Obama Perilous Legal Pick, Russia Antagonizing Canada, Bank Forced into TARP

1) OBAMA'S MOST PERILOUS LEGAL PICK JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq.  Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh.  President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice.  It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish. See: http://www.nypost.com/seven/03302009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/obamas_most_perilous_legal_pick_161961.htm 2) Warships set sail ahead of N. Korean rocket launch SEOUL, South Korea – Japanese, South Korean and U.S. missile-destroying ships set sail to monitor North Korea's imminent rocket launch, as Pyongyang stoked tensions Monday by detaining a South Korean worker for allegedly denouncing the North's political system. North Korea says it will send a communications satellite into orbit between April 4 and 8. See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090331/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_missile 3) Russia, China cooperate on new currency proposals: (more on getting rid of that pesky US dollar) Russia and China are coordinating proposals on a new global currency that could replace the US dollar as a reserve currency to prevent a repeat of the global economic crisis, the Kremlin said on Monday.  "We have received proposals from our colleagues in China, detailed proposals," President Dmitry Medvedev's top economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich said. "Our positions are very similar.  "We have similar positions on the development of the international financial architecture," he told reporters.  Ahead of the Group of 20 summit in London later this week, the Kremlin has published a raft of proposals to overhaul the global economic order, including plans for a supra-national currency that could replace the US dollar. See: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.7e6cab4fec704a0fdd135ecdac00673b.9c1&show_article=1&catnum=0 4) Canada says will defend its Arctic: (Russia continues to become militarily antagonistic…) The Canadian government on Friday reaffirmed its Arctic claims, saying it will defend its northern territories and waters after Russia earlier announced plans to militarize the North. See: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.92e661444313b232e8931de00c29c73b.3a1&show_article=1 5) German Chancellor Won’t Give In to U.S. Pressure, New York Times Reports March 30 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel won’t give in to U.S. pressure to increase economic stimulus spending, stressing that overspending could plant the seeds for a new crisis, she told the New York Times in an interview. See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=akG.AozphHLo&refer=germany 6) Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told' …But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.  Despite fluctuations down as well as up, "the sea is not rising," he says. "It hasn't risen in 50 years." If there is any rise this century it will "not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm". And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about. See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html 7) Job Losses From Obama Green Stimulus Foreseen in Spanish Study March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Subsidizing renewable energy in the U.S. may destroy two jobs for every one created if Spain’s experience with windmills and solar farms is any guide. See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0 8) Bank forced to participate in TARP The U.S. Treasury told, not asked, U.S. Bank to participate in the program, which is a Darwinian attempt to “synthesize” weaker banks into stronger banks through consolidation, Davis said at the forum, held at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans in Minneapolis. U.S. Bank (NYSE: USB) sold $6.6 billion in preferred stock with warrants to the U.S. Treasury in November through its capital purchase program. See: http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/02/16/daily17.html 9) Centrue Bank president resigns: Atlas Shrugs… Don Davis, president of Centrue Bank in St. Louis, has resigned because his income will be severely restricted by new federal limitations on bank executives. See: http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/03/23/daily12.html