Ruth Marcus writes a pretty good article in the Washington Post about the crack pot conservatives running as teabaggers in the upcoming midterm elections like Rick Barber. After watching Barber's insane political ads she concludes her article with this:

As to the video, Barber was unapologetic. "We can't be so naive to think that just because we live in America that can't happen to us," he said. "We are being fed a socialist agenda spoon by spoon, and we don't see it coming. In Germany, when Hitler was first elected under the Socialist Party, no one would have thought in a million years it would have gone where it did."

I would not have thought in a million years that this kind of thinking would be inside the conservative mainstream. If it is not, it is time for rational conservatives to speak up.

I would not have thought in a million years that a Washington Post writer would have no clue about the history of the conservative movement. Does she not realize that there was a fight for the soul of that movement between William Buckley of the NRO and Robert Welch of the Birchers? Barry Goldwater refused to dismiss the Birchers as wackos entirely because they were useful like the teabaggers, but he did attack Welch.

Rick Perlstein's: 'Beyond The Storm:'

The attendees fell into two camps. Buckley and Kirk said they were ready to write the Birchers out of the conservative movement altogether. Goldwater and others canceled accommodation. He thought there were a lot of 'nice guys' in the Society and not just 'kooks' and that it wasn't time to precipitate breaks in the conservatives' fragile movement.

They settled on a compromise. National Review would attack Robert Welch, not the John Birch Society. Goldwater would take the line that Welch was a crazy extremist, but that the Society itself was full of 'fine, upstanding citizens' working hard and well for the cause of Americanism.

Haven't we heard the same thing from Newtie and Rove about the teabaggers? Sure, they have racist signs and say racist things, but it's only a few people.The rest are great Americans. Right wing extremists have populated the conservative movement since it began. It's only when a Democrat is elected president that they freak out and expose themselves to public view. That's why I came up with the idea of writing our new book. I thought what was happening should be documented. The 'Whiplash politics' practiced by the conservative movement as soon as Obama was elected, (The Tea Party folks) which is really the GOP now was just another chapter in their checkered history. Ruth Marcus should know that. I often wonder if the MSM is just too scared to write about the tea party people or conservatives because they were traumatized during the HCR town hall meetings last summer. They were shocked by the vitriolic insanity that was splashed across the nation. Here's another tip for Ruth. Conservatives rarely abandon their wingnuts. They may attack a Michael Steele once in a while, but they will never forsake a conservative transmitter like Coulter, no matter how far out they get.

Anyway, please support liberal authors and buy this book.

Oh, and Dean Baker takes her down because she doesn't know jack about Social Security either.

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Glenn Beck thought he was making a great point earlier this week when he held up a bag of pot and a bottle of prescription pills and compared illegal immigration to the pot:

Beck: Let me be clear -- what I have said in the past is, there is a difference between legal and illegal immigration. There's a difference between legal and illegal. This is Allegra D -- or so, this is actually crack cocaine, but I get it from a doctor, so it's OK -- Allegra. Drugs? Pot! Drugs! 'I have a problem with drugs!' No no no -- I have a problem with illegal drugs. Not prescription drugs. I don't want to ban all drugs! Prescription drugs are good for you when used by prescription and follow the advice of the doctor. Bad otherwise. Got it?

Immigration -- good! Illegal immigration -- bad!

This was, of course, a classically dishonest Beckian analogy. Because in many states, it's already perfectly legal for people to obtain marijuana by prescription, particularly if they are cancer patients using it for treatment relief.

In a more honest analogy, Beck would hold up not a bottle of Allegra but a bottle of Jack Daniels. Because the reality is that marijuana is illegal largely for its recreational use. No one is taking Allegra recreationally.

And then the analogy is actually somewhat useful. Because it sheds a very interesting light on the nativist argument -- favored by the Glenn Becks and Tom Tancredos, but also echoed frequently among many "moderate" Democrats -- that "all we really need to do is enforce the laws we have on the books."

Because I think a lot of people are perfectly aware that, when it comes to illegal drugs and the "War on Drugs," taking the "enforce the laws we have on the books" approach is a dead horse we've been flogging for the better part of thirty years, and it's getting more rank and fetid with age. The marijuana laws in particular are a classic case of an antiquated approach in which merely "enforcing the laws on the books" has failed miserably and is fueling a drug war on the Mexican border. It is a situation that really calls for an overhaul of the laws themselves, one in which drug users are treated medically instead of criminalized, and the black market and its attendant drug kingpins scattered to the winds.

A lot of progressives and libertarians in particular are well attuned to this reality. But it's surprising how few of them -- at least the non-Latinos -- apply the same logic to our immigration laws.

