This past Friday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) guest hosted CNBC’s Squawk Box. The senator covered a variety of topics while hosting the show, including his belief that Republicans should and will alter the recently passed health care bill instead of simply repealing it.

At one point, the Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen explained that the show received e-mails asking them to ask Corker “what he wants to cut” in order to reduce the budget deficit. Corker responded that “everything need to be on the table.” Kernen followed up by asking, “Everything’s on the table? Defense? Entitlements?” Corker once again replied, “Everything! I mean look, Secretary Gates will tell you there’s a lot of waste there. We need to streamline it”:

KERNEN: We get e-mails coming in saying, “You’re going to have Corker on. For once ask a Republican what he wants to cut.” [...] The rap is all you say is cut but you’ve got no idea what to cut. What would you specifically cut?

CORKER: Well, first of all I think everything needs to be on the table.

KERNEN: Everything’s on the table? Defense? Entitlements?

CORKER: Everything! I mean, look, Secretary Gates will tell you there’s a lot of waste there. We need to streamline it.

KERNEN: Other than waste, though?

CORKER: Well, obviously that’s going to be more difficult, let’s face it. Because it’s our national security, that’s the most important thing we do in Washington, but everything we do needs to be looked at. So I would say nothing’s off the table, nothing.

Watch it:

Corker’s sentiments are in line with at least five Republicans running for Senate this year. Last week, Oregon nominee Jim Huffman called for defense cuts, citing the “vaste amount of money wasted in defense.” Earlier that week, Pennsylvania candidate Pat Toomey criticized Congress for voting for “programs the Pentagon doesn’t even want.” The week before, Illinois candidate Mark Kirk said we need “across the board” reductions in defense spending. Earlier this month, Sen. Johnny Isakson (GA) told a local news station that reducing the deficit “begins with the Department of Defense.” A few days later, Kentucky candidate Rand Paul criticized Republicans for exempting the military from waste-trimming, telling PBS’s Gwen Ifill that cutting defense spending “has to be on the table.” All of these candidates are stating positions in direct opposition to the GOP’s much-touted “Pledge To America,” which explicitly exempts the Department of Defense from waste-cutting.

If these Republicans are really serious about reining in the defense budget, they can look to The Sustainable Defense Task (SDTF) report released earlier this year. The SDTF — which comprises Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and some of the nation’s leading defense and budget experts — identified nearly $1 trillion in waste that can be cut from the defense budget over the next ten years simply by eliminating outdated Cold War-era programs. They could also reference a recent report by CAP experts Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley that lays out $108 billion in defense cuts in the current 2015 budget forecast.

Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly has been on an Islamophobic tear lately. O’Reilly initially took heat for saying that “Muslims attacked us on 9/11″ and he has since defended that claim, saying that “there is a Muslim problem in the world.” After receiving criticism for that statement, O’Reilly defended himself again, claiming that there is a “Muslim problem” because “good” Muslims don’t combat extremism — a point radio host Don Imus told O’Reilly was not “accurate.”

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seems to have picked up on O’Reilly’s spurious reasoning, telling Imus yesterday that leaders in the Muslim community “do not cooperate”:

KING: It’s not just people who are involved with the terrorists and extremists, it is people who are in mainstream Islam, leaders of mosques, leaders of Muslim organizations who do not come forward and denounce, officially denounce, officially cooperate with the police against those extremists and terrorists. So, it goes beyond the terrorists and the extremists and also includes those in what others call mainstream Muslim leadership.

Watch it:

King didn’t provide any evidence that Muslims aren’t cooperating with authorities. While many Muslim leaders have complained of a heavy-handed FBI presence in their communities, American Muslims have been integral in combating domestic terrorism. As Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) said at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress, according to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, “About a third of all foiled al-Qaida-related plots in the U.S. relied on support or information provided by members of the Muslim community.” Indeed, a Senagalese Muslim immigrant who works as a vendor in Times Square was the first to bring the smoking car that was part of the failed Times Square bombing plot to the police’s attention. And the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — who failed in his attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit last year — alerted U.S. authorities of his son’s “extreme radical views” months before he tried to carry out the attack.

Moreover, a recent academic study found that American contemporary mosques are serving as a deterrent to the spread of extremism and terrorism. The New York Times noted that the study found that “many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.” “Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization,” said study co- author David Kurzman. “This is one reason that Muslim-American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11.”

King’s claim that Muslim organizations in the U.S. aren’t denouncing terrorism is simply false. For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading American Muslim organization, unequivocally condemned terrorism and has launched numerous anti-extremism campaigns.

One of the architects of Arizona’s immigration law, Kris Kobach, has often had to defend himself against accusations of bigotry. One of his most common lines of defense is that he is religious man with Christian values. As proof, Kobach even cited his Christian missionary work in Africa, saying groups like the Anti-Defamation League who have accused him of bigotry “don’t want you to know that in my spare time I do Christian missionary work in Uganda.”

However, Lauri Lebo of Religion Dispatches has revealed some more interesting information on the church that Kobach affiliates himself with. Lebo writes:

However, despite his assertions that his faith prevents him from being a bigot, the church Kobach attends, the Christ Church, Anglican of Overland Park, Kan., has close ties to the anti-homosexuality movement in Africa. Christ Church was part of the Anglican Realignment, one of a group of theologically conservative parishes which aligned themselves with bishops outside the Episcopal Church in the United States following the ordination of Gene Robinson, the church’s first openly gay bishop.

According to its website, Kobach’s church is part of the Anglican Mission of the Americas, which is sponsored by the Anglican Church of Rwanda. Like the Anglican Church of Uganda, the Church of Rwanda is virulently anti-homosexual. Its previous Archbishop Emmanuel Musaba Kolini likened homosexuality to “moral genocide” and his successor Most Rev. Onesphore Rwaje has vowed to carry on his predecessor’s policies.

The Kansas City-based alternative newsweekly The Pitch reports that Kobach continues to visit Africa, working as a missionary with Christ Church in Overland Park. Kobach told the Pitch that he distributes bibles to “people who live in huts, who have no written material whatsoever” and used his university experience to teach men “Christian and universal values.”

In a speech before the Christian Heritage, Kobach himself blasted gay marriage, stating “the institution of marriage is under assault.” Kobach worries about the “normalization” of homosexuality, compares efforts to legalize gay marriage to a frog in boiling water, and advocated for a constitutional amendment to ban it.

Though Kobach’s religious affiliation doesn’t necessarily imply that he is a bigot or a homophobe, it’s probably not the smartest thing to point to when he’s trying to argue that he’s not. Lebo writes, “If Kobach wants to use his faith to argue that the legislation he has been promoting is not rooted in bigotry, perhaps he should choose a church that better embraces a more convincing message of tolerance.”

Finally, Kobach’s “Christian values” don’t account for his crusade against undocumented immigrants and his commitment to making life as miserable as possible for them.