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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) corrected NBC host David Gregory on Sunday after he repeated the National Rifle Association's (NRA) talking points in opposition to expanding gun background checks even though only 10 percent of the country agrees with the lobbying group.

During a panel discussion on NBC's Meet the Press, Gregory argued that "not a lot is about to be accomplished" even if the Senate succeeds in passing a bill to close the so-called gun show loophole and expand background checks to Internet sales.

"I disagree," Gillibrand insisted. "I think we have a very good start on beginning to crack down on gun crime. And the bottom line is the families of Newtown, the families all across America who lose children every single day, they deserve a vote, they deserve an answer, they deserve leadership out of Washington."

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) argued that the background check proposal "would serve primarily to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens, while doing little of anything to prevent tragedies like [Newtown] from occurring in the future."

Gregory asked Gillibrand if supporting gun control would be "tough" to do after she had touted a pro-NRA voting record during the 2008 election.

"That's why I know this bill will work," the New York Democrat explained. "It is making sure you protect Second Amendment rights. We're not undermining Second Amendment rights by saying criminals have to go through a background check before they can buy that weapon or straw purchasers and trafficker can't be stemming their guns straight into these communities."

"But the NRA doesn't believe that," Gregory interrupted. "The NRA does not agree."

"This is not about the NRA!" Gillibrand exclaimed. "This is about families! This is about America! Seventy-percent of NRA members like the background check bill, like the straw purchase bill. They even support things like assault weapons ban."

"So if you're talking about people and if you're talking about America and what Americans want, Americans want these reforms. We just saw that mother who lost her child, you cannot do nothing in the face of that tragedy!"

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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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As we already discussed here and as Jon Stewart rightfully mocked this week, Republicans have gone off of the rails with their opposition to this United Nations treaty that they just shamefully voted down in the Senate, because the homeschooling crowd is scared to death that the U.N. is going to somehow impose agreements from international treaties onto the citizens of the United States.

This Friday evening, CNN's Anderson Cooper decided to actually do his job and pushed back at wingnut Mike Lee, who was one of the leading voices in the Senate who made sure the treaty wasn't approved.

As Hullabaloo's David Atkins rightfully observed on that topic:

We shouldn't have to hit rock bottom for CNN to start actually doing its job. But at least we've found a level of insanity that will actually prompt some legitimate journalism.

As Raw Story noted, Cooper pretty well destroyed most of Lee's arguments about why he opposes the treaty. I'll be surprised if he's back on there any time soon. Cooper was polite, but he managed to show Lee for the dishonest embarrassment that he is along with the rest of them that voted with him during the interview.

Full transcript and video of Cooper's interview with Lee below the fold.

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Jon Stewart took his audience through the entire, disgusting "Senate day of shame" with Mike Lee and the home schooling crowd objecting to the passage of the U.N. disability treaty. After asking how the treaty failed and what the hell is wrong with "these people," Stewart said he guessed it was time for a new segment: "Please Tell Me This is Rock Bottom."

Sadly Jon, I'm fairly sure we haven't hit it yet. He got into the meat of their real objection to the treaty a bit later in the segment, which Dave wrote about here and their fear that the treaty might be used to interfere with American sovereignty, and somehow "threaten the rights of parents." Except, as Stewart noted, there are no enforcement mechanisms. That of course, was one of wingnut Lee's objections to the bill.

The Republicans in the Senate are bound and determined to make themselves look like as big of clowns who want to constantly embarrass this country as their counterparts in the House. It would be a lot easier to laugh at a lot of it, if it weren't also so dangerous.

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If anyone who subscribes to HBO has not watched their new series on Sunday night, The Newsroom yet, I'd recommend trying to catch up now, with their latest episode and who it upset just being one of the reasons: Sen. Mike Lee Takes Issue With HBO’s ‘The Newsroom’:

HBO’s new drama “The Newsroom” has been the target of critical derision since its premiere. Now a sitting senator is taking issue with the show.

Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) called HBO co-president Richard Plepler on Monday, after “The Newsroom” mentioned Lee in its latest episode. Reporting on the rise of the Tea Party, the show’s anchor Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels, said “the centerpiece of Lee’s stump speech is repealing the 14th amendment.” McAvoy called it an “applause line” that will win Lee his primary by double digits.

Lee’s office, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, says the senator supported “clarifying” the interpretation of the constitutional amendment, but didn’t support its repeal. And Lee’s opponent in 2010, Bob Bennett, failed to make it to the primary after the Utah Republican Convention.

The senator’s office told the paper that the network is free to criticize Lee, so long as it does so accurately. “Lee obviously understands he is a public official and open to criticism,” Lee spokesman Brian Phillips said, “but this particular mistake was especially egregious and deserved to be corrected.”

Phillips told TPM that Lee believes HBO “responded positively” to his issue with the episode, but declined to comment further.

As someone who is a political junkie and who watches the kind of shows they're parodying here, I've really enjoyed the new series. It's been a mix of what you hope might happen if some conservative commentator finally got fed up enough with the Republican Party that they've been a member of to start speaking out about it, combined with a lot of really interesting side stories with all of the characters involved surrounding that anchor, the people who work for him, his old girlfriend who returns to the scene as his new producer and the new found conflicts with the station owners now that he's decided he actually wants to report the news rather than playing it safe and worrying about ratings.

The time frame for the show is set a couple of years ago, with the fictional anchor responding to both the BP oil disaster in the Gulf along with Arizona first passing their anti-immigration law and the rise of these "tea party" Republicans and their pay masters, the Koch brothers.

And for anyone else who isn't sure yet if they'd like to take the time to watch the series if you do have HBO and haven't caught it yet, here's the opening scene from the first episode.

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You've just got to love what passes for "straight news" over at the Fox/Republican cable channel. During one of their "breaking news" segments after the news that Standard and Poor's decided to downgrade the AAA credit rating of the Unites States, who did they bring in to do some "objective" analysis? The American Spectator and Wall Street Journal's resident hack, John Fund.

And what was Fund's reaction to the downgrade? More austerity measures naturally.

And what did Fund completely ignore? This tidbit from the report issued by Standard and Poor's on their decision for making the downgrade.

(h/t Jamie)

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

Fund naturally thinks we should be taking it out on the hides of everyday working Americans to do something about our budget deficit. Ignoring completely that the Republicans have been the ones being absolutely rigid in their position that there will be no tax increases since they're all afraid their Uncle Grover will primary them.

I think we just got a preview here of what we're going to see from Fox 24/7 over the next week as they try to explain what happened with this downgrade. No questioning of whether we should even trust the ratings agency that got it all so wrong before the meltdown of the financial industries and more demands that we go after Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid or these vultures will never be satisfied.

UPDATE: And right on cue, one of our newly elected TeaBircher Republicans in the Senate, Mike Lee was chiming some of the same talking points in another "breaking news" segment following the one with Fund. Not only was he calling for austerity measures, but he was also still touting their ridiculous balanced budget amendment as well. And of course the problem in Lee's mind with protecting his rich campaign donors is that Washington is spending too much (code for they're doing things to help out working people and not corporate welfare or funding our military industrial complex) and they're borrowing too much. And of course with him also ignoring that the wealthiest 1% are being taxed at the lowest rates in ages and that we have a revenue problem they refuse to fix. I'm just wondering how much worse things have to get in the United States before the majority of the public starts to get wise to these liars because they actually start paying attention to what's going on and how ridiculous these talking points from the GOP are that do not match up to reality in any way, shape or form.

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After a really unfortunate visual of John Boehner that I don't have enough brain-bleach to get out of my head, Jon Stewart slammed these "tea partiers" (note to Jon Stewart, there is no "tea party") for still not being satisfied with the outcome of this ridiculous debt ceiling hostage taking.

As Stewart noted, they control less than one half of one chamber of Congress and even though our deficit is primarily a result of Republican policies like the Bush tax cuts, they still won't "take the win" because they're pissed off that "government still exists."

