When students in California return to school this fall, they will have a brand new environmental curriculum — developed, in part, by oil giant BP. The Sacramento Bee reported today that BP helped California’s public schools form an environmental curriculum to be used by over 6 million public school students (kindergarten through 12th grade) in 1,000 districts. The Bee reports that state officials included BP on a technical team that “was responsible for developing the program’s guiding principles.”

Even before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, which BP officials admit was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the company had a terrible environmental record: over the past five years, BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution after admitting to breaking U.S. environmental and safety laws.

The same company involved in forming California’s environmental curriculum also has a long record of dishonest greenwashing. As Lisa Graves, executive director for the Center for Media and Democracy, which monitors “greenwashing” techniques, told the Bee: “I’d hate to see how a section in future textbooks mentioning the BP oil spill will look. … I think it’s very worrisome because their fundamental goal is to profit from energy and not to teach children.”

BP’s dishonesty was on full display during the Gulf disaster, as the company tried to spin the environmental catastrophe that unleashed 206 million gallons of oil into the ocean. Just today, BP released a report deflecting blame for the oil spill onto various other companies. The Wonk Room‘s Brad Johnson has been tracking some of BP’s most egregious statements:

– Five months and one day before its Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, BP’s top Gulf of Mexico official testified its practices were “both safe and protective of the environment.”

– In the immediate aftermath of the explosion, BP officials called the disaster “inconceivable,” “unprecedented,” and completely unforeseeable: “I don’t think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we’re faced with now,” said one spokesman. This was despite the fact that blowouts are unfortunately common in offshore oil drilling.

– Then-CEO Tony Hayward said on May 19 that “the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.”

– On June 9, Hayward said that a new fund the company set up “will have a significant positive impact on the environment in this region.”

– BP’s new CEO, Robert Dudley, has repeatedly said dispersants the company used in the Gulf were “like dish soap.” The dispersant used, Corexit, is a combination of petroleum distillates, propylene glycol, and dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate which is banned in the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, California officials defended BP’s involvement in interviews with the Bee, saying that the company’s involvement was “minor” and that it was “important to get all sides of the environmental debate involved in developing the classroom materials.” The problem is that the side BP generally represents is not based in fact.

In July, former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) lambasted then-Republican gubernatorial primary candidate Dan Maes as an “unelectable” disaster in the making. Unwilling to watch the GOP blow an opportunity to defeat Democratic nominee John Hickenlooper, Tancredo jumped in as a third-party candidate, believing he presented the best opportunity for a conservative victory.

But Tancredo’s third-party candidacy is garnering him anything but love from the conservative base. Immediately after announcing his entry, Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams and 21 state Tea Party leaders pummeled Tancredo for siphoning votes away from a potential GOP victory. Constitutional conservatives of the Vail Valley 9.12 Project in Colorado later joined in decrying Tancredo for pursuing the type of candidacy that “guarantees the re-election of liberals” and demanded that he “drop out of the race and come back to the conservative party.”

Fed up with his obstinacy, two Colorado Republican voters upped the ante yesterday by filing suit in Denver District court to prevent Tancredo from being placed on the November ballot. The lawsuit, filed by Colorado Republican Party treasurer Richard Westfall on their behalf, states that both Tancredo and his running-mate Pat Miller switched their party affiliation from the GOP to the American Constitution Party too late, violating state and party bylaws and rules:

“The goal is to make sure the American Constitution Party follows its own rules when it comes to ballot selection,” said Richard Westfall, attorney for the plaintiffs. “This is an important precedent to be set. You can’t allow a particular member of any political party be affiliated with a major political party and then at the eleventh hour just switch over and be the governor candidate for another party.”

“Under their bylaws it says you have to be a member of the party, the ACP, for at least six months prior to being nominated, but they [] can waive that,” said Richard Kaufman, the attorney for Tancredo’s campaign.

But the party’s vacancy committee, made up of five members, cannot validate a candidate on its own, as it did with Tancredo’s candidacy — only the party’s state assembly has that ability, the suit alleges.

