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If anyone wanted to know where wingnuts Mike Lee and Rick Santorum got their talking points in opposing this United Nations treaty that just got voted down by the shameless Republicans in the Senate who were too afraid of the crackpots among their ranks to do the right thing, look no further than this guy -- Michael Farris.

CNN's Anderson Cooper did a nice job going after Sen. Mike Lee the other night when he was trying to defend leading the opposition to the treaty. This Monday evening, Cooper brought on the Home School Legal Defense Association's Farris to defend his position as well. Despite Cooper continually reminding Farris that the treaty would not directly impact United States' law or force parents of disabled children here to do anything, Farris continued to maintain that the opposite was true and that it has already impacted cases in the United States.

After he went off the air, Cooper did some follow up with their chief legal analyst at CNN, Jeffrey Toobin, who basically said that Farris was full of it. Farris continually challenged Cooper during the interview as someone who had no idea what he was talking about and painted himself as an expert because of his experience teaching law at the school he founded, Patrick Henry College. After reading a bit about it, it pretty well sounds like just another Liberty University, designed with the purpose of pushing home schooled evangelicals into the government and positions of power.

Here's more on that from Daily KOS: German reporter goes underground at Patrick Henry College:

Amrai Coen, a writer for the German weekly Die Zeit, wanted to visit Patrick Henry College, but the college administration refused her visit since the school had "bad experiences with foreign journalists." Undeterred, Amrai posed as a prospective student and showed up on campus on "Visitor's Day". Her piece on her experience that day provides a rare inside glimpse of life at America's Madrassa,

Nearly all of the students at Patrick Henry College have been home-schooled by ultra-conservative evangelical Christian parents. At Patrick Henry these young people can complete their christo-fascist indoctrination before joining right-wing think tanks and media groups in Washington. Students are taught to kneel before images of Jesus and Ronald Reagan; they attend lecturess on how America can waterboard its way to global dominance. Professors are dismissed if they actually teach science, since students are taught that the earth is only 6000 years old and baby Jesus frolicked with dinosaurs.

(Note: my translation from the Zeit piece)

The college has one mission: to save America from its downfall, from the abyss into which Barack Obama has steered the country in the past four years. Young conservative Christians are the soldiers in this wa. At Patrick Henry College they will be trained to fight one day on the front - as politicians, filmmakers, or entrepreneurs they will win back American society. Some have rejected Harvard or Yale in order to study here.

I'm sure much to the dismay of their founder, an LGBT group has also been making the public aware of how the school treats their students: Patrick Henry College, Homeschool Bastion, Has LGBT Group.

Here's more background on Farris from Right Wing Watch as well: Michael Farris Warns that the UN might 'Get Control' over Children With Glasses:

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After a stinging election night defeat, President George W. Bush's former White House secretary still says that the Republican Party will never support LGBT rights and reproductive rights for women.

"The big issue that Republicans are going to have to wrestle with is the Hispanic issue," Ari Fleischer explained after President Barack Obama's defeat of GOP hopeful Mitt Romney made it clear that the country was more liberal than he had expected.

"It's not the social issues," he insisted. "You're not going to make the party pro-choice and pro-gay rights and think you've made the Republican party the party that's the popular party. We have a party like that. It's the Democratic Party."

"But the Republican Party used to be against abortion," CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted. "In the past year, they have become identified with opposition to contraception. That is, you know, moving backwards at a pace that is astonishing and politically disastrous."

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From Raw Story -- Chris Hayes: Breitbart ‘a serial manipulator of the media’

On MSNBC’s The Last Word Tuesday night, Chris Hayes questioned why conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart was allowed to “spout off” on CNN about Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). Breitbart implied Tuesday that Weiner had been engaged in inappropriate relationships with multiple young women.

“Am I wrong in my level of outrage that this person who has been so discredited, so many times, is such a serial manipulator of the media is allowed to just come on and spout off like this?” he asked.

