>> jon: that's our show, here it is your moment of zen. >> despite opposition from catholic bishop it is white house is standing by captioning sponsored by comedy central >> stephen: tonight, big-government regulations on woodworking. great. now i have to baby proof my circular saw. (laughter) then, the latest in my ice cream war with jimmy fallon. turns out, revenge is a dish best served frozen. (laughter) plus, my guest bill mckibben believes in global warming. so i'm going to deny that he exists. (laughter) a college student found cocaine in a book she ordered from amazon. customers who purchased this book also bought $20 bills, hand

mirrors and tape recorders for all their amazing ideas. (laughter) this is "the colbert report." (cheers and applause) captioning sponsored by comedy central (cheers and applause) (crowd chanting "stephen") (cheers and applause) >> stephen: thank you, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. welcome to the "report," everybody. good to have you with us. well, folks, the show was on

hiatus last week in observance of yom ki-martin luther fourth of jul-easter. (laughter) one of the many long religious festivals i've had engineered into my schedule since i converted to orthodox owning a sailboatism. (laughter) and, as usual, there was lots of big news over the my break. (laughter) most of it was bad for handsome millionaires from massachusetts. (laughter) (cheers and applause) yes, my very own new york giants won a whole mess of super bowl! whoo! whoo, baby! whoo! and the city has been celebrating hard. last week, new york threw the champions a ticker tape parade down the canyon of heroes! iraq war vets, we will get to you eventually. (laughter) but as much as i love me the football, i cannot get enough of professional ball in hoop.

(laughter) the n.b.a. logo down there. the actual n.b.a. logo licensing fee is very expensive so... (laughter) we went with the generic down here. i think it gets the idea of a logo across even better than the actual logo. the point is, i love the game. the slam dunking, the layouts, the rim jobs, all of it. (laughter) and like all true new yorkers, right now i am caught up in the tidal wave that is new york nicks point guard jeremy lin. (cheers and applause) this kid... this kid... high five! (laughter) this kid has single-handedly done the unthinkable: made people want to watch the new york nicks! (applause) >> in one week he's gone from the bench to the top of the

n.b.a., he wasn't drafted out of college. two n.b.a. teams-- rockets and golden state warriors cut him-- the income nicks scooped him up but sent him down to the d-league and because of injuries he was called back to the team and in one week this unknown asian american with a degree in economics from harvard has put up le bron james like numbers. >> he came out of virtually nowhere. >> stephen: yes, he came out of nowhere which is my nickname for harvard. (laughter) folks, you know things are rough when a harvard economics grad has an easier time getting a job as an n.b.a. point guard than a wall street bond trader. (laughter) folks, i'm not some fair-weather fan. i've been behind my boy lin since day one of some time last week. (laughter) folks, there is a name for what we're feeling. >> lin-sanity continues. >> it's become lin-sanity new york. >> new york basketball fans have a ranging raging case of

lin-sanity. >> stephen: yes, i've had a raging case of lin-sanity. i have been declared legally lin-sane. my symptoms? lin somnia. rest lest lin syndrome and lin-testinal blockage. (laughter) folks, it's an exciting time. fans have not come down with a basketball-born disease this intense since the mid-'70s outbreak of kareem abdul ja-botulism. (laughter) but lin-sanity, it caught the n.b.a. off guard. all the jeremy lin jerseys that were on the shelves sold out-- because there weren't any. (laughter) best of all, jeremy lin here is currently without a corporate sponsor which means he's in the market for endorsement deals. so, mr. lin, in the spirit of lin-sanity, i hope you will consider endorsing my line of premium lin-oleum tiles. (laughter) (applause) tough stuff. (cheers and applause)

peel and stick. it goes everywhere. and, of course, jeremy lint. as we speak, i am drying socks and towels as fast as i can to meet what i assume will be heavy demand. (laughter) folks, it's no secret that the big government nanny state is smothering us in buzz-killing regulations. if i can't bring a gun on a plane, who's going to kill the panther i also brought on the plane? (laughter) well, tonight... pretty animal. so tonight i profile one do-gooder whose do-gooding done gone do-bad. (laughter) this is the people who are destroying america. (cheers and applause)

if there's one thing america loves, it's power tools. and nothing says power like a table saw. nine inches of steel powered by a dual horsepower motor spinning at 5,000 r.p.m. just look how amped woodworker pete perillo gets. >> it's... it's... there's some excitement, let's put it that way. (laughter) the sound, the power, the vibration, the energy. >> stephen: yeah! the energy to rip through anything. shoes, meat, computers, breakfast cereals, even fingers. (audience reacts) >> after i finished a cut i reached across the top of the table saw. (audience reacts) and the blade was spinning and that's how i severed my finger.

