Check here, or here. If you’re gonna give someone a gift card, spare the environment and the firm’s profit line, and give them cash.

The first paragraph is from the National Review. The second is from the Economist blog Democracy in America.

“Uniting the conservative coalition is not enough to win a presidential election, but it is a prerequisite for building on that coalition. Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.”

“The message to Mr Huckabee from one of the Right’s premier publications is crystal clear. For Republican presidential candidates, rejecting homosexuality and abortion remains perfectly acceptable, even necessary. But that social conservatism has to come with a commitment to economic conservatism. Equating gay people with corpse-lovers might win Mr Huckabee the votes of some social conservatives. Being a Baptist former pastor and a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical will almost certainly win him many more. But the economic conservatives are going to need a lot more convincing. “

“Third, and most serious, the carbon-offset movement, combined with well-publicized projects by Google and other companies to reduce carbon emissions, creates the false impression that global warming can be tamed by voluntary efforts, just as cleaning up after dogs has been achieved by voluntary efforts, without need for legal compulsion. Global warming cannot be tamed by voluntary efforts, because the costs of significantly reducing carbon emissions in order to reduce the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (or at least stop it from increasing) are enormous. If people believe that voluntary efforts will suffice, there will be no political pressure to incur the heavy costs that will be necessary to avert the risk of catastrophic climate change.”

Link here

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOomh_YPcYI"]