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Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) on Wednesday explained that Al Gore and the United Nations get most of the blame for what he called a global warming "hoax," but filmmaker Michael Moore and billionaire George Soros deserved some credit too.

At a Environment and Public Works Committe on President Barack Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to be the next head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that he wanted the agency to listen to scientists instead of climate change deniers like Inhofe and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY).

"What Sen. Inhofe has written and talked about is his belief that global warming is one of the major hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people, that it's a hoax pushed by people like Al Gore, the United Nations and the Hollywood elite," Sanders told the committee.

"I think that is a fair quote from Sen. Inhofe. Is that roughly right, Sen. Inhofe?" Sanders asked the Oklahoma Republican.

"Yes," Inhofe agreed. "I'd add to that list MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore and a few others."

"That's exactly the issue," Sanders said, turning back to the committee. "Do we agree with Sen. Inhofe that global warming is a hoax and that we do not want the federal government, the EPA, the Department of Energy to address that issue? Because it is a -- quote -- unquote -- hoax, according to Sen. Inhofe and others? Or do we believe and agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists who tell us that global warming is the most serious planetary crisis that we face, and that we must act boldly and aggressively to protect the future of this planet? That is what the issue is."

(h/t: The Hill)

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The founder of a tea party group in Oklahoma was charged with two felonies on Tuesday for allegedly sending threatening emails to a Republican lawmaker after he refused buy in to the notion that the United Nations was conspiring to transform the country into a communist dictatorship.

According to the Oklahoman, 54-year-old Sooner Tea Party founder Al Gerhart faces up to five years in prison for blackmail and violating the state computer crimes act.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation determined that Gerhart admitted sending an email to state Sen. Cliff Branan (R) "that was intended to threaten and intimidate him."

Gerhart had been angry because Branan refused to allow a vote on a bill that would have ensured Oklahoma cities do not participate in Agenda 21, a United Nations initiative to promote environmentally sustainable development. Conspiracy theorists on the right have long thought that Agenda 21 was a "conspiracy to transform America from the land of the free, to the land of the collective” through “a mind-control" tactic called the Delphi technique.

Although the Oklahoma state House had passed House Bill 1412, Branan refused to bring it up in the state Senate because he said it was based on a "fringe conspiracy."

"Branan, Get that bill heard or I will make sure you regret not doing it," Gerhart wrote in the email. "I will make you the laughing stock of the Senate if I don't hear that this bill will be heard and passed. We will dig into your past, yoru [sic] family, your associates and once we start on you there will be no end to it. This is a promise."

At a press conference last week, the tea party leader admitted that he sent the email.

"Political pain and embarrassment will be necessary if the citizens expect to regain control of this Senate down here from the state chamber of commerce and special interests," he insisted. "The time for ‘nice' behavior is over with."

Gerhart suggested to reporters that there was "scuttlebutt" at the state Capitol that the state senator pushed for criminal charges because he was afraid the Sooner Tea Party would reveal infidelities.

On Tuesday, a judge set a bail of $15,000 and ordered Gerhart to stay at least 1,000 feet from Branan and his family.

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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Monday linked an MSNBC promotional advertisement about public education to conspiracy theories that contend the United Nations plans to use mind control to establish a communist dictatorship and that the Obama administration is using school testing standards for "leftist indoctrination."

Last week, conservative websites like Newsbusters and the Daily Caller cited MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry's promo about the need for public education as evidence that liberals intended to usurp parental sovereignty.

"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children," Harris-Perry says in the spot. "So part of it is, we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments."

On Monday, The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher featured the video with the headline, "MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry wants your children." And the Media Research Center's snarky headline borrowed a popular Internet meme: "Shorter Melissa Harris-Perry: All Your Kids Are Belong to Us."

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A Republican congressman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan on Sunday looked back at the Iraq war and declared that it was a "just and noble war."

During an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley asked Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR) for his views on the war 10 years after the U.S. invaded.

"The Iraq war noble and just war," the Arkansas Republican declared. "I would say it was worth it, but it's also a little too soon to tell because there's nothing ever certain in human affairs."

"But if you look at the accomplishments of our troops in Iraq, they deposed an evil tyrant who was an aggressive international dictator," Cotton continued. "He'd invaded across two boundaries. He had demonstrated the ability and the will to use weapons of mass destruction. He was believed by every Western government -- including senior high-ranking officials in President Obama's cabinet right now -- to be developing new weapons, who was in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions."

"But under those conditions, I think as I said, it was a just and noble war."

Many in Congress, however, now look back at the Iraq war as a mistake because President George W. Bush's administration used false information about weapons of mass destruction as a "pretext" to invade.

"You remember World War II, Korea, all the major wars of this nation," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) said recently. "This is one that slips into the background, and people are comfortable with it slipping into the background. I think the legacy of this is always going to be that it was a mistake, that it was pre-emptive, that it wasn't based on real information, and that the whole struggle could have been handled differently."

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The hosts of Fox & Friends on Monday lashed out at 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft because he failed to devote a significant part of his Sunday interview with President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "follow up" on the suggestion that the secretary may have not told the truth about a concussion that delayed her testimony on Benghazi.

In December, Fox News regulars like former Florida Rep. Allen West and former United States Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton -- along with numerous other network hosts and personalities -- mocked Clinton by suggesting that had conspired to fake a “diplomatic illness” or “Benghazi allergy” to avoid going before lawmakers.

"If you give somebody 30 minutes [for an interview], you could get real news -- especially Steve Kroft, who is usually awesome," co-host Brian Kilmeade opined on Monday. "But I think for some reason, they just didn't dig in to anything at all. For one thing, I would like to know, did she pass out and hit her head? Was she pushed? How did she hit her head and get a concussion?"