i made a careless mistake. so there's nobody to blame other than myself. >> stephen: but inventor steve gas doesn't see it that way. >> i'm on a personal mission to make table saws safer. >> stephen: safe sawing? that's like wearing condoms on your hands when everybody knows woodworking feels best bare-back. (laughter) and just why is gas so concerned? >> table saws are responsible for sending about 40,000 people a year to the emergency room. about 4,000 of those end up losing one or more fingers. >> stephen: sure, 4,000 fingers a year sounds bad, but when you break it down, that's just ten fingers a day. (laughter) but steve gas has got a safety fetish. so this finger-hugger invented saw stop. >> saw stop works by sensing when you run your finger into the blade on a table saw and then stopping the blade so quickly that you just get a

little nick instead of cutting your fingers off. >> stephen: how well does it work? here's a regular table saw. imagine this delicious sausage fest is your hand. now that's a power tool. now let's try the same task on a saw stop. way to pussy out, soft stop. (laughter) luckily, every table saw manufacturer that gas showed his saw to protected us from his protecting us. the power tool trade association rejected his design saying soft stop could actually increase the accident rate. because it would give our fingers a false sense of security. (laughter) but timmy ten-fingers doesn't get it. he actually wants big government to force saw manufacturers to adopt this technology and make their saws afraid of your fingers, too. bob adler of the consumer product safety commission. >> we do have the authority to require manufacturers to

incorporate a technology like saw stop into their products. >> stephen: so what does he want? the nanny state dictating our lives? >> i could imagine having a nanny-like mary pop pins who is all-knowing and extremely comforting and nice. >> stephen: nice? (screaming) this is your vision of america, sir? >> can i stop for a second? >> stephen: yeah, let's stop. stop saw stop. and stop assaulting our god-given constitutional rights. >> i have the right to cut my own finger off on my table saw if i want to. >> stephen: and who wouldn't want to? america, we cannot let these digit-coddlers emasculate the great american saw-scape. they may want to save our fingers, but we have got to save our balls. (laughter) before it's too late. right, pete? >> i'll give up my saw when you

take it out of my cold nine and a half fingers. (laughter) >> stephen: we'll be right back.

(cheers and applause) >> stephen: thank you, everybody. welcome back! nation, as you may know, tomorrow is the most romantic holiday of the year. it's stephen colbert's americone dream at participating ben & jerry's shops nationwide day. it's the best possible way to say "i like a big ass." (laughter) tomorrow also happens to be valentine's day, the perfect time to reflect on your loved ones and your hate-ones. for instance, my eternal enemy for six months until march 3, jimmy fallon. (audience reacts) nice. (laughter) you see, march 3 of last year, jimmy came on my show to celebrate his new ben & jerry's ice cream flavor late night snack. it's vanilla ice cream with salted caramel and fudge-covered potato chip clusters. also the same ingredients of a

cleveland steamer. (laughter) true story. that night jimmy and i became best friends forever for six months. last fall jimmy broke my hard when he had ben and jerry on his show to say this "the big issue i want to tell you about is i'm outselling stephen colbert's ice cream. >> the flavor is doing very, very well. it t short answer is yes, it's outselling. >> that's right! (audience reacts) >> stephen: jimmy outselling me? who who's buying it? are morgues using it to chill the corpses? (laughter) so then jimmy and i became eternal enemies for six months and i urged you to get out there and buy some delicious americone dream. i want to beat jimmy fallon like a rented mule! mule, by the way, also a major ingredient in late night snack. (laughter) just think, just think, this guy was ever my best friend for six months.

oh, jimmy. how long must we fight this senseless war pitting brother against brother, host against host? caramel swirl against salted caramel swirl? (laughter) it's... this madness has to end. maybe >> maybe i should reach out to him. folks, should i send jimmy a valentine's card? (cheers and applause) >> let's do it, let's do it. okay. good idea, good people. i'll get my card stack here. get well, get worse. (laughter) to a special nephew upon his parole. (laughter) all right, here we go, here we go. valentine. all right, all right. (laughter) "my dearest jimmyest. i know we're supposed to be eternal enemies until march 3, but without you i feel like vanilla ice cream with salted

caramel and fudge-covered potato chip clusters. terrible. (laughter) sometimes i lie awake at night wishing for a glimpse of your face. by i always fall asleep before your show comes on. (laughter) so i hope you'll accept this token of our friendship and let's be best buds again. please read this next sentence in a whiser the. i miss us. sincerely yours, the reverend sir dr. stephen t. mos def colbert b.f.a., dictated not read." (laughter) now i'll send this to jimmy using the late night talk show internal mail system. (audience reacts) (cheers and applause)

(laughter) jimmy fallon. fallon, not kimmel. fallon. go! (laughter) he's slow now but once he takes off he's lickety-split. (laughter) we'll be right back. (cheers and applause) hey ladies. enjoying the film?

of course not. because this is our movie. and dr pepper ten is our soda! it's only ten manly calories, but with all 23 flavors of dr pepper. it's what guys want. like this... catch phrase! so you can keep the romantic comedies and lady drinks. we're good.

