After the intelligence community released its NIE that concluded Iran had halted its nuclear program in 2003, conservatives have generated a host of conspiracy theories. The intelligence community is “trying to — once again — influence our national elections,” said right-wing blog Strata-Sphere. Neoconservative Norman Podhoretz said that the intel officials may have tried to sabotage President Bush.

Last night on PBS’s Charlie Rose, former senator Fred Thompson added his own conspiracy theory to the mix, stating that Iran may have deliberately “leaked” the information on their lack of nuclear program to distract the U.S. “Nobody knows” if Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, he declared:

We’re just going to have to wait and see, why they would start it up and they would move away without telling anybody. Unless of course they have leaked this themselves. So, just a bunch of unanswered questions. [...]

And this is perhaps a weak, faint or weak attempt to cause us to divert our attention a little bit.

Watch it:

Today, on Red State, Thompson expanded on his disdain for the NIE:

The accuracy of the latest NIE on Iran should be received with a good deal of skepticism. Our intelligence community has often underestimated the intentions of adversaries, including Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and North Korea. … It’s awfully convenient for a lot of people: the administration gets to say its policies worked; the Democrats get to claim we should have eased up on Iran a long time ago: and Russia and China can claim sanctions on Iran are not necessary. Who benefits from all this? Iran.

Thompson’s conspiracies aren’t a far cry from the Bush administration’s reactions. In July, administration officials “expressed skepticism” about an intercept from “a senior Iranian military official” complaining “that the nuclear program had been shuttered,” believing it was “part of a clever Iranian deception campaign.”

UPDATE: Thompson suggested that his skeptical eye towards the NIE was something he learned at home: “Remember what your mama told you — if something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is.”

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Via Ross Douthat, Noah Millman and Russell Arben Fox offer their views of what Mitt Romney ought to say in his big speech about religion. Probably he should stay in keeping with his main campaign themes and just tell Republican primary voters that he’s willing to say whatever they want him to say about Mormonism and explain that he’s only had trouble with this issue because it’s not clear what people want from him.

For that matter, if you could just replay this whole primary campaign, it seems to me that Romney’s big mistake was failing to flip-flop on the question of his faith. Back when he was a culturally moderate Bay Stater, religion wasn’t especially central to Romney’s political identity. And while flip-flopping on “the issues” is generally held in low esteem, flip-flopping on religion — converting, in short — is usually celebrated as long as people like your new religion. So why not find Jesus? Back when he was considering that stem cell bill, Romney could have consulted with a wide array of religious leaders including, say, a baptist minister. And maybe the minister in question is really convincing and Romney decides to abandon the faith into which he was born. Religious right types have to be prepared to believe conversion stories, and the experience of being “born again” would be the perfect opportunity to flip-flip on an array of issues, lending the flops a pseudo-plausible veneer of respectability. And who, then, would speak of Mike Huckabee?

According to a new government report, the U.S. “teen birth rate has risen for the first time in 14 years. … The birth rate had been dropping since 1991. The decline had slowed in recent years, but government statisticians said Wednesday it jumped 3 percent from 2005 to 2006.”

In an op-ed this morning mocking former Vice President Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize win, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. “attacks the international scientific consensus without providing a single piece of counterevidence.” In order to cast doubt on the consensus, Jenkins insults the entire scientific community as people who “do not wait for proof“:

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn’t. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they’ve chosen to believe.

Climate Progress ably takes Jenkins to task for his insults and distortions.

The Democratic race has gotten a bit tedious to think about since the arguments are all so well-trod, but Rasmussen’s national daily tracking poll shows the Republican race in all its fascination:

In essence, the candidates all seem to be close enough in national polling — and the situation sufficientlly fast-changing — that nobody’s far enough ahead to have a meaningful advantage and nobody’s so far down as to be out of it. It seems to me that if Huckabee wins Iowa, that still would leave ample time for an establishment rally around John McCain if they want to go in that direction.

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, Michael Guest — the first openly gay man to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as a U.S. Ambassador — resigned from the State Department last month, “in order to protest rules and regulations that he believes are unfair to the same-sex partners of Foreign Service officers.” Guest said he chose to resign after “absolutely nothing…resulted from” his direct appeals to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for policy changes.

The State Department is not the only branch of the Bush administration that explicitly discriminates against gay and lesbian employees. In 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft barred DOJ Pride, an organization of almost 200 gay and lesbian employees of the Justice Department, from holding “an annual event celebrating ‘gay pride month’ at the agency’s headquarters” while allowing other employee groups to do so.

Though the decision was eventually reversed after pressure from gay rights groups and members of Congress, the Department has continued other discriminatory policies. During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey if he would “stop the disparate treatment of gay and lesbian employees” at DOJ:

The department sponsors commemorative events to recognize the contributions of various minority groups, but under Attorney General Ashcroft and Gonzales, in contrast to Attorney General Reno, it has refused to do so for the GLBT Americans.

In addition, while DOJ Pride, an organization of GLBT employees, is permitted to use department space to hold events, it is prohibited from advertising those events on public billboards, in department buildings, again, unlike organizations for minority employees at the department.

Similarly, the department refuses to recruit at job fairs aimed at GLBT attorneys but sends recruiters to job fairs aimed at other minority groups.

Responding to Feingold, Mukasey said that he couldn’t “understand the reason for that treatment” and that he was “going to” do something about it. But Mukasey is unlikely to feel pressure from the President to follow through on his promise.

Not only has the administration threatened to veto legislation barring employment discrimination based on sexual identity, but President Bush has refused throughout his tenure to even observe June as Gay Pride Month.

Early Monday afternoon, the Bush administration released a new National Intelligence Estimate revealing that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Though the blockbuster revelation was featured prominently that night in all three network newscasts, it was all but ignored on Fox News. Steve Benen reports that on Monday night, only one of Fox’s primetime shows — Special Report with Brit Hume — even mentioned the report. On Tuesday, after President Bush held a news conference, the shows did cover it, but with only conservatives and administration supporters discussing it.

Yesterday evening, right-wing talk show hosts Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly teamed up on the O’Reilly Factor. Beck criticized the University of Florida for admonishing the campus College Republicans for airing the film Obsession, which students promoted with posters stating, “Radical Islam Wants You Dead.” O’Reilly and Beck agreed, “They missed 9/11 in Gainesville”:

BECK: And in the — when they played it, they put out a flier all around the campus that said militant Islam wants you dead. Well, the university came out with a statement and said how dare you say that? That’s hate speech. That’s completely inaccurate. I mean, Bill, would you agree…

O’REILLY: Well, they missed it. They missed 9/11 in Gainesville. You know they missed it. That was the only city in the country that didn’t get the broadcast around the world.

BECK: Right.

O’REILLY: I don’t know why, but they are looking into the technical problem.

Watch it:

At one point, O’Reilly said, “But you’ve got to understand something, Mr. Beck. You and I are put into that extreme category by many people.”