Leave it to us Kentuckians to take the lead in addressing tough issues, like global warming.  Why, Rep Jim Gooch, D-Providence KY, the Chairman of our state’s Interim Joint Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources is so concerned with getting critical information on the effects of global warming that yesterday he invited two well known experts on the issue to address the committee.

As I mentioned in an diary earlier this week here,  Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers has provided some of the best on the ground reporting of the situation in Iraq since the US invasion.

In my own military experience, if you want to know what is REALLY going on, you need to talk to the people at the platoon level.  

Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers (and formerly of Knight Ridder) has provided some of the best, most unvarnished reporting of the situation in Iraq since the invasion.  In his latest piece here he details how US efforts to train and equip Iraq's security forces has strengthened Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. And he's getting it straight from the kids closest to the situation, the platoon leaders themselves.