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Hacked e-mails from top environmental researchers, which appear to question whether humans influence climate, have been misunderstood, former Vice President Al Gore said Wednesday. "The climate deniers tried to create the impression that that's what was in those stolen e-mails, but when you put them in context, it's clear that's not what [scientists] were doing, " Gore said on CNN's "American Morning."

'Dangerous, deceitful' attempts to derail Copenhagen summit condemned Gordon Brown tonight led a chorus of condemnation against "flat-earth" climate change sceptics who have tried to derail the Copenhagen summit by casting doubt on the evidence for global warming. Sceptics in the UK and the US have moved to capitalise on a series of hacked emails from climate change scientists at the University of East Anglia, claiming they show attempts to hide information that does not support the case for human activity causing rising temperatures. On the eve of the Copenhagen summit, Saudi Arabia and Republican members of the US Congress...

An alleged series of attempted security breaches at the University of Victoria in the run-up to next week's Copenhagen summit on climate change is evidence of a larger effort to discredit climate science, says a renowned B.C. researcher. Andrew Weaver, a University of Victoria scientist and key contributor to the Nobel prize-winning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, says there have been a number of attempted breaches in recent months, including two successful break-ins at his campus office in which a dead computer was stolen and papers were rummaged through.

The University of East Anglia has released statements from Prof Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Prof Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit, and from CRU. Statement from Professor Trevor Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research The publication of a selection of the emails and data stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has led to some questioning of the climate science research published by CRU and others. There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation...

The perfect companion clip to Ace’s post yesterday on The One’s illusions about what his global charm offensive might actually accomplish. The key bit comes early, at about a minute in. Why hasn’t his glorious restoration of America’s “standing” translated into any foreign-policy achievements thus far? Simple, he says: We’re in the laying-the-groundwork stage right now. Softening up the people. Giving them a jolt of Hopenchange fee-vah that’s going to force their leaders to play ball with America whether they want to or not. Meanwhile, here’s what’s in the Times today: A week ago, when Mr. Obama kicked off his...

President Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

Fox's attempt to smear ACORN Thursday September 10, 2009 is despicable, part of a coordinated, long-term campaign by Fox to damage ACORN, the premiere community organization of low- and moderate-income people in the United States. Every day ACORN members are working for health care reform, living wage jobs, to end the foreclosure crisis, and to strengthen our public schools. For its part, Fox is running a campaign to demonize ACORN. They will get attention, but they will not succeed. In July 2009, Fox agents attempted to enter ACORN offices in New York, in Philadelphia, in San Diego, in Los Angeles,...

Kate Walsh's hubby doesn't think Private Practice should also describe her accounting methods. The actress' soon-to-be ex-husband, studio honcho Alex Young, has filed court documents stating that the company that managed both his and Walsh's finances has engaged in "unlawful and unethical conduct" by refusing to hand over the documents he has requested pertaining to the couple's house and other assets.

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices. "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to...

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.” We have created a system for growth that depended on our building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made...

On his second full day in office, President Barack Obama made a major gesture toward restoring the Constitution and the rule of law by signing two executive orders: one closed the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and the other restored America to the company of civilized nations by closing so-called “black sites� that facilitated state-sanctioned torture. Nice start, and the credit goes both to Obama and to the millions of Americans who stood up and took risks to fight against gathering tyranny. But it is not enough. There is a speech that we still need to hear, detailing five tasks that,...

CALGARY - U.S. President Barack Obama says Alberta's oilsands industry "creates a big carbon footprint" that leaves Canada and America facing an environmental dilemma about how to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from energy development. He also says he's eyeing carbon capture and storage as a possible solution. As the public-relations war between industry and environmental groups heats up over the oilsands - the second-largest oil reserves on the planet next to Saudi Arabia - the massive development in northern Alberta has clearly caught the eye of the 44th U.S. president. Obama has previously vowed to end America's addiction to "dirty, dwindling...

Who do you think would be an appropriate replacement for Alan Colmes on FOX News's Hannity & Colmes program?

Sarah Palin, the classic schoolyard bully Tuesday, October 07, 2008 By Tony Norman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Those of us with vivid memories of middle school have seen Gov. Sarah Palin's type before. She was the girl who was always the first to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and the last to stop instigating fights in the cafeteria. She was the girl who always had just enough self-awareness to know when the boys were paying more attention to her than to other girls. Her specialty was flattering the alpha boys around her. Terrified of losing her exalted place, she quickly perfected...

