Just when you thought the current level of right-wing fear mongering couldn’t get any worse, the Wall Street Journal writes an editorial about nuclear weapons.

Did you know that while you were sleeping, America’s vast and technological advanced nuclear arsenal was rapidly deteriorating? It cites the Perry-Schlesinger commission as evidence to make this point, which should be news to the Perry-Schlesinger commission since the Commission’s report never makes this point. The Journal’s editorial lays out what has become the right wing’s main push back against the new START treaty currently being negotiated between the US and Russia: the state of our apparently decrepit nuclear arsenal. The right is now posturing that they will not support a new START treaty – a treaty that was initially pushed by President Ronald Reagan – unless Obama puts up money for building a new nuclear warhead to replace existing ones.

The Journal writes:

A group of Senators is telling the White House that it will have little or no chance of success unless it also moves ahead with nuclear-warhead modernization. … The deteriorating U.S. nuclear arsenal is emerging as a big security problem, and Start won’t be an easy sell even with the money for warhead upgrades.

Our nuclear arsenal is not deteriorating. We spend billions on programs to ensure the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal. The Wall Street Journal and Senators like Jon Kyl seem to not have read or are just choosing to ignore the JASON report – a report from independent scientists tasked with assessing the US nuclear force. The JASON report concludes that:

Lifetimes of today’s nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in LEPs [Life Extension Programs] to date.

In other words, what we are doing right now to maintain are nuclear weapons is working and we don’t need new warheads. Furthermore, members of Congress should know this, as the defense spending bill, which passed with bipartisan support in the House and Senate, includes funding for the nuclear stockpile stewardship program which ensures the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal.

But in the hyper-paranoid neoconservative vision of national security we can’t cut our nuclear forces. In fact we need to build new nuclear weapons, because the Cold War never ended, Russia wants to kill us, China is the new Soviet Union, and Iran and North Korea need to be attacked right away. This is crazy and is even more extreme than the disastrous foreign policy approach that dominated during the Bush administration.

The anti-immigrant group, NumbersUSA, posted a video today of its director, Roy Beck, on Fox & Friends touting recent polling by its unofficial sister group, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which claims to show that religious leaders lobbying for comprehensive immigration reform are out of tune with the people of faith they represent. However, even Fox News religion contributor Father Jonathon Morris seemed to hesitate when it came to agreeing with the polling, despite Alisyn Camerota’s leading questions:

BECK: There’s about 5 billion people who would like to come the United States overall — they’re more impoverished than the average Mexican. And so, it’s just that the leaders have put their priorities on those where the members of those churches — their priority is on compassion within their own community — the 15 million Americans who are unemployed…

MORRIS: I believe there is a natural right of every human person to look for a better life — to emigrate with an “e.” But there’s also a responsibility of every country to control the amount of immigration. To make sure it’s sustainable, to make sure it’s safe — both for the immigrant and the citizens….

CAMEROTA: But is it religious leaders’ responsibility to lead the charge on this?

MORRIS: It’s the responsibility to give principles for decisionmakers and then for politicians to say “we’re going to implement policy that’s good for the human being.”

Watch it:

Morris’ logic echoes that of the Reform Immigration for America Campaign and the strategy he proposes resembles the approach that religious leaders have already adopted. Morris even referred to Kevin Appleby from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as the “expert” on the polling. Appleby countered Beck’s claims by citing a “more scientific” survey conducted by the University of Michigan and Stanford University which found that 56 percent of Catholics support a legal path to citizenship and 61 percent say immigration levels should stay the same or increase. Another recent poll by Zogby showed that 69 percent of Catholics polled support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, provided they register with the government. Meanwhile, the poll Beck cites indicates that 69 percent of Catholics think immigration levels are too high with 54 percent opposing a path to legalization.

A recent memo written by Dr. Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research, explains many of the discrepancies by pointing out that the CIS poll “is not based on a scientific random sample of Americans but rather on an opt-in online panel survey.” Though Zogby tries to make their online samples “representative” of the U.S., it’s still a self-selected pool of respondents. Jones also notes that “the question wording is problematic in several places.” Meanwhile, the poll that Zogby conducted for the USCCB used the “tried-and-true” method of a random telephone sample.