The people running the Iraq war are eager to make an example of Ehren Watada. They’ve convened a kangaroo court-martial. But the man on trial is setting a profound example of conscience -- helping to undermine the war that the Pentagon’s top officials are so eager to protect.

“The judge in the case against the first U.S. officer court-martialed for refusing to ship out for Iraq barred several experts in international and constitutional law from testifying Monday [Feb. 5] about the legality of the war,” the Associated Press reported.

While the judge was hopping through the military’s hoops at Fort Lewis in Washington state, an outpouring of support for Watada at the gates reflected just how broad and deep the opposition to this war has become.

The AP dispatch merely stated that “outside the base, a small group that included actor Sean Penn demonstrated in support of Watada.” But several hundred people maintained an antiwar presence at the gates, where a vigil and rally -- led by Iraq war veterans and parents of those sent to kill and be killed in this horrific war -- mirrored what is happening in communities across the United States.

A preliminary investigation by Free Press staff demonstrates the new graduate program rankings offered by the Chronicle of Higher Education undercount the number of books produced by faculty members at reviewed institutions -- sometimes dramatically.

A simple search of Amazon.com, the source used by the Chronicle's data provider (Academic Analytics), directly contradicts the rankings.

For example, the Chronicle's data state that faculty at sociology departments at schools such as Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago produced zero books between 2001 and 2005. Here are three examples of books produced by faculty at these institutions during those years (via Amazon.com).

One from Chapel Hill

One from Johns Hopkins

Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," raises the issue of global warming in a way that scares the bejeezus out of viewers, as it should since the consequences of global climate change are truly earth-shaking. The former Vice-President does a good job of presenting the graphic evidence, exquisite and terrifying pictures that document the melting of the polar ice caps and the effects on other species, new diseases, and rising ocean levels.

But, typically, the solutions Gore offers are standard Democratic Party fare. You'd never know by watching this film that Gore and Clinton ran this country for 8 years and that their policies -- as much as those of the Bush regime -- helped pave the way for the crisis we face today.

Gore never critiques the system causing the global ecological crisis. At one point, he even mourns the negative impact of global warming on U.S. oil pipelines. Oh, the horror! What it all comes down to, for Gore and the Democrats, is that we need to shift away from reliance on fossil fuels and tweak existing consumption patterns.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due to release a report in Paris on Friday entitled Climate Change 2007 in which 2,500 scientists from 130 countries unequivocally state that the current trend towards potentially catastrophic global warming has been induced by human activity, which began with the dramatic increase in fossil fuel use during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century.

A draft of the report, the fourth climate change assessment conducted by the IPCC, has been circulated among major news organizations over the past week.

"As we add to [greenhouse] gases, we are just doing the same thing as putting another blanket on our bed at night," said Sir David King, British chief government scientific adviser, in an interview with CBS News. "The consequences are that you get warmer, and that is as simple as it is."