In a bit of theater at the Capitol today, House members Mike Noel and Aaron Tilton revealed that the Southern Utah Wilderness Association and other environmentalists are inflating the energy costs of poor people.

"What the heck?" you ask. Have Noel and Tilton suddenly become bleeding-heart liberals?

Noel trotted out Niger Innis, left, a New York-based conservative Republican consultant, who explained that the poor and minorities suffer from high utility costs and would benefit from energy exploration on public land.

Noel's rainbow of compassion comes a day after he got 45 lawmakers to sign a letter calling for SUWA to open its financial records to see if "SUWA funds were inappropriately converted or misused in any way."

Noel and Tilton, by the way, are financially involved in putting a nuclear power plant, or two, in Utah, which makes Noel's bad-assed behavior recently look like a preemptive strike on the environmental groups.

Salt Lake City Weekly's Holly Mullen reports:

No word yet as to whether SUWA has any weapons of mass destruction hidden in its downtown Salt Lake City office, but if Reps. Mike Noel (R-Kanab) and Aaron Tilton (R-Springville) can find a link, they'll be all over it.