From Al Gore to America the Beautiful...

From American Progress:

Think Fast...

Al Gore is working on a new environmental book entitled The Path to Survival, a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth that offers a blueprint on what can be done to fight global warming. The book will be released on Earth Day, April 22, 2008.

Intelligence analysts dispute the Bush administration's claims that sectarian violence has dropped in Iraq, noting the selective way the military categorizes deaths. "If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian," a senior intelligence official said. "If it went through the front, it's criminal."

Global warming "is already affecting the nation's parks, forests, marine sanctuaries and monuments" and the federal government needs to do a "better job" addressing the issue, according to a new Government Accountability Office report to be released today.

"[T]he program devised to rebuild Iraq at the provincial level has gone through three directors in the past four months, and much of the staff hired to organize the effort in Baghdad has left." Just "29 of the 610 people deployed in Iraq as part of the provincial reconstruction program have extensive knowledge of Arabic culture, history and language."

"One day after Rep. John Doolittle's (R-Calif.) top two aides revealed that they had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury" in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe, "Alisha Perkins, Doolittle's office manager, told the chamber Wednesday that she too had been called by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to give testimony."

Identifying 171 "performance expectations," a new report from the Government Accountability Office concludes that the "Homeland Security Department has failed to meet even half its performance expectations in the four years it has been in existence."

And finally: Move over, Singing Senators. Seven House members "backed up gospel singer BeBe Winans in a rendition of 'America the Beautiful'" on Wednesday during a tribute to music legend Quincy Jones. One observer reported that Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) "ducked into the event to give Jones a bear hug that seemed to last eons."

Wrap....