With under a month until election day, Sen. John McCain's campaign stepped up its rhetoric against Sen. Obama. The latest charge this weekend from the McCain campaign was not that Obama will raise your taxes or will prematurely pull out of Iraq, but rather that Obama is not American enough. Such a line of attack is not only disappointing and disrespectful but is also a distraction from the issues that face our country. Speaking at rallies across Colorado and California on Saturday, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin repeatedly said, " Our opponent is someone who sees America, it seems, as being...

One in four of the world’s mammals is threatened with extinction and half are in decline, the most comprehensive assessment so far has found. The Tasmanian devil was one of 450 mammals described as endangered despite previously being regarded as of least concern Scientists who carried out the five-year survey of the 5,487 known mammal species described their findings that 1,139 face dying out as “bleak and depressing” and said that it was likely to get worse. Marine mammals were the worst affected, with more than one in three at risk of annihilation. For the Yangtse river dolphin, it may...

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me. ---SNIP--

DETROIT - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama yesterday said he was outraged at being asked by the Bush Administration to bail out Wall Street for the financial crisis, but said it was a necessary measure that should be passed soon. Saying he supports the $700 billion bailout that was agreed to early yesterday, Mr. Obama nonetheless said the financial ruin threatening Wall Street was "the final verdict" on an era of greed that he laid at the feet of the current administration in the White House. And he attacked his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, for backing deregulation policies...

The Emperor has no clothes. If you want to know why American capitalism is on the brink of disaster, but also want to understand what will save it, then log on to the C-Span congressional website and watch the interrogations of Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, by the Senate and House banking committees. Until last week, I was in a minority of one in arguing that Mr Paulson was personally responsible for suddenly turning the painful but manageable credit crunch that had been grinding away 18 months in the background of the US economy into a global catastrophe. Mr...

Psalm 15 My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, please, please, please stop sending me things trying to convince me that I should vote for John McCain because he has anointed Sarah Palin as his running mate. Please understand this, I am not going to vote for either McCain or Obama. Now, let me agree with you that Sarah Palin is the best of the four on the ballot for President and Vice President. It is a sad day for the Republic and it is a sad commentary that the best the two major parties could come up with...

If John McCain and Sarah Palin were to say the moon was made of green cheese, we can be certain that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would pounce on it, and point out it's actually made of rock. And you just know the headline in the paper the next day would read: "CANDIDATES CLASH ON LUNAR LANDSCAPE." Why doesn't somebody call Neil Armstrong? He's been there. Or go to the Smithsonian and open the glass case that contains a piece of the moon. The moon is a rock. That's a fact, Jack. Facts are indeed stubborn things, but the McCain-Palin...

Upstaging the GOP presidential candidate who can't read a speech, the exuberant Gov. Sarah Palin exposed the nominee as a listless, 72-year-old senior citizen taking a tricky handoff from the nation's most unpopular commander-in-chief and likely its most incompetent. John McCain's GOP convention, lest we forget, was blessed at the outset with Hurricane Gustav offering a handy excuse for President George W. Bush to steer clear of St. Paul. The titular head of the party and his fearsome vice president had formed a Category 5 storm taking dead-aim at the Republican National Convention. The McCain-Palin team took to the attic,...

NEW YORK -- News executives Thursday tried to shake off the excoriations of the media emanating from the Republican National Convention, defending their coverage of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as responsible and evenhanded. ______ "I really do take exception to it," NBC News President Steve Capus said. "These terms get thrown around in an awfully cavalier way, and they're incredibly damaging. We're in the business where words matter, and those are awfully, awfully strong accusations."

Republican presidential candidate John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate after conservatives threatened a revolt if he went with his first choice, former Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. Senator McCain has defended his choice of Ms Palin to run for vice-president after news of her 17-year-old pregnant unmarried daughter dominated day one of the Republican national convention in St Paul, Minnesota. Now it has emerged that the shock announcement of the unknown Ms Palin was forced upon Senator McCain after conservatives threatened a revolt at the convention if he pushed ahead with his preferred vice-presidential pick, Independent...

The Orlando Sentinel landed on newsstands Sunday with a new layout featuring more graphics, quick-read digests of top news, blog summaries and other changes aimed at making the newspaper more appealing to harried readers. Orlando is a proving ground for Sam Zell's effort to reinvent floundering Tribune Co., owner of a string of television stations and newspapers, including the Sentinel, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Between now and the end of September, Tribune plans to roll out redesigns at its papers. Accompanying the makeovers will be scaled-back page counts and further paring of employees. snip It remains...

Bush administration is 8 years of failure Friday, March 14, 2008 11:41 AM EDT As the Bush presidency winds down we can reflect on what never should have been, like the Iraq war and the attack upon civil rights. But equally important is to consider what might have been, had this president met the needs of the nation.

