Washington, D.C., December 1, 2003—Finding a politically correct holiday gift can be difficult—almost as difficult as high school chemistry.  CEI’s Politically Correct Periodic Table of the Elements Mousepad solves the first problem without bringing back bad memories of the second.

The modern version of the Periodic Table was developed in 1869 by Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev.  In the years since we took high school chem, millions of us have successfully blocked out that fact, as well as most everything else we were taught in class.  Nonetheless, many chemical elements are now the focus of heated political battles. CEI’s Politically Correct Periodic Table of the Elements Mousepad highlights over a dozen elements that have been the subject of high-profile scaremongering and pork-barreling campaigns.  Among them are:

• Chlorine—“blamed for everything from falling sperm counts to five-legged frogs”;
• Carbon—“the basis of life, not to mention global warming alarmism”;
• Hydrogen—“tomorrow’s fuel, financed by today’s taxes”;
• Francium—“soon to be renamed freedomium”.

CEI's Politically Correct Periodic Table of the Elements Mousepad can be viewed and ordered online at (click on ).  And procrastinators who can’t do their holiday shopping in time have another red-letter day to aim for—February 7, the 170^th anniversary of Mendeleev’s birthday.