“Andrew Breitbart is not known to be the most self-reflective, remorseful person,” his guest, Huffington Post’s Alex Wagner added. “I think in that same interview he talked about the Shirley Sherrod story being a liberal attack on him.”

As they also noted, Wagner didn't think Rep. Weiner did himself any favors by refusing to answer direct questions during his press conference today and I agree. That said, it was pretty astounding to see CNN going after him the way they did on the word of a known liar like Breitbart and allowing Breitbart on the air earlier today to attack him, where even their legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin called out his own network for their behavior.

Following Breitbart’s interview, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told host Randi Kaye that he regretted the network allowed Breitbart to make those claims.

“What Andrew Breitbart was insinuating about [Weiner] with young girls and stuff is outrageous,” Toobin said. “And frankly, it’s too bad that he got to say that stuff on CNN.”

Media Matters has more on CNN's hackery here -- One Year After Debunking Breitbart's "Slander," CNN Welcomes Him Back As Newsmaker.

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Digby has more on this exchange on CNN's Parker Spitzer and Jeffrey Toobin tying himself in knots trying to defend Attorney General Eric Holder's statement that the US government might use the Espionage Act to go after Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, so go read her whole post over at Hullabaloo. I just wanted to highlight something Naomi Wolf said during that discussion on how dangerous it is if the government does end up taking that route.

SPITZER: And back to Woodward, where does Woodward fit in to this?

SHIRKY: So I think that Woodward is not a criminal for publishing leaked documents but I also think that Assange is not a criminal for publishing leaked documents. However, I also, also think that if I'm wrong about that, that the way in which I would be wrong is going through the court system. Not through an extra legal running of WikiLeaks off the network.

The damage to me -- Jeffrey to your earlier point about the slippery slope, the non-slippery slope argument is the State Department has currently committed itself to making it very difficult for autocratic governments to force information off the Internet. And we're suddenly providing not just a recipe but a rationale that's making everyone from Lubchenko (ph) to Kim Jong-il laugh.

TOOBIN: But see, you know, again, this is a slippery slope argument.

SHIRKY: No.

TOOBIN: It is, it is. Because the fact that someone takes United States government documents, secret, no foreign distribution, and says that shouldn't be on the Internet. To say that North Korea shouldn't have a free press, to say that Russia shouldn't allow journalists to -- I mean, I think it is easy to draw a distinction between the two.

WOLF: Jeff, can I talk about the Espionage Act because that's really what's at stake now that they've invoked it. I predicted in my book "The End of America" that sooner or later, journalists would be targeted with the Espionage Act in an effort to close down free speech and free criticism of government. And we have a precedent for that. In 1917, the Espionage Act was invoked to go after people like us who are criticizing the first World War. Publishers, educators, editors. Wait, and people were put in prison. They were beaten. One guy got a 10-year sentence for reading the First Amendment. And that intimidation effectively closed down dissent for a decade in the United States of America.

The Espionage Act has a very dark and dirty history. And when you start to use the Espionage Act, to criminalize what I'm sure you've handled classified documents in your time as a serious journalist, you know perfectly well that every serious journalist has seen or heard about classified information and repeated it. When you start to use the Espionage Act to say reporting is treachery, reporting is spying, it's espionage, you criminalize journalism. And that's the history that our country has shown.

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From CNN's Parker Spitzer, author Naomi Wolf debated CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on the WikiLeaks release and whether Jullian Assange ought to be treated any differently than the news outlets that published the information his site passed on to them. Jeffrey Toobin sadly did a whole lot of water carrying for the US government during this debate to the point where it made me wonder, as it did Klein, if he was willing to throw his own employer under the bus for his views. CNN was more than happy to get ratings from reporting on the leaks. It seems they're happy to make the profits from it with none of the risk after watching Toobin defend the network here.

