Updated

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Hold Your Horses

The high price of gasoline may mean that Congress will now tell you to slow down. Republican Senator John Warner of Virgina has asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to calculate what speed would provide optimum gasoline efficiency under current technology.

In a letter to Bodman, Warner cited studies that show the 55-mile per hour national speed limit saved 167-thousand barrels of oil a day — after it was imposed by Congress in 1974 because of the Arab oil embargo. That speed limit was repealed in 1995.

The letter read "one could assume that the amount of fuel that could be conserved today is far greater."

An Energy Department spokeswoman says Warner's letter will be reviewed but that "if Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production."

On the Docket?

England's most senior judge says it is okay to use Sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims in that country. Sharia is a set of Islamic religious laws governing Muslim life. But Sharia law has come under fire for some of its tenets — for instance — stoning adulterers to death in some cases.

But the Daily Mail reports that Chief Justice Lord Phillips says Sharia could be used for family and marital arguments and to regulate finance. He says that there is a "widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of Sharia law."

But his remarks have drawn criticism. Lawyers are warning that Sharia can be disadvantageous to women and the British Ministry of Justice says English law takes precedence over any other legal system.

Thawed Theory

For global warming alarmists Greenland is one of the most potent weapons in their arsenal. They say that melted water drains from the lakes that form each summer on Greenland's ice sheets — causing sea levels to rise.

But now a new 17-year study published in the journal Science has revealed that Greenland is melting at a slower pace than previously thought. Scientist Roderik van de Wal at the University of Utrecht in Holland has discovered that at its current rate Greenland's melting ice will take thousands of years to have any affect on sea levels.

The study concludes that the melting rate is not accelerating but may be slowing down in some places.

Potty Paradise

Beijing's public restrooms are notorious for being smelly and ill-kept. However, the French Press Agency reports that officials say they want to ensure a pleasant experience for Olympic visitors so they are going to clean up more than four-thousand public bathrooms and provide what are being characterized as rarely seen luxuries.

Those luxuries? Toilet paper and soap.

The campaign to stock Beijing's bathrooms with those items is part of an ongoing cleanup effort that began in 2005. We reported last month that officials have already installed Western-style sit down toilets in a number of restrooms to provide an alternative to the squat-style devices popular in many Eastern countries.

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