(cheers and applause) >> stephen: welcome back, everyone. thank you. my guest tonight founded www.350.org to fight global warming. he must be winning because it's kind of chilly out. please welcome bill mckibben. (cheers and applause) hey, bill, thanks for coming back. all right, firm grip, man. all right, sir, i have had you on the show. i know who you are. let me explain to these people the trouble maker that you are. you are also an environmentalist activist. you wrote "the end of nature" you founded www.350.org and you led the effort to kill the keystone x.l. pipeline and you're... (cheers and applause)

your profile on the "boston globe" "can this man save the planet." so you're the clown who's going to make me pay five bucks a gallon for gas this summer. that's you. would you like to apologize to everyone? >> with any luck, we're the people who are going to help you get the plug-in hybrid car that does so well on gas you forget which side the gas tap is on. we're moving in new directions now. >> stephen: look, buddy, thanks to you, i've gone from an audi a. 8-l to an s-5. (laughter) don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful car. it's a dropped off cabriolet. it's beautiful. >> our goal is to keep the planet working so that when you drop the top it's working. >> stephen: the planet still turns. everything we're extracting from the ground is natural. right? (laughter) it's all natural! that oil is 100% certified organic. (laughter) is it not? is it not organic? >> it's all dinosaurs.

the trouble is we're taking.... >> stephen: that's what they sell at whole foods. >> we're taking 200 million years of it and putting in the atmosphere at once. the tar sands in canada is the perfect example. >> stephen: that's where the x.l. goes. the tar sands in can do d.a. to the gulf states. >> second biggest pool after saudi arabia. >> stephen: you mean oil. >> it was burning saudi arabia that raised the temperature of the planet one degree. if we... knowing what we know about climate change do the same thing with the second saudi arabia we're not as wise as we like to think we are sometimes. >> but you say we have to get off this oil, this carbon. >> that's right. >> stephen: how do you propose we do that? because right now the system we have... you may say it's flawed but it's global, it's profitable and it works. >> it's profitable as heck and that's the problem. the reason that.... >> stephen: and that's the problem? that's what builds a nation. >> the reason we have so much trouble is because the financial

powers of fossil fuel industry has been enough to keep science at bay. >> they don't have any power. you killed the x.l. pipeline! i'm worried they don't have enough of a say. >> well, the x.l. pipeline may be coming back. just today with worries that the senate was beginning to cave to big oil we launched what we thought would be a 24-hour drive to try to collect half a million messages to the senate. in fact, we blew by that half million mark after six hours with colbertnation on board for the next 18 it's going to be like one of those old jimmy stewart movies where they're having to carry the bundles of telegrams into congress. >> stephen: you mean "it's a wonderful life"? >> that's it. >> stephen: where he turns out to be a thief? >> no, you didn't watch all the way to the end. >> stephen: i only watched half of it. (laughter) so we don't get that oil, that's what happens. we don't get that oil. >> hopefully. and much of the coal stays in the ground. >> stephen: so the oil instead

goes to china. >> no. >> stephen: china will buy it and france will buy it and germany will buy it. so it goes into the atmosphere but we lose out. >> everyone would like to buy it but the you look at where those tar sands are, for instance, they're a long ways from anywhere up there in alberta. >> stephen: wherever in canada is a long way from anywhere. >> they're trying to build a pipeline also west to the pacific and hence on to china but so far canadian activists have done a great job of opposing it. a majority of canadians oppose building that pipeline. >> stephen: canadian activists? they say "would you mind very much not building that pipeline eh? are you going to do it anyway? soory." (laughter) >> stephen: if someone out there in the audience was foolish you have no sign your petition, where would they go? >> www.350.org is the place to be. >> stephen: do not do it! bill mckibben, www.350.org, thank you so much for joining

(cheers and applause) >> stephen: welcome back, everybody. before we go. i'd like to congratulate andrew buneta and his wife jen on the birth of their baby mila sophia rose buneta who i believe was named after most of the golden girls. (laughter) everyone here at the "report" is so excited to meet little mila. unless andrew photo shopped the baby to get out of work. (laughter) as a