Is the ACLU Giving Muslims Special Treatment?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

ACLU Changing Its Tune?

The University of Michigan at Dearborn is planning to spend $25,000 to install two footbaths for Muslim students to use before prayers.

Muslim leaders had considered trying to raise funds to pay for the baths privately — until the American Civil Liberties Union said it would not oppose having the university pay for the project. The director of the Detroit ACLU called the footbaths a "reasonable accommodation" to resolve "safety and cleanliness issues."

The ACLU has a long history of opposing other activities associated with prayer and religion on public property. It sued a Louisiana school board over allowing a preacher to give out pizza at school during lunch periods, and it sued a west Texas school district over an optional Bible class.

France's New Terror Threat

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is dealing with the possibility of a new terrorist threat — from the country's own winegrowers.

A group of seven mask-wearing winemakers produced a video threatening that "blood will flow" unless Sarkozy quickly acts to raise the price of wine.

The BBC reports several local supermarkets selling foreign wines have been attacked with small explosive devices and others have been graffitied.

Winemakers say falling prices and big cuts taken by middlemen are destroying their profits.

'Father of Scientific Climatology' Questions Global Warming

The retired professor who started the meteorology department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison says there is no credible evidence that links mankind and carbon dioxide to global warming.

The Madison Capital Times says Reid Bryson is known as the "father of scientific climatology." Bryson says he takes a good amount of criticism for his bucking conventional wisdom, but counters: "There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion... where you have to believe in (man-made) global warming or else you are nuts."

And as far as Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth," Bryson says he hasn't seen it: "Don't make me throw up. It is not science. It is not true."

Location Issues

If you've ever wondered how climate scientists come up with their figures to prove global warming, there is a network of 1,221 weather stations used by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in the U.S.

But now former TV meteorologist Anthony Watts is finding some of those thermometers may not be located in places showing the most accurate readings.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reports a preliminary look at the system finds a weather station in Forest Grove, Oregon, 10 feet from an air conditioning exhaust vent, another in Tahoe, California, next to a drum where trash is burned and one in Roseburg, Oregon, on a rooftop near an air conditioning unit.

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.