So not only are the Grimm Reepers writing the tea-party fairy tale, they are now falsifying MIT!

"MEDIA -- EDITOR: 'I'M EMBARRASSED' I PUBLISHED REP. BACHMANN'S CAP AND TRADE LIES: On April 8, global warming denier Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) published an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that attacked green economy legislation by claiming that "cap and trade" is really "cap and tax." To make her argument, Bachmann wrote, "[A]ccording to an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by $3,128 per year." This claim, however, was a flat lie, as a letter to the editor published the very next day  pointed out. In fact, Bachmann's lie had been debunked publicly by MIT's John Reilly with Politifact.com on Tuesday, March 24. Reilly also sent a letter to the congressional Republican leadership denouncing their repeated use of the fabricated figure. In an interview with the Wonk Room's Brad Johnson, Eric Ringham, the opinion page editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, acknowledged that the MIT lie was fully debunked before the column was submitted by Bachmann. "It wasn't on my radar. I'm embarrassed to have let it go unchallenged," said Ringham. Ringham told Johnson that with both the limited resources he has and the role of the opinion page as a forum for argument, it is "an uncomfortable role" for an op-ed editor to run corrections after a column's publication. "I'm not equipped -- or really inclined -- to go, after the fact, probing someone's assertions," said Ringham. Despite the fact that a correction will not be run, Ringham said, "You can rest assured this study is never going to be represented in the paper again without confirmation it's being accurately portrayed."


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