Right wingnutsophere pwned

The day before yesterday, Reason's Hit & Run blog linked to a story entitled "Belgium to impose tax on barbequing to fight global warming" by the Russian News & Information Agency Novosti:

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

And of course that was just too damned tempting for the wingnuts to slow down and think before posting. A large number of right-wing blogs posted something about how ridiculous it is to enforce such a tax with a fossil-fuel burning helicopter. [some notable examples]

When I first read it, it was pretty obvious that this was just way too ridiculous and probably not trustworthy, so I let it go. A few wingnut blogs also left open the possibility of it being an April Fools Day joke, but most were just too busy writing about how silly the leebruhls are for believing in the religion of environmentalism and taxes and on and on.

I did some snooping around on google belgium's site and tried to find an actual news story from the region, but found only this, dated April 1. Considering that this has become such a blogospheric storm, you'd think there'd be more than one source in Belgium reporting on this [a Romanian news agency repeated the Russian news agency's story, but nothing from Belgium or neighboring countries]. Though I've not yet checked every available source, I'm going to call bullshit on this story early. Wingnuts: you've been pwned!