Liberal Esquire political columnist Charles Pierce, formerly with the Boston Globe, joined MSNBC’s All In on Thursday during live coverage of Pope Francis’s visit to New York City and used the occasion of the Pope’s speech hours earlier before Congress to lash out at Ted Cruz and conservatives for not endorsing climate change or other liberal social issues as does the Pontiff. 

It would appear that Hillary Clinton's act is wearing thin even among the people at that liberal bastion known as NPR.

Tuesday afternoon, the headline at an NPR story about Mrs. Clinton's sudden decision to publicly announce her opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline project indicated that her announcement was deliberately timed to coincide with Pope Francis's visit to the United States (HT Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media):

In what appears to be a mixed result in the quest for clarity, the Associated Press has announced that its reporters and those who wish to adhere to its Stylebook guidelines will henceforth refer to those who don't worship at the altar of the global warming/climate change absolutists "doubters" instead of "deniers" and "skeptics."

The specific change reads as follows: "To describe those who don’t accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from man-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers."

Applying bogus definitions of “fascist” and “fascism” to conservatives and conservatism has long been almost a cottage industry on the left. In a Friday post that mostly riffed on Rep. Paul Gosar’s intention to skip Pope Francis’s speech to a joint session of Congress, Daily Kos writer Hunter argued that the modern conservative movement may not be fascist right now, but easily could become so.

“All the elements for the ascension of true fascism are now in place among the top ranks of the American right,” wrote Hunter. “The adaptation of pseudo-‘Christian’ rhetoric to promote movement goals (expansionist interventionism, hyper-nationalism, xenophobia, a focus on ‘true’ members of the nation versus the undesirable intellectual, political, religious and ethnic ‘others’) while actual Christian thought is marginalized as ‘leftist’ and even dangerous ought to be good for a sub-essay of its own.”

Filmmaker and liberal activist James Cameron appeared on MSNBC, Tuesday, to “bemoan” the climate “denialists” on “the right” who won’t face up to the “biggest crisis” for Earth. Talking to Chris Hayes, the director lamented, “I felt hopeless for a long time watching a government that's paralyzed by denialism on the right, about what I think of as the biggest crisis that our society and our global civilization faces.”