STEWART: This whole process has been like, you're in a bank, it's a negotiation where you've got some hostages and after getting everything you wanted, you're still going "Oh, and one last demand. I still get to kill the hostages, right?"

That about sums it up. They're all of the Grover Norquist ilk where they want to shrink government to the size of a baby and then drown the baby in a bathtub. People who do not believe in government working should not be allowed to be running our government, but here we are. I can only hope everyone of these astroturf, Koch-funded TeaBirchers finds themselves looking for new employment after the next election or whenever the rest of them have to run again.

Maybe we can get Stewart to ask one of these days as many of our commenters have suggested here and as I would also suggest myself, if these "free market" anti-regulation, anti-government zealots want to live in a country where their ideology has come to fruition, can we get them all to move to Somalia and leave the rest of us that still want government to work for the people that have elected our politicians into office, and that they're supposed to be representing, the hell alone? I suspect that's too much to ask for from the crowd that just wants to burn the whole house down.

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Chris Matthews did a good job of making Utah Sen. Mike Lee look like the obstructionist he is on Hardball tonight. Here's more from Think Progress -- Mike Lee: I Want America’s ‘House To Come Down’ Unless Congress Votes To Rewrite Constitution:

In an interview on MSNBC’s Hardball this evening, tenther Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) admitted that he is using the threat of a catastrophic default to extort the nation into rewriting the Constitution to force a permanent era of conservative governance:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: How many days do you think we have, on the outside, to get this debt ceiling through before we have a problem? How many days?

LEE: I don’t know, maybe ten days.

MATTHEWS: Okay, in ten days you want to change the United States Constitution by two-thirds vote in both houses? That’s what you’re demanding.

LEE: Yes. If possible we can’t change the Constitution just in Congress but we can submit it to the states. Let the states fight it out.

MATTHEWS: And you think you’re being reasonable by saying you want a two-thirds vote in the House, which is Republican, and in the Senate which is Democrat. You want the Democratic Senate, by a two-thirds vote, to pass a constitutional amendment or you want the house to come down?

LEE: Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying and I’ve been saying this for six months.

Go read the rest for more details on Lee's hostage taking. Someone wake me up when this debt ceiling kabuki is over. I can barely stand watching any of it any more.

Looks like the Senate Democrats are pushing back at Mitch McConnell for making the ridiculous statement that only the Democrats are talking about their hostage taking and the continued threats of shutting down the government. Apparently old Mitch has forgotten that things like recording devices and transcripts exist and that we can go back and check them.

Here's more from TPM -- Dems To McConnell: What About All Those Republicans Talking About A Government Shutdown! (VIDEO):

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says the only people talking about shutting down the government are a handful of Democrats.

So, Dems are asking, what about all those Republicans who've threatened a shutdown?

They're rounding up examples, and have put a few together in the below video.

And, of course, there's no shortage of examples, particularly from House Republicans for which there's no audio or video record. Read on...

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Following the mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona that left six dead and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (R-AZ) in the hospital, there have been calls for politicians and pundits to back off violent rhetoric.

But tea party favorite Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) isn't about to let the tragedy change his tone.

Prior to the shooting, Republicans in the House introduced "The Repealing the Job-Killing Health-Care Law Act." Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) used the phrase "job-killing" eight times in one briefing on Jan. 4.

Most Republicans dialed back that rhetoric in the wake of the shooting.

"Whether it’s job-killing, job-destroying, job-crushing, job-ending, job-eliminating, job-preventing, job-limiting, job-hurting, job-excising, job-removing, job-exterminating, or job-doingawaywith – the point is clear," Cantor later said.

In an interview broadcast on ABC Sunday, Lee refused to follow Cantor's lead.

"The shooter wins if we, who’ve been elected, change what we do just because of what he did," Lee told ABC.

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) may agree.

Speaking to Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday about whether Republicans would force a shut down of the government if Democrats didn't agree to deep spending cuts, McConnell used some violent imagery of his own.

"Nobody is going to put a gun to anybody's head here," he said.