Kevin Grandia at DeSmog Blog regularly debunks the well-funded PR campaigns that promote this kind of crap, and he did some actual reporting. He contacted Dr. Michael Mann for clarification, whose name appears in some of the emails and whose graph was used in Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth." Mann's quote was widely disseminated by wingnutia as proof that "truth doesn't matter."

Reading the beginning of Mary Beth Sheridan's article in the Washington Post Thanksgiving morning, one might think serious critics of Bill and Hillary Clinton have voiced serious questions about possible conflicts inherent in their roles as former President and Global Initiative Head versus Obama's Secretary of State. One would be wrong.

The biggest weakness of the Kyoto protocol for dealing with the human-created emissions that are causing the decades-long rise in global temperature is that the two biggest polluters, the US and China, refused to sign it. China wouldn't sign it largely because the US under Bush wouldn't sign it, and the US under Bush wouldn't sign it because the Bush Administration wasn't just merely in bed with big industrial polluters, but actively worked for them, being oil execs and all.

Giving thank...overrated.

Featuring original art by Ken Addington and a perfect kitchen song by Bearfoot.

A couple of aspiring reality-TV stars from Northern Virginia appear to have crashed the White House's state dinner Tuesday night, penetrating layers of security with no invitation to mingle with the likes of Vice President Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Though they normally cover climate change, our good friends at DeSmog Blog recently weighed in on the 42 members of Congress who helpfully inserted lobbyist language into the Congressional Record in favor of endless patents on biologic drugs on behalf of the prescription drug industry. Said Brendan Demelle

I was on a conference call with White House budget director Peter Orszag and Office of Health Reform chief Nancy-Ann DeParle today, and both of them were adamant that the health care reform moving through Congress would cut costs over the long term and "move us into the future of health care," as Orszag put it.

Ralph Freidin MD, is an internist. Dr. Freidin traveled from Massachusetts to Little Rock, Arkansas last week to volunteer his professional services at the Little Rock Free Health Clinic, which I also attended. He was assigned to The Line.

A couple of weeks ago, the USDA put numbers to the reality that has appeared, anecdotally, all over the country: more and more people in this country don't have enough food. Almost 15% of the country had at least some food insecurity last year. 5 million more kids faced hunger last year than the year before. That means the food banks that have helped such families fill the gap are slammed, facing far more demand than they can meet.