“Tancredo and Miller’s last-minute nominations are the result of, in the Tancredo campaign’s own words, ‘inter-party squabling’,” the lawsuit states. “Tancredo’s ACP nomination is nothing more or less than a failed gambit to force the duly nominated Republican candidate for Governor, Dan Maes, to withdraw his candidacy.

Colorado law says that a nominee cannot be “registered as a member of a major political party for at least twelve months prior to the date of the nomination” unless the ACP bylaws indicate otherwise. Tancredo switched in July and Miller switched in August and nothing in the ACP bylaws supersede Colorado law, according to the lawsuit.

Tancredo’s campaign manager Bay Buchanan pointed out that the Secretary of State Bernie Buescher (D) already certified the general election ballot last Friday. In a statement to the Denver Daily News, Buchanan said, “Our attorneys have reviewed the recent complaint by a disgruntled Maes voter related to this certification and are confident that the courts will find no grounds on which to overturn the decision by the one individual with authority to make such decisions.”

While both plaintiffs emphasized that they were taking action “in their individual capacity only, and not on behalf of any candidate,” both voters “have contributed to Maes’ campaign.” The case is set to be heard Monday. Despite the lawsuit, Buescher’s office “continues to print ballots with Tancredo’s name on it.” Wadhams said that while “he does not believe Tancredo’s name will be removed from the ballot because of the lawsuit,” he will certainly “watch with interest.”

Despite the backlash from the Colorado GOP, Tancredo has outraised Maes 4 to 1, pulling in almost as much funding in August as Maes has raised in total. And in a further blow to the state GOP, Chairman of the Republican Governors Association Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) said today that RGA will no longer “throw good money” to “badly damaged nominee” Dan Maes, adding that “we don’t give to sure losers.”

As conservative blog Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey points out, “the RGA move appears to send an official Amityville Horror message [to Maes] … get out.” If Maes heeds calls to pull out of the race and the state GOP replaces him with former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, that move “might convince Tom Tancredo to withdraw his independent bid.”

Before Rev. Terry Jones was being condemned by the White House and military commanders in Afghanistan for his planned “International Burn a Quran Day,” he was a pastor at an evangelical church he founded in the 1980s in Cologne, Germany. Jones grew the congregation of the Christian Community of Cologne to as many as 1,000 members, but his radical, hate-filled preachings eventually got him expelled from the church. According to the German magazine Der Spiegel, Jones ruled the church like a tyrant, even as his sermons became increasingly Islamaphobic and hateful, prompting his congregation to kick Jones and his wife out of the church last year:

Various witnesses gave SPIEGEL ONLINE consistent accounts of the Jones’ behavior. The pastor and his wife apparently regarded themselves as having been appointed by God, meaning opposition was a crime against the Lord. Terry and Sylvia Jones allegedly used these methods to ask for money in an increasingly insistent manner, as well as making members of the congregation carry out work. [...]

Jones became increasingly radical as the years went by, former associates say. At one point he wanted to help a homosexual member to “pray away his sins.” Later he began to increasingly target Islam in his sermons. A congregation member reported that some members were afraid to attend services because they expected to be attacked by Muslims. “Terry Jones has a talent for finding topical social issues and seizing on them for his own cause,” says Schäfer.

Former members of Jones’ German church described a “climate of fear and control” and said Jones insisted on “blind obedience.” Some former congregants are even “still undergoing therapy as a result of ‘spiritual abuse.’” A German Protestant Church official familiar with Jones even said the pastor has a “delusional personality.”

In a heated interview on Thom Hartmann’s radio show, Jones confirmed that he had been the head of the Christian Community of Cologne, but refused to respond to Der Spiegel’s allegations, telling Hartman, “If you want to discuss 9/11, that will be fine, if not, I guess we will have to end this conversation”:

In response to his plan to burn Qurans, Jones’ old church, said, “We want to distance ourselves fully from this plan and from Jones.” “We are as shocked as the rest of the world,” said Jones’ successor Stephan Baar, adding, “This has nothing to do with us and nothing to do with our beliefs.”