The front page of Monday's Washington Times features rather explosive lead story: "Obama climate czar has socialist ties," the headline reads. Unsurprisingly, this is the kind of story that gets quite a bit of attention on the right. The D.C. Examiner had it last week, actually, and the conservative blogosphere is all over the report.

To the Times' credit, the story is true -- Carol Browner, who was also EPA head under Bill Clinton, served on the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is run by the Socialist International.

This doesn't exactly make Browner the next V.I. Lenin, however. In fact, the commission is about as mainstream as it gets. Its co-chairs are former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and Goran Persson, the former prime minister of Sweden. Other members include Hilary Benn, the UK's secretary of state for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, former Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski (who, as President Bush would likely remind us, provided troops for the invasion of Iraq) and Martin Torrijos, the president of Panama.