The former Vice President’s new book, The Assault on Reason, hit bookshelves today with a resounding message that political corruption, cronyism, secrecy and blind faith have joined forces to quell logical debate and thereby imperil the very core of American democracy.

A retired businessman, Texan and lifelong Republican has joined the crusade against climate change as leader of a program launched by former Vice President Al Gore, whom he has never supported politically.

Update #2: the Surrey School Board issued a correction late yesterday stating that: "On Monday, the Curriculum Review Committee recommended the "An Inconvenient Truth" video as an instructional resource, as per the Surrey School District's regular curriculum approval process. When the DVDs are received by the district, they will be distributed to all secondary schools."

Al Gore has done an amazing job raising the awareness of global warming to a level that it rightly deserves. The global warming deniers who frequent DSBlog can say all they want about Gore, but most of what they say only makes them look more idealogical and desperate than they already are.

What Gore has done, is communicate in a very compelling way, to a very large number of people, the overwhelming scientific evidence telling us that global warming is happening, human activities are to blame and we should all be very concerned about the outcomes.

Now it looks like another heavyweight in the art of communication will be joining Gore's efforts in a serious way. Check out Leonardo DiCaprio's trailer for his new film, The 11th Hour, debuting this month at the Cannes Film Festival.

With the Heartland Institute being such passionate defenders of smokers' rights I thought for sure they would be interested in a debate on the subject.

After what we thought was some constructive dialogue towards making this event happen, the Heartland seems to now be playing a bit of duck and cover.

In the meantime, please enjoy some past posts we have done on the Heartland Institute or the entry for Heartland over at Sourcewatch.