SPITZER: Joining us in "The Arena" for more on what today's ruling means, Naomi Wolf, road scholar, author of "The End of America," and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Thank you for joining us.

Look, Naomi, let me begin with you. You have been intensely critical of the Swedish government for even bringing the case. You're basically saying had he not been the individual who released these documents --

NAOMI WOLF, AUTHOR, "THE END OF AMERICA": Absolutely.

SPITZER: -- then --

WOLF: Absolutely.

SPITZER: This law would not have been brought to bear against him in this way.

WOLF: Exactly. Exactly.

SPITZER: And this is government from the U.S. to Sweden and Britain, basically saying we're going to shut you down.

WOLF: Exactly. That's right. I am saying that.

SPITZER: And you're saying that's wrong?

WOLF: Well, obviously, I can't say conclusively until the man has had his day in court.

SPITZER: Right.

WOLF: And the women, too, need to have their day in court.

SPITZER: Jeffrey --

WOLF: But I am saying it -- from 23 years of looking at how rape is treated, this is so anomalous that it sure --

(CROSSTALK)

PARKER: OK.

SPITZER: You're a (INAUDIBLE), does that bother you?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: No, not a bit. I mean, you know, Sweden has the right to enforce their laws however they want.

WOLF: Selectively?

TOOBIN: The idea -- the idea that Sweden of all of a sudden has become a wing of the FBI or the American Republican Party is totally inconsistent.

WOLF: Just not -- that's so naive of you. Of course United States brings pressure to bear against governments like Britain which is a total lack --

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CNN can't seem to get enough of these teabaggers. Dana Loesch was on Parker/Spitzer and then Anderson Cooper brings her on to discuss the Christine O'Donnell/Chris Coons debate. I guess they didn't want to let Bill Maher be the only one to ruin a show this week by having her on.

COOPER: We begin tonight, though, as we do every night, "Keeping Them Honest" and we start tonight with a politician who claims to be guided by the Constitution and talks about it all the time on the campaign trail. Yet it turns out she might not be as familiar with it as she pretends.

We're talking about Delaware Republican and Tea Party favorite Christine O'Donnell, who is running for Senate debating opponent Chris Coons at a Delaware law school this morning. Now, the two were sparring over teaching evolution and the separation of church and state. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'DONNELL: Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: A few beats later, someone in the crowd says unbelievable. Ms. O'Donnell keeps smiling, then, a minute later, this exchange:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COONS: The First Amendment, the First Amendment establishes the separation, the fact that the federal government shall not establish any religion and decisional law by the Supreme Court over many, many decades...

(CROSSTALK)

COONS: ... clarifies and enshrines -- clarifies and enshrines that there is a separation of church and state that our courts and our laws must respect.

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: So, you're telling me that the separation of church and state...

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: ... the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?

(CROSSTALK)

O'DONNELL: Let me just clarify. You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?

COONS: The government shall make no establishment of...

O'DONNELL: That's in the First Amendment?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Now, perhaps Ms. O'Donnell was simply trying to say that the literal phrase separation of church and state is not in the First Amendment. That's true.

Here's a relevant passage. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The very first sentence of the very first amendment. The words separation of church and state are not in there. Yet, the sentence itself makes it plain. Government can neither meddle with your faith, nor set up an official faith of its own.

Now, even before the Bill of Rights, Article 6 of the Constitution prohibited religious tests for holding public office. And as Chris Coons pointed out, numerous Supreme Court decisions over the years have fleshed out what the First and other amendments mean in practice. What Ms. O'Donnell got right was the technicality. What a lot of people think she missed was everything else. She also had a tough time today remember something of the other amendments.

When asked if she, like some other Tea Party candidates, supported changing or repealing the 14th, 16th and 17th Amendments, she said she didn't want to change the 17th Amendment, but clearly didn't know what the other amendments were. Listen.

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From The Colbert Report:

Jeffrey Toobin explains what will happen to elections if the Supreme Court decides in favor of corporations.