Vt. towns approve Bush 'indictment' By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago Voters in two Vermont towns approved measures Tuesday calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for what they consider violations of the Constitution. More symbolic than anything, the items sought to have police arrest Bush and Cheney if they ever visit Brattleboro or nearby Marlboro or to extradite them for prosecution elsewhere — if they're not impeached first. In Brattleboro, the vote was 2,012-1,795. In Marlboro, which held a town meeting on the issue, it was 43-25 with three abstentions. "I...

On a just-finished conference call in which retired military leaders endorsed Hillary Clinton to be commander in chief, retired General Wesley Clark said John McCain's military experience is not the right kind of experience to command the nation's armed forces: In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain's service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There's no issue there. He's a great...

NYT: MCCAIN'S BIRTHPLACE IN CANAL ZONE RAISES ELIGIBILITY QUESTIONS...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A huge survey of the world's Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence. The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism. It shows that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemned the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks, the authors of the study said in Washington. "Samuel Harris said in the Washington Times (in 2004): 'It is time...

President George W. Bush should stop worrying about his legacy. It’s already established. By his deeds you shall know him; preemptive war, torture and wiretapping, for starters. Nothing said in history can wipe out those flaws in his administration. And no revisionist historian down the road can diminish the importance of those acts. He has governed with threats -- and by nourishing fear in the American people. The president seems to have a hard time abiding by the law. Referring to his struggles with Congress during his first year in office, Bush joked that ``a dictatorship would be heck of...

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers' ability to repay, making loans with deceptive ''teaser'' rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets. Even though predatory lending was...

As a lifelong conservative, I wish McCain evinced a greater understanding that limited government is indispensable to individual liberty. Yet there is no candidate in either party who so thoroughly embodies the conservatism of American honor and tradition as McCain, nor any with greater moral authority to invoke it. For all his transgressions and backsliding, McCain radiates integrity and steadfastness, and if his heterodox stands have at times been infuriating, they also attest to his resolve. Time and again he has taken an unpopular stand and stuck with it, putting his career on the line when it would have been...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – George McGovern, the Democratic Party's 1972 nominee for president, is calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. And in an editorial in Sunday's Washington Post, McGovern writes the case for impeaching the current president is "far stronger" than the case made against former President Richard Nixon — the man who soundly defeated McGovern in the general election match up."Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses," McGovern writes. "They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after...

(CBS) The former Democratic nominee for president who ran against a president later driven from office under threat of impeachment, today said that impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is "the rightful course for an American patriot." George McGovern, a former South Dakota Senator who ran on the Democratic ticket in 1972 as an anti-war advocate, wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post that, while he steered clear of calling for the impeachment of Richard Nixon in the '70s - fearing it would appear as "an expression of personal vengeance" against his opponent who...

The historical analogies for the phenomenon that is Barack Obama have already stretched credibility. For a while pundits likened him to the effete loser Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic party’s 1950s version of Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell, the greatest prime minister we never had. But Obama doesn’t seem like such an airhead after his gritty, crushing defeat of Hillary Clinton in Iowa. I long thought he’d win; but I never thought it would be by eight points, or that he’d push Clinton into third place. So now the favourite analogy is JFK: the young, hopeful rhetorician urging a New Frontier after two...

BRASILIA, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Unless the international community agrees to cut carbon emissions by half over the next generation, climate change is likely to cause large-scale human and economic setbacks and irreversible ecological catastrophes, a U.N. report said on Tuesday. "We could be on the verge of seeing human development reverse for the first time in 30 years," Kevin Watkins, lead author of the report, told Reuters.

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday. Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by “clearing the decks” with a “quick burst of violent action” had led to “the worst of all worlds”. In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation. He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided...

How much exactly would it cost to get Rudy Giuliani to holster his overdone 9/11 sanctimony? The government for the tiny Persian Gulf nation of Qatar might have a good idea. Following earlier reports that Giuliani was still getting paid by the consulting firm he created, Mary Jacoby of the Wall Street Journal sheds light on some potentially problematic sources of Giuliani's private income. Chief among them is Qatar, the U.S. ally that paid Giuliani Partners for "security advice" regarding their petroleum facilities. The article uncovers a "potential political pitfall" for Giuliani's candidacy and image given Qatar's spotty record in...

A few days after her roughest night as a candidate — the Oct. 30 Democratic presidential debate — Hillary Clinton could be found ambling along a spectacular bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in a town called Clinton, Iowa, with former Vice President Walter Mondale, a ghost of Democratic disasters past. It was the photo op for an endorsement that seemed a potential kiss of death. Mondale is a smart and decent man, but he ran the worst sort of cautious front-runner campaign for the nomination in 1984, was nearly upended by the younger, more dynamic Gary Hart in the primaries...