"She said -- quote -- 'I still have some lingering effects from falling on my head,'" co-host Steve Doocy noted. "That's all she said! And there was no follow up!"

"Okay, she was injured, she had a concussion," co-host Gretchen Carlson pointed out, attempting to inject some reality into the conversation.

"That's a question I have!" Kilmeade exclaimed.

"How did you follow on your head?" Doocy insisted.

"She passed out, I think was the story," Carlson continued. "For me, this was more of -- the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the two of them together was, Barack Obama is going to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in 2016. That's why they were doing this interview together, I think."

"Then Joe Biden just passed out on his head, he's going to be seeing double soon," Kilmeade quipped as Doocy simulated Biden's imagined accident by placing his head on the studio desk.

"Bonk!" Doocy said.

(h/t: Media Matters)

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The more things change, the more they remain the same. It's now almost ten years later, and Colin Powell is still defending going in front of the United Nations and pushing the faulty intelligence to justify our invasion of Iraq. Of course don't expect any introspection from host David Gregory who decided to treat this as merely some policy disagreement between Powell and former Sen. Chuck Hagel, who he was defending as President Obama's pick for Defense Secretary during this segment on Meet the Press.

It's no wonder all of the neocons don't seem to mind re-litigating the invasion of Iraq if this is the type of coverage that we're going to get from our corporate media once those hearings start.

GREGORY: The renewed debate about Iraq is also occurring, the New York Times write about-- writes about that today. And his-- in his memoir, he writes something very pointed about the Iraq war. He writes, "it all comes down to the fact we were asked to vote on a resolution based on half-truths, untruths and wishful thinking. I voted for this resolution that gave the president the authority to go to war in Iraq if all diplomatic efforts were exhausted and failed. Unfortunately, it was not his intention to exhaust all diplomatic efforts.” He is talking about the diplomatic efforts you were engaged in as Secretary of State in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

GEN. POWELL: I would disagree with this characterization. We were basing all of our actions on a national intelligence estimate that the Congress asked for and was provided to the Congress by the CIA. And all of us in the Bush administration at that time accepted the judgment of our 16 intelligence communities. I presented it to the U.N. Three months before I presented it to the U.N., Congress passed a resolution, also supported by Senator Hagel and many other senators that would give the president the authority to go to war. They weren’t half-truths is what we were being told by the intelligence community. We subsequently found out that a lot of that information was not accurate and that is very unfortunate but that’s the way it unfolded.

GREGORY: Was he wrong on Iraq?

GEN. POWELL: With respect to what?

GREGORY: With respect to what he ultimately called a huge foreign policy blunder?

GEN. POWELL: He-- that’s his characterization and if people want to challenge his characterization, they will have that opportunity during the confirmation.

GREGORY: In your judgment, was he wrong on Iraq?

GEN. POWELL: I would not have called it that. I would have said that what I think was wrong was the president had more than sufficient basis to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction that were a danger to the world and the possibility of those weapons going to terrorists. And so, he undertook military action. I think that was the correct thing to do and it was well supported by the intelligence. I think we did not execute the operation well. Once Baghdad fell, there was a feeling that well that was the end of it. It was not the end of it. That was just the beginning of it.

Here's a little reminder about just what Powell knew and didn't know when he made that presentation to the United Nations: The U.N. Deception: What Exactly Colin Powell Knew Five Years Ago, and What He Told the World

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A spokesperson for the Department of State recently seemed to be really enjoying his job as called out Fox News correspondent Justin Fishel for asking an "asinine" question that suggested Secretary Hillary Clinton had faked her illness to avoid testifying about September attacks in Benghazi.

Officials revealed last month that Clinton's testimony would be postponed after she became sick, fainted and suffered a concussion. Just two days later, Fishel showed up at a State Department press briefing and seemed to question the official story.

"Toria, can you expand on why Secretary Clinton can’t testify on Thursday about this?" the Fox News correspondent asked department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, according to a transcript. "It seems that she has not been available to testify on the Benghazi situation on some very key dates, including the Sunday after 9/11 and now this Thursday."

"As we put out on Saturday, she is still under the weather," Nuland calmly explained. "She was diagnosed as having suffered a concussion, and her doctors have urged her to stay home this week. So it’s on that basis that she’s asked for the committees’ understanding... But it was her intention to be there. If she had not been ill, she would be there."

In an email obtained by The Washington Post and published on Wednesday, Clinton Senior Advisor Philippe Reines took a much snarkier tone with Fishel.

"We owe you an apology," Reines wrote. "I’m almost embarrassed to even admit this – but somehow your question at today’s Daily Press Briefing was somehow completely mauled and transcribed in the release."

"I just called them and read them the riot act for putting such misleading, accusatory, and absolutely asinine words in your mouth. Because after what we and her doctors explained over the weekend regarding her health, you couldn’t possibly have been insinuating the ulterior motives that question implies. No way. No credible journalist would do that without any basis whatsoever."

Reines continued by pointing out that there was no way "an informed reporter" would compare testifying before Congress with appearing an Sunday morning talk shows as Fishel seemed to do by asking why Clinton had "not been available to testify" in an interview on Fox News on the Sunday after the attacks instead of United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.

"I don’t know Chris Wallace all that well, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t place his television show on par with one of the three branches of our government," Reines insisted. "And therefore, saying that this has happened on multiple ‘key dates’ is simply a blatant lie and grossly misleading to the public."

"Anyway, our sincere apologies," he concluded. "If you send us what you really said, I’ll make sure it’s properly reflected."

Last year, Reines had taken a less-subtle approach with BuzzFeed correspondent Michael Hastings, telling him to "fuck off" and "have a good life."

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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.