Fox News has a new reason to attack the United Nations: the U.N., under the leadership of Russia, China, and Iran, is dangerously close to taking over control of the Internet, stifling free speech around the world. Fortunately for Internet users, this is not actually the case.

Fox’s Megyn Kelly interviewed The Lawfare Project’s director, Brooke Goldstein, on the grave threat that the United Nations poses to the freedom of the Internet:

KELLY: [Countries like China and Russia] already crack down, they censor the Internet already to some extent in their respective countries. So how much more control do they want?

GOLDSTEIN: Well, they want legitimacy and they want coordinated control. What this is going to result in, people are predicting at the very worst, is a fractured internet. It is an Internet that changes depending on whose borders you’re in. What it’s also going to result in are high-levels of taxes for internet providers. So U.S-based companies like Google or Yahoo who want to provide their services to Russia, to China, are more taxed. And that’s going to be an incentive not to provide it. It will also provide a highly coordinated censorship, something that we’ve seen before, and again it will be legitimized by the United Nations.

Watch the full interview here:

Fox is correct in noting that next month will be the start of the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, hosted by the International Telecommunications Union, the oldest part of the U.N. system. They are also correct that states such as Russia and India are in fact in favor of the United Nations having more direct control over the governance of the Internet. That’s about where the accuracy ends.

As Kelly reluctantly admit during the segment, the United States is opposed to this proposal. That didn’t stop her from managing to critique the Obama administration for not leading the opposition towards the measure.

Despite Fox’s fretting, the real purpose of the conference is far more mundane than they let on. According to the Better World Campaign, a part of the United Nations Foundation, the conference is based primarily around such technical issues as “fair mobile roaming charges; how to prevent taxation on mobile users from two different countries when receiving an international call; how to prevent spam; and basic cyber-security.” The majority of time and effort will go into updating the International Telecoms Regulations, a process that requires consensus.

The fact is that Russia and other states have been trying for a decade to move control of the Internet from non-profits to intergovernmental organizations where they would have more control; they have failed to do so each time. What’s more, the stance of these states runs against adopted U.N. policy, with the U.N. Human Rights Council having declared free and open internet access a human right earlier this year. In addition, preparatory documents that leaked back in June showed no sign of anything on the agenda that would indicate that a takeover was even close to being at hand.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is reportedly stepping down from his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. The New York Republican is well known for his Islamophobia and he famously spearheaded anti-Muslim House investigations like the hearing on “Radicalization In The U.S. Muslim Community.” The New York Daily News reports that GOP Reps. Mike Rogers (AL), Mike McCaul (TX), and Candice Miller (MI) are jostling to assume the committee’s chairmanship. But are any of these contenders likely to initiate anti-Muslim hearings of the kind King championed?

Dozens of House members and more than a hundred religious leaders opposed King’s hearings. The committee called on faux Islam experts like Dr. Juhdi Jasser, who narrated the anti-Muslim film “The Third Jihad.” Some of the witnesses King wanted to hear from were forced to back out after backlash because they were too anti-Muslim. At the hearings, King pushed false narratives about Muslim-Americans, for example claiming that “too many mosques…don’t cooperate with law enforcement.” In the past, King has said that “80 percent of the mosques in this country are controlled by radical Imams” and that “almost 90 percent of the terrorist crimes are carried out by the Muslim community.” The Southern Poverty Law Center said King’s hearings “demonized” Muslim-Americans.

McCaul could be the most likely candidate to carry on King’s anti-Muslim legacy should he take the committee gavel. He praised King’s investigations, claiming they set out to “end the era of political correctness.”

McCaul also suggested that Islam and terrorism are linked, saying King’s anti-Muslim hearing should not “overlook the correlation between Islam and national security.”

Rogers is just as likely to keep King’s anti-Muslim flame going. He not only supported the Muslim-American investigations, Rogers even criticized the Council on American-Islamic Relations for instructing Muslim-Americans to obtain a lawyer when law enforcement officials ask questions, even though they were being targeted. “I want to make it known that I don’t think they have to have an attorney present to talk with residents when they are just finding out how things are going,” he said.

It’s more uncertain what direction Miller will take the committee on this issue. While she called King’s anti-Muslim hearings “very, very important,” Miller added that Islam is a “peaceful” religion and that she didn’t know why the committee “never had any” hearings on other groups that might be a threat to America. She did, however, criticize the media for “prejudging” the investigation as targeting Muslim-Americans disproportionately.

