The first Corner post on the vote, predictably, was headlined "Empire Shame," and it was brief, and defeated-sounding. But then everything went off the rails.

The Corner actually ran a surprisingly sympathetic report from the Stonewall Inn the night the vote happened. (Sympathetic if a bit zoological in tone. Gay people, Michael Potemra tells us, can look surprisingly "demure," which you may not know if you've only ever seen them in parades. "I learn tonight that the annual gay-pride march is on this very Sunday....")

Potemra made mocking reference in his Stonewall story to Archbishop Timothy Dolan's glib invocation of North Korea in an anti-gay marriage blog post earlier this month. That set off Kathryn Jean Lopez, the fragile, abortion-hating, anti-sex former editor of the National Review Online, whom I generally tend to imagine scribbling "Mrs. Kathryn Ratzinger" in her Lisa Frank journals.

Her response:

Do not be so quick to dismiss the North Korea comparison, Mike. We are witnessing tyranny today that is fostered by a false sense of freedom, a tyranny that faux tolerance ferments.

More Monday.

Tyranny! North Korean-style!

Jason Lee Steorts, the managing editor of the National Review, then decimated K-Lo's (and the archbishop's) non-argument in a devastatingly sarcastic post that went up about 45 minutes later:

So it is your view, Kathryn, that the action of democratically elected representatives, who are accountable to the citizens of the State of New York, is tyrannical in a way that justifies comparison to North Korea, a state in which an absolute ruler has burned people alive in a stadium. Okay. But now I want a new word for what "tyranny" used to mean.

I would like to see the reaction of a North Korean refugee to your claim.

It would also be nice if you troubled yourself to make an argument.

There follow four separate updates in which Steorts apologizes for his tone but continues to criticize Lopez for defending a claim that he finds "absurd and offensive to North Koreans":

It will be good to find out whether Kathryn thinks the procedure of enactment is tyrannical, the substance, or both. I hope, in offering an exegesis of the context of the Dolan quote, she will say what she understands by "dictate," and how the process of enactment constituted dictatorial tyranny of a kind specifically similar to the North Korean or Chinese (as opposed to, say, the Canadian), and how what has happened here is that the state has presumed omnipotence in a North Korean or Chinese fashion rather than the people’s having wickedly done this through their elected representatives, through whom they may also change their minds — a process not commonly witnessed, I do believe, in North Korea or China. All this if the point is that the procedure of enactment is tyrannical. If the substance, I suppose she can just mention the famous North Korean and Chinese tendency to redefine civil marriage as New York has done, and we will grant its deviance from her understanding of natural law, and the equivalence of this with tyranny, without requiring her here to defend all that.

All of this is terribly entertaining -- like watching Mom and Dad fight, if you didn't like your parents, and one of them was kind of dumb.

Potemra followed up with a gentler rebuke that still clearly mocked the vague and unlikely predictions of the doom that shall come to the American soul once we let the homos get hitched. K-Lo was reduced to quoting emails and smarter anti-gay thinkers than she. She idly wished that gay marriage had been a ballot initiative, because direct democracy is much less tyrannical than representative democracy. Eventually she moved on to attacking Amy Poehler for being a baby-killer.

At this point -- just like the critics predicted, once we passed gay marriage -- it is practically anarchy at the Corner. Conservatives making pro-gay marriage arguments left and right! Criticizing George Weigel! Invoking Eisenhower and the biblical King David!

Don't worry too much, though: The Corner is still your best bet for dudes warning that the world is going to hell because they saw some lesbians on the train.

The U.S. Congressman described what is taking place in terms of the meetings of opposition and independent figures who are expressing themselves and their views openly and freely as "a largely positive progress", saying "President Bashar al-Assad cares so much about what is taking place in Syria, which is evident in his effort towards a new Syria and everybody who meets him can be certain of this."

"President al-Assad is highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians," said Kucinich, voicing his belief that people in Syria are seeking a real change which is up to them. ...

He continued saying "All whom I talked to during the last few days spoke about the importance of stopping violence. It is very important to stop violence, and this is a responsibility the government is aware of and deals with seriously."

I've asked Kucinich's press secretary if this article -- which seems to use broken English -- is accurate. I will update this post if I hear back. (We do know that, in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer last month, Kucinich primarily blamed the protesters for the violence.)

If Kucinich did make these new statements -- that Assad is "loved" by Syrians, and that the government is taking steps to end violence -- it's worth noting that the reported facts suggest the exact opposite.

Specific numbers are hard to come by because the Syrian regime expelled Western reporters from the country, but reports suggest that over 1,000 civilians have been killed in a violent military crackdown against protesters. Thousands more have fled to neighboring Turkey and Lebanon.

Here is a CNN interview with a Syria researcher from Human Rights Watch:

UPDATE: Kucinich's press secretary sends over a statement from the congressman disputing the article, saying it misquoted him: 

Today, the Syrian Arab News Agency published an article that contained a number of mistranslations and mischaracterized statements that I made during a news conference in Damascus.

