out doing things like rehabilitating wells and such, whining that these were things that should be left to the aid agencies. The irony of the fact that we were all sitting in a meeting, DISCUSSING it, while the US military had already been out DOING it, was completely lost on them.

Sounds like it’s same-old, same-old. Nothing but tools, the lot of them.

Yup, ya’ gotta’ get over it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Unless you’ve been living in a closet for 2 week, or are a die-hard Obama supporter trying to avoid the news, Scott Brown, the Republican, won the special election to fill the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy.

Yes, that Ted Kennedy.

Was this simply a local election, judged solely on local issues?  I don’t think so, especially since Brown himself injected national issues into it when he said he would vote against health care "reform".  Yes, local issues played a part, but I think the national ones overshadowed them. 

This is Massachusetts, after all, one of the bluest of blue states, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3.5 to 1, and where they were replacing a Democrat who’d held that seat for a generation. 

Polls a month ago put Coakley ahead by 20 points.  Brown then made it national, and all of a sudden the momentum shifted in a big way.  The payoffs, most notably to Senator Ben Nelson, didn’t help matters.

There are those that say conservatives shouldn’t get credit for Coakley’s defeat, and explain why the loss was mostly, if not wholly, due to disappointment by Democrats in Obama; what he promised vs. what he’s delivered.  The problem with that analysis is that not much on that front has changed in 3-4 weeks, when Coakley’s numbers tanked.  The issues noted in that blog post — military commissions, international surveillance, drug laws, sentencing reform, Gitmo’s closing, the Afghanistan war, anti-terror policies — have not substantially changed one bit since mid-December.  So you can’t really say that those are the issues that moved the voters.  A sea changed occurred, and there’s one thing, one major issue, that did change during that time; the health care "reform" bill. 

According to Rasmussen, 56% of voters thought that this was the most important issue.  Brown brought up the issue of voting against it, and once he did, voters flocked to his side.  Now true, some did so because they don’t like it at all, and some did so because they thought it didn’t go far enough.  Rasmussen notes:

Forty-seven percent (47%) favor the health care legislation before Congress while 51% oppose it. However, the intensity was clearly with those who are opposed. Just 25% of voters in Massachusetts Strongly Favor the plan while 41% Strongly Oppose it.

Fifty percent (50%) say it would be better to pass no health care legislation at all rather than passing the bill before Congress.

But the point here is this is Massachusetts, after all, where Democrats far outnumber Republicans and where Ted Kennedy was in a safe Senate seat for a generation.  And they’ve elected a man who says he’ll vote against the health care "reform" bill.  Conservatives, mostly of the Tea Party variety, have been getting the word out on how awful this bill will be, and while the opinion polls have gone against it, now, more importantly, the voters have as well, pulling off what’s been called an epic upset. 

Will Democrats in Washington get the message?  We’ll see.

Popularity: 2% [?]

There are many ways to contribute monetarily to the relief effort in Haiti.  I’d like to share a couple.

The Salvation Army:  In Haiti since 1950, the church I grew up in has one of the lowest overhead percentages of any charity you’ll come in contact with.  You can go to this web site and put a donation on your credit card.  Alternately, you can text the word "Haiti" to 52000 on your cell phone to donate $10, which will be added to your next cell phone bill.  (Carrier’s text message charges may still be applied.)

The Christian & Missionary Alliance:  The church my with wife grew up in, and with whom her parents spent 30+ years as missionaries to Indonesia, has set up a web site to collect donations.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Blaming God for the earthquake in Haiti got Pat Robertson some major blowback.  (He didn’t really blame God, he blamed Satan, but work with me here.)  All manner of scorn was heaped upon him.  Fair enough.  Then how about this lesser-publicized remark regarding the earthquake?

When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m sayin’?

(Emphasis mine.  Well, actually it’s Tim Blair’s, to whom the hat tip goes.)  See it’s OK for actor Danny Glover to blame a planet for these problems.  Heck, Al Gore’s made a living doing that.  But talk about what Blair calls “a less-fashionable deity” and all hell breaks loose.

That’s a phrase that Brit Hume used to describe his mentioning of that same deity.  Sounds like his contention that someone else wouldn’t have faced the same firestorm if they had said the same thing he did about Tiger Woods but suggested a New Age guru, is sounding more and more correct.

Want to nail Robertson for his comment?  Have at it.  But you you should give the same treatment to Glover.  The media and the liberal elite don’t, which suggests which side their on (or, more specifically, against).

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Israel Project is a great source for keeping up with information about Israel and the Middle East.  Clearly it has Israel primarily in mind, but its information is generally not of the opinion variety.  Most often, it is an aggregation of information from many sources to make a point.

Like this article noting Iran’s duplicity just during Obama’s 1st year.  Below are some excerpts, with the original footnote links.  Does this sound like a county willing to deal fairly with the world?

January 2010

Jan. 2: Iran issues an ultimatum to the United States warning that if the United States doesn’t accept Tehran’s counterproposal by the end of January it will commence reactor fuel production at increased levels of enrichment.[5]

December 2009
Dec. 29: News emerges that Iran is close to clinching a $450 million deal to import 1,350 tons of purified ore uranium, or “yellowcake,” from one of the world’s biggest uranium miners, Kazakhstan.[6] The deal would be a direct violation of UN sanctions placed on Iran for refusing to halt its nuclear program and raises concerns in Washington. Iran and Kazakhstan deny that there’s any such deal.[7]

Dec. 22: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly dismisses a year-end deadline stipulating that Iran must send out of the country more than 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium “in one batch” to avoid additional UN sanctions.[8] The deadline, set by the world’s major powers - the P5+1 (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) - stipulates that in accordance with the Oct. 1 proposal, Iran must send out more than 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium “in one batch” to avoid additional UN sanctions. [9]

Dec. 18: The Times of London exposes secret Iranian intelligence documents that outline a four-year trial project that includes the neutron initiator, a final element for creating a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion, as well as uranium deuteride, which experts say can only be used in for nuclear weapons.[12] Intelligence sources say the documents date back to 2007, raising doubt over Iran’s claim that it stopped its weapons program four years prior.[13]

Nov. 3: A cargo ship filled with tons of Iranian weaponry en route to Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon is intercepted 100 miles (161 km) from Israel’s coast. It was carrying more than 500 tons of advanced weaponry and missiles, including Katyusha rockets, assault rifles, mortar shells, grenades, and anti-aircraft platforms.[19] The containers aboard were imprinted with the acronym IRISL (Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines) and cargo slips proved the weapon containers were from Iran.[20]

Oct. 17: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Iran is helping Venezuela explore and eventually mine its uranium deposits. Venezuela reportedly has 50,000 tons of uranium reserves.[26]

Oct. 1: Iran conditionally accepts the P5+1 proposal negotiated in Geneva, which would require Iran to deliver more than 70 percent of its low-enrichment uranium to Russia and France for refinement into fuel for a medical research plant, as well as permit IAEA inspectors to inspect the Qom facility within two weeks of the agreement.[28] The P5+1 includes the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China plus Germany.

And that’s just excerpts, and just going back as far as October.  Read the whole thing(tm).

This is what a rogue state looks like.  This is what a country that doesn’t live up to its agreements, and continually demonstrates that it can’t be trusted, looks like.  Comparisons to other countries’ behavior, when using the word "rogue", need to take this into consideration.

Popularity: 2% [?]