This was not an easy thing for Al Gore to do. We're sitting in outside the house of a sitting president of his own party; political decorum might have led him to duck the whole thing, and I wouldn't have blamed him.
But he stepped up, big. Late this afternoon he released a statement that put the case very plainly: Every environmental group, millions of Americans, and the "brave people" being arrested outside the White House are exactly right about the Keystone Pipeline. If approved, it will carry "the dirtiest fuel on the planet."
And if approved by Obama, the president points out, he will find himself to the right of the Republican governor of Nebraska, who came out against the project today.
This is a man who won the presidency in 2000; if he'd been allowed to take office this planet would be a different place. When I read his statement to the hundred people preparing to get arrested tomorrow, they whooped and hollered. Everyone here is very very grateful for his truth-telling.