Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Work of Fiction?

A former global warming alarmist and creator of the model that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol says that while global warming is real, there is no evidence that the main cause is carbon emissions. David Evans says that C02 emissions play — at most — a minor role.

Evans writes in The Australian newspaper that if global warming was caused by C02, scientists would have found hot spots about six miles up in the earth's atmosphere over the Tropics. Evans describes those hot spots as the signature of the greenhouse effect. He says scientists have been trying to locate them for years using thermometers attached to weather balloons.

But he says years of research "show no hot spot — whatsoever" adding that "an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming."

Upon further Review

Once you get past the controversial cover, Ryan Lizza's look at Barack Obama in last week's New Yorker magazine included some telling nuggets about the senator. Lizza republished parts of a little-noticed article Obama wrote in Chicago's Hyde Park Herald just eight days after the September 11th attacks.

Obama wrote: "the essence of this tragedy... derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers." And why did Obama say Al Qaeda lacked empathy? Was it radical Islamist hatred? No. Obama wrote that Al Qaeda's lack of empathy grew out of a "climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

The Los Angeles Times online reports that the Obama campaign had no space for Lizza, who asked to join Obama during the European leg of his overseas trip.

Militant Measures

As part of his tour, Obama will meet with leaders of the Palestinian authority in the West Bank. World Net Daily reports that Palestinian security officials have called upon Fatah's military wing — the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade — to help provide protection for the presidential candidate.

Al Aqsa is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. Security officials say Brigade members will help secure the perimeter during a scheduled meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Meanwhile, the Politico newspaper reports that members of the press traveling with Obama were given a dress code to follow while in Israel and Jordan. They were advised not to wear green clothing, because it is the color of the Hamas terrorist group.

Hall Monitor

Some members of Congress have been told that they have to get rid of their tributes to fallen soldiers, because they are cluttering the halls.

Congressional Quarterly reports that a group of lawmakers — headed by Republican Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina — is imploring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to change a new policy that bars free-standing flags, furniture and easels because they are considered hazards.

Jones has easels outside his office depicting the faces of constituents killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, like many of his colleagues, he has been told that he must get rid of the display by August 2. Jones says, "We're going to just have an ongoing contest of me putting them up and them taking them down."

— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.