"Mad Hatter" Throws a Tea Party for Koch and ExxonMobil

A group called Balanced Education for Everyone (BEE) is backing an effort to force the Mesa County, Colorado, school board to mandate school instruction of the "other side" of the so-called debate about global warming, in what may be a national test case on how global warming is taught. Attorney and Tea Party activist, Rose Pugliese — working with the support of Balanced Education for Everyone — presented the board with one petition demanding that global warming not be taught and, ironically, another demanding that political views be kept out of the classroom. At the meeting, Pugliese and her supporters said if warming is taught the "other side" should be too.   BEE is a project of the Independent Women's Forum, which, in turn, is an arm of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation — an industry front group that reportedly gets most of its funding from from oil companies  Koch Industries and ExxonMobil.  AFP organized last summer's Astroturf Hot Air tour, in which oil company employees posed as average citizens opposed to climate legislation.