Former Vice President Al Gore’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” was nominated for an Academy Award this morning for Best Documentary.
Although President Bush “will devote about half of tonight’s 40-minute-plus” State of the Union speech to Iraq and other foreign policy matters, aides say he “will not directly engage in a debate over congressional efforts to block the troop increase.”
29 percent: Percentage of countries who believe the United States is a positive influence in the world, according to a BBC poll of 25 nations. That number is down from 36 percent last year and 40 percent two years ago. An average of 73 percent of the respondents disapprove of the war in Iraq.
“Evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq’s troubles is limited. U.S. troops have found mortars and antitank mines with Iranian markings dated 2006,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “But there has been little sign of more advanced weaponry crossing the border, and no Iranian agents have been found.”
Iraq is sliding “into the abyss of sectarianism,” U.N. envoy Ashraf Qazi said yesterday “after two car bombs in a Baghdad market killed 88 people.”
The new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be released next week will show that “[h]uman-caused global warming is here — visible in the air, water and melting ice — and is destined to get much worse in the future.” “This isn’t a smoking gun; climate is a battalion of intergalactic smoking missiles,” said Andrew Weaver, a study co-author.
The jury has been picked for the Scooter Libby trial. The jury is “not completely representative” of the Washington, DC area, and includes a former Washington Post reporter who once worked for Bob Woodward, “a travel agent who only looks at newspapers for the sudoku puzzles; and a hotel sales agent who described herself a ‘master of all things pop culture, but nothing related to current events.’”
Americans flying to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean are now required to show their passport when re-entering the country, under new rules going into effect today. Only about a quarter of U.S. citizens hold valid passports and new passports cost almost $100.
“The Director of the Congressional Research Service last week issued a revised agency policy on ‘Interacting with the Media’ that warns CRS analysts about the ‘very real risks’ associated with news media contacts and imposes new restrictions on speaking to the press.” One CRS staffer said the policy “will obviously have a chilling effect on staff.”
And finally: James Madison High School in Brooklyn is pretty much the only school that can boast of three sitting U.S. senators — Sens. Norm Coleman (R-MN), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — and a current Supreme Court Justice — Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Fellow alumni remember Ginsburg as a “very popular and attractive” cheerleader, but recalled that Coleman “wasn’t the most popular guy.”
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.