National Centre for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) president Amy Ridenour is in high dudgeon, accusing ThinkProgress of libel for posting the Bonner Cohen clip that the deSmogBlog noticed yesterday. Ridenour says it is “false and defamatory” for ThinkProgress to have suggested that the NCPPR or its associates are under the paid influence of the fossil fuel industry, from which Ridenour reports “total donations to us: less than one percent of our revenues, and for most of our history, zero percent.”

So now we’re clear: Ridenour is happy to accept donations arranged by a corrupt influence peddlar (Jack Abramoff), and to pass those funds along to the corrupt politician Tom DeLay “for educational purposes” – but “no one here (at the NCPPR) has ever been instructed to ‘distort the facts’ about any issue, global warming or otherwise, not by management and not by outsiders.”

Of course, the whole point of people like Amy’s old college buddy Jack is that they are insiders, but we’re sure that doesn’t pertain here.