After a year of concentrated effort that includes a multimillion-dollar p.r. campaign on top of An Inconvenient Truth and slavish media coverage parroting the climate-alarmist line, recent polls show that public opinion on global warming has barely budged. Only about a third of Americans, according to a recent Gallup survey, are agitated about climate change, and even people who say the environment is their most important issue rank climate change behind air and water quality in importance.

Meanwhile a backlash in the scientific community has begun. New York Times veteran science reporter William Broad filed a devastating article about scientists who are “alarmed” at Gore’s alarmism; Gore’s account of global warming goes far beyond the evidence. The dissents from Gore’s extremism, Broad explained, “come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists” who have “no political ax to grind.” It appears Gore refused to be interviewed directly for the article; he responded to e-mail questions only.

This business about Pakistan being our ally is abject nonsense. Most of the country despises us. Musharraf and some of the military have been a fickle ally but they did at least occasionally take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban. They didn't do it with abandon, though, precisely because (a) the people of Pakistan oppose it(they are fine with having anti-Western jihadists operating from safe-havens within their country), and (b) Pakistan has always been a strong supporter of the Taliban (which Benazir Bhutto was key to establishing in Afghanistan) for both cultural and geopolitical reasons.

If the rationale for continuing American combat operations in Iraq is, principally, that we cannot allow anti-Western radicals to establish a platform from which they can launch 9/11-style operations, how can we conceivably turn a blind eye to the platform they have in fact established in Pakistan's border region? Try as it might, international law has not (yet) repealed the sovereign right of self-defense. We are not required by anything so vapid as "our standing in the world" to tolerate an al Qaedastan in Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, or anyplace else.

A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter's. Allam's renunciation of Islam as a religion of violence and his embrace of Christianity denotes the point at which the so-called global "war on terror" becomes a divergence of two irreconcilable modes of life: the Western way of faith supported by reason, against the Muslim world of fatalism and submission.

As Magdi Allam recounted, on his road to conversion the challenge that Pope Benedict XVI offered to Islam in his September 2006 address at Regensburg was "undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert". Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more threatening: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains. Before Benedict's election, I summarized his position as "I have a mustard seed and I'm not afraid to use it." Now the mustard seed has earned pride of place in global affairs.  

coincidence that Democrats chose Denver for their convention. When they converge on the Mile High City in five months, they'll be staking their claim to what was once a solidly Red region. The Republicans have one hope - at least, for a four-year reprieve:Hillary Clinton. While the Democrats as a party are building strength out West, polls consistently show that Clinton has little appeal to Independents and Republicans in the region. Survey USA did a 50-state, 30,000-person poll earlier this month, looking at the electoral map for hypothetical McCain-Clinton and McCain-Obama races. It showed that New Mexico is likely to tilt Democratic no matter what this fall - and Barack Obama could pick up Colorado and Nevada rather handily (by 9 and 5 points, respectively). But Hillary would lose Colorado by 6 points and Nevada by 8 points. This is just one poll, taken months ahead of the election, but it certainly jibes with past polls by Survey USA and recent polling by Rasmussen. It certainly wouldn't be the first time the Clintons helped keep the Republican coalition together (see: 1994). But until Chelsea's old enough to throw her hat in the ring, it would probably be the l