While on fact-finding mission in Syria, I was asked to share my initial reactions with some journalists, which I did. During my remarks I stressed the importance of the government paying attention to the democratic aspirations of the people of Syria. It is up to the people of Syria to decide the future of their government. There is a process of national dialogue beginning and this process is important. It is important that the Assad government listen carefully to the just demands and act positively to fulfill the democratic aspirations of the people of Syria. The process of national dialogue which has now begun is a step in the direction of identifying necessary reforms. 

I did not come to Syria with my mind made up. After discussions with people at many different levels of the society, I am convinced of the need for honesty, fairness and dialogue.

A story written about my remarks by the Syrian Arab News Agency unfortunately mistranslated several of my statements and did not reflect my direct quotes. Arab-speaking friends accompanying me have explained that the problem may have come from a mistranslation as well as the degree of appreciation and affection their state-sponsored media has for President Assad.

It is unfortunate that translation errors can create such problems. Given the stakes for Syria and the region, I will consider the article only an error, not a willful intent to mischaracterize my statements or my efforts in the region.

I intend to continue my efforts to determine as best I can exactly what is happening in Syria, ever more mindful of the maxim, “lost in translation.”

  When Kucinich's actual remarks are available, I will update this post again.

This quote-recycling (or inventing) is apparently a not-uncommon practice, Young says, though it's rare among the famous and successful:

Now, it would be dishonest not to point out that many British journalists are guilty of this practice. In America, if a journalist lifts a quote from elsewhere, the custom is to provide a source, i.e. “as Negri said in Negri on Negri …”, but in Britain there’s no hard and fast rule. What’s curious about this case is that, in general, the lower down the professional totem pole, the more likely a journalist is to indulge in these cut-and-paste shortcuts. For someone of Hari’s stature to be found guilty of it – a winner of the Orwell Prize, no less – is unusual. Hari is a holier-than-thou, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth, supercilious Lefty, not a tabloid hack.

American-style standards of professionalism have long been more of a suggestion than a tradition in the British press, where the newspapers have overt political stances, the Murdoch tabloids hack the phones of celebrities, potentially libelous stories are printed in "satirical" magazines, and most of the papers are constantly sniping at one another. All of this means that UK newspapers are much livelier and more fun than their American counterparts, with the circulation numbers to prove it. It also means that every now and then someone is accused of making things up, and then a bunch of longtime journalists share stories of editors inserting fiction into their copy or what-have-you. ("He told me to put that in, and -- you've guessed it -- he cut out my disclaimer, and the piece appeared the next morning claiming that the Museum of London had found a Roman brothel.")

Hari has unconvincingly defended himself at his personal site. The Independent has not commented, but its editor defended Hari on Twitter.

Last December the bill failed in the Senate 55-41 (in what was its fifth roll out) and since the Republicans are now in the majority, the bill has no greater prospects this time round. However, its defenders are hoping an argument from economics might do the trick. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in Tuesday testimony, "this is an investment not an expense."

According to Politico, "Duncan said the law would rescue the federal deficit by $1.4 billion in the next decade by making it possible for more illegal immigrants to stay in the country and pay taxes."

Similarly, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano argued Tuesday that the DREAM Act's passing would allow immigration authorities to better focus their resources on criminals, not students.

However, the bill still faces staunch opponents who are unlikely to budge, relying instead on the argument that beneficiaries of the DREAM Act would take away American jobs. Politico reports that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) released a statement saying that the DREAM Act would "prevent Americans from getting jobs since millions of illegal immigrants will become eligible to work legally in the United States" -- that old chestnut.

Monday night brought a vivid example of what such loyalty to the governor can translate into for these bosses.

In a late-night session, the state Senate fell one vote short of blocking Christie's plan to sell the state's public television station -- NJN -- to New York's WNET. That was the transaction's final hurdle, and NJN's entire staff is now set to be pink-slipped.

You're probably asking: What does this have to do with Democratic bosses? The answer is this: As part of the deal, WNET will contract with a New Jersey-based production company to fulfill its obligation to provide New Jersey-based programming. And who owns the company that WNET will contract with? A man named Steve Adubato Jr. -- who just so happens to be the son of Steve Adubato Sr. ("Big Steve," to the New Jersey political world), who just so happens to the same Newark Democratic boss who has been extremely helpful to Christie.

Big Steve's power has traditionally been based in Newark's North Ward, where he oversees a network of educational and social service operations, all of which serve to fortify his own power. But his clout extends far beyond the North Ward. Since 2002, Big Steve's protégé, Joseph DiVincenzo ("Joe D"), has served as the Essex County executive -- a massively important position, given the executive's role in dispensing patronage. Essex County, which takes in Newark and the surrounding cities and towns, is also