The reality is that only 12 percent of terrorist incidents in America have been caused my Islamic extremists, while right-wing extremists have committed the majority of the incidents (56 percent). Furthermore, a Gallup poll last year found that 89 percent of Muslim Americans “reject violent attacks by individuals or small groups on civilians.” The poll also found that 92 percent of Muslim-Americans “have no sympathy for al-Qaeda.” And contrary to what King has said, a Duke University study published in 2010 found that American Mosques are “actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism.”

While King’s departure as the House Homeland Security Committee chairman is bad news for Islamophobes, it presents an opportune time to transition the committee’s focus from Muslim-Americans to significant threats in America. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the candidates running to fill King’s role are likely seize that chance.

Tom Ricks, author and Pulitzer prize winner who has reported for the Washington Post, lambasted Fox News’s coverage of the Benghazi attacks in an interview with the conservative network on Monday. Ricks, who has written extensively on the American military, called the Fox an “operating as a wing of Republican Party” that “hyped” the Benghazi attack as a faux-scandal.

During the interview, which lasted only a minute and 45 seconds, Ricks responded to a loaded question with a remark that surprised the anchor:

JON SCOTT (HOST): Senator John McCain said in the past he would block any attempt to nominate Susan Rice to become U.N. — I’m sorry, Secretary of State. She’s currently the U.N. ambassador. He seems to be backing away from that. What do you make of it?

RICKS: I think that Benghazi generally was hyped, by this network especially, and that now that the campaign is over, I think he’s backing off a little bit. They’re not going to stop Susan Rice from being secretary of state.

After Ricks called Fox the “operating wing” of the GOP, Scott ended the interview. Watch it:

Ricks’ assessment of Fox’s role in what they themselves dubbed “Benghazi-gate” is accurate. Since the Sept. 11 attack that killed four U.S. citizens, Fox has pushed a constant stream of conspiracy theories and easily countered “facts” claiming that the Obama administration lied to the public in their response. Even Fox’s own personalities have had trouble accepting the push at times, but Ricks’ blunt statements caught the network off-guard.

The interview apparently didn’t sit well with Fox: a “news staffer” told Ricks that he was rude while he was on air. Ricks’ segment, according to an interview he gave with the New York Times, was about “half as long as planned.”

“I had told the producer before I went on that I thought the Benghazi story had been hyped. So it should have been no surprise when I said it and the anchor pushed back that I defended my view,” Ricks told Politico. Ricks also told the New York Times that he was going to discuss the “lack of combat readiness of some Army units” but he never got the opportunity,. “They seemed to lose interest in that,” he said.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) today alleged that U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice has been “tainted” by the tragedy in Benghazi, preventing her from being qualified to become Secretary of State.

Duncan’s statement showcases that Republican members of the House of Representatives are not giving up yet on pillorying Rice for her role in the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11 assault in Libya that killed four American citizens. Duncan was the author of a letter, signed by over ninety House Republicans, urging President Obama to select anyone other than Rice to fill the role of Secretary of State in his second term.

On Fox and Friends this morning, Duncan stood by his denouncement of Rice when asked about her seeming willingness to answer questions related to her Sept. 16 statements explaining the administration’s knowledge of the attack at that time:

DUNCAN: Well, it comes down to her credibility now. Do we want someone as Secretary of State that is somehow tainted in this whole Benghazi issue. I don’t think so. I think the bigger question to ask is — you know, she should have known the information, should have all the talking points, the truth of the matter. The fact that she misled the American people, whether its intentional or unintentional, she is tainted in this issue.

Watch Duncan here:

Duncan would probably need to explain how Rice has been “tainted” from the Benghazi fallout seeing that every GOP attack on her as a result has been found to be false, misleading or baseless.

But while Rice is not the nominee yet, she is indicated to be the leading favorite for the job. Duncan and his cohorts ire would in no way affect a potential confirmation of Rice; only the Senate confirms the President’s nominees for Cabinet-level positions.

In the upper chamber, controlled by Democrats, cooler heads seem to be prevailing regarding the chance of a Rice nomination. Even Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), one of Rice’s harshest critics, has backed off from his attacks. Rice for her part has reached out to McCain, saying “I have great respect for Senator McCain and his service to our country. I always have, and I always will. I do think that some of the statements he’s made about me have been unfounded, but I look forward to having the opportunity at the appropriate time to discuss all of this with him.”