And the truth is that there are 12 million human reasons not to just "enforce the laws on the books" when it comes to immigration, as well. The first and most important of them is that our current system of immigration laws are so outmoded, antiquated, and misbegotten that they too need a complete and thorough makeover.

It's worth remembering that our current immigration system is built on the bones of the Immigration Act of 1924, the law that first created the concept of "illegal immigration" by cutting off all immigration from nations whose citizens were "ineligible for citizenship" -- namely, all Asians. That law was passed in a milieu of extreme xenophobia, and was ultimately a manifestation of eliminationist eugenics in American politics.

Perhaps not surprisingly, our current drug laws are built on nearly identical bones. Like the immigration laws, they were largely enacted in the same kind of milieu: predicated on defending white privilege and keeping a law-enforcement thumb on nonwhites, including immigrant Latinos:

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From the wonderful artist Zina Saunders (click here for larger):

"Double, double, toil and trouble," chant Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh as they stir up the pot against health care reform.

A few incantations from the trio's trick or treat bag: Congresswoman Bachmann says sex clinics will result from Health Care Reform, Ann Coulter says Obama's plan encourages assisted suicide for the elderly, and Rush Limbaugh says Obama's health care plan is right out of Hitler's playbook.

Boo!

Open thread below and John Amato has a World Series thread going as well...

Duuuuuuuude:

(Massachusetts Congressman Barney) Frank has filed a bill that would eliminate federal penalties for personal possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana.

It would also make the penalty for using marijuana in public just $100.

"I think John Stuart Mill had it right in the 1850s," said Congressman Frank, "when he argued that individuals should have the right to do what they want in private, so long as they don't hurt anyone else. It's a matter of personal liberty. Moreover, our courts are already stressed and our prisons are over-crowded. We don't need to spend our scarce resources prosecuting people who are doing no harm to others."

Frank filed a similar bill last year, but it failed.

The law passed in Massachusetts last November.

Given the general timidity of the majority party and the hay that most certainly would be made by the minority party, I don't have much hope that this sensible and long-due bill will succeed, but more power to Barney Frank.

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(h/t Heather for the vid)

ON FOX News Sunday, Chris Wallace really got into Joe Biden's remarks from the Today Show about the flu and ran with them pretty hard. It's been almost a week and the administration has clarified his statements, but that didn't stop Wallace from FOXing them up.

First he brought up a conspiracy theory that says the Vice President slipped up and was giving us information that the government didn't want Americans to know. Namely, that the swine flu is highly contagious and you had better stay in your house and lock your doors.

Wallace: I have to tell you, some people have said to me since Vice President talked. Maybe you guys are telling the public one thing, but at the highest levels of government you've heard something else, no -- you're saying to me that everything the Vice President Biden said, I'm not talking to the travel to Mexico. Being in a confined space, being in a classroom. Being in a school. Being in a subway, no health danger to any of that?

Sebelius: Again, with, we're letting the science lead this investigation and trying to be prudent...

Second, he asked if Biden was just insane.

Wallace: So why would the Vice President tell his family that? Are we to believe that the Vice President of the United States is a crackpot?

Sebelius: I think that each member of our country makes decisions about themselves and their family and about safety and security. What we're telling you is what the science says.

Kathleen Sebelius should have gotten up in his grill on that last point, but she's trying to be reassuring to the American people. We hope the next time a talking head gets out of line she will call them on it.

Wow, Chris Wallace had plenty of good reasons to call out Dick Cheney on a host of topics, but he never would have ever used that language to describe a "Vice President" of the United States during Cheney's tenure. FOX News has completely gone off the rails since President Obama was elected. They were always a propaganda arm for the GOP, but the ad hominem attacks have escalated to monumental proportions among their talk-show hosts.

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Friday morning on CNN Kiran Chetry spoke with Arizona's AG Terry Goddard about the raging drug war taking place along our southern border and how U.S. gun and drug laws are perpetuating the violence.

Since George Bush allowed the assault weapons ban to expire, the gun smuggling trade in the U.S. has skyrocketed and many of these weapons are ending up in the hands of Mexican drug lords and are responsible for thousands of murders. The right has been going bonkers, warning Democrats want to take everyone's guns from them and turn us into a nation of dopers, but it's high time they admit that our gun laws are aiding drug cartels and making it possible for them to get more drugs into our country.

Goddard points out that the vast majority of the drug cartel's income comes from the sale of marijuana which begs the questions - is it time to reinstate the assault weapons ban and legalize pot? Both President Obama and AG Eric Holder have said they want to reinstate the assault weapon ban, hopefully they will be successful. As for the legalization of pot, I think the time has come.