When Stu Bykofsky, a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News, wrote a column last week in which he openly hoped that America suffers "another 9/11," he merely had the poor judgment to say what many a right-wing politician and pundit is thinking. Evidence for this is everywhere: in the fact that Bykofsky was invited to appear on the GOP's unofficial network, Fox News, to "explain" his comments; in the keen disappointment that ripples throughout the right-wing blogosphere every time the collapse of a bridge or a steam pipe explosion turns out not to have been the work of Scary Brown...

Rugged American individualism could hinder our ability to understand other peoples' point of view, a new study suggests. And in contrast, the researchers found that Chinese are more skilled at understanding other people's perspectives, possibly because they live in a more "collectivist" society. "This cultural difference affects the way we communicate," said study co-author and cognitive psychologist Boaz Keysar of the University of Chicago. Simple study The study, though oversimplified compared to real life, was instructive. Keysar and his colleagues arranged two blocks on a table so participants could see both. However, a piece of cardboard obstructed the view of...

Ted Kennedy pulled an all-nighter last night - how ironic is that? There must be something about Ted Kennedy and all-nighters on July 18, because it was 38 years ago tonight that he pulled another one. At Chappaquiddick. Will Teddy’s Senate office issue a statement today about the anniversary of his 1969 drive off the bridge? They used to. But you know the Kennedy bumkissers would prefer to ignore this day which will live in his infamy. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. After all, Teddy’s got so many big issues on his plate, even after the defeat of...

Nicolas Sarkozy was a divisive figure during his campaign for the French presidency, but he's governing as a uniter, not a divider. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 promising to ease partisan divisions. He has left our politics a wreck of recrimination, anger and polarization. This weekend, the contrast between Sarkozy and Bush could not have been more conspicuous. From France came word that the center-right president was urging the International Monetary Fund to name Dominique Strauss-Kahn as its managing director.

Three years ago, when I and the 48 percent of Americans who voted for then-Sen. John Kerry for president were lamenting President George Bush's win, I made this prediction about Bush's second term: He'd stick us with a right-wing high court that will chip away at the country's yet-young history of government-sanctioned integration methods. By the time the decider-in-chief was done, I'd be on a plantation somewhere, picking cotton. That dire and admittedly over-dramatic prediction has yet to come true, but the Supreme Court took a good-sized step in that direction Thursday with its ruling that restricts how race can...

PHILADELPHIA - Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities in a bloodstained corridor along the East Coast are seeing a surge in killings, and one of the most provocative explanations offered by criminal-justice experts is this: not enough new immigrants. The theory holds that waves of hardworking, ambitious immigrants reinvigorate desperately poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods and help keep crime down. It is a theory that runs counter to the widely held notion that immigrants are a source of crime and disorder.

His health is rough; he has been the most disastrous vice-president in history; he has lost two wars; he has lost every ally; he is despised in much of the country; he is now going to be the center of all the questions that the Libby guilty verdict raise. Why did he get so exercized about a two-bit critic during a critical time in the Iraq war? Why would he risk losing his most trusted aide by coordinating a media sting on a minor political opponent? Why would he risk committing a crime to pursue Wilson unless he had something...

Why would Australian Prime Minister John Howard separate Barack Obama from all of the other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination for attack as the favorite son of the terrorists? What was Howard thinking when he claimed in an interview on Australian television: "If I was running al-Qaida in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats"? Is Howard, arguably the truest believer in the Iraq war this side of Dick Cheney, so supportive of the Bush administration that he...

Setting the stage for a knockdown fight over the fate of four towering Klamath River dams accused of hammering salmon stocks and the West Coast fishing industry, a new government study released Friday has found that decommissioning the dams could cost $100 million less than operating them for another generation. The economic analysis, ordered by the California Energy Commission in cooperation with the U.S. Department of the Interior, should provide ammunition for Indian tribes, environmentalists and commercial fishermen eager to see the hydropower dams demolished to reopen more than 300 miles of river that have been blocked to migrating salmon...

North Korea's declared nuclear bomb test program will increase the incentives for other nations to go nuclear, will endanger security in the region and could ultimately result in nuclear terrorism. While this test is the culmination of North Korea's long-held aspiration to become a nuclear power, it also demonstrates the total failure of the Bush administration's policy toward that country. For almost six years this policy has been a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction. President Bush, early in his first term, dubbed North Korea a member of the "axis of evil" and made disparaging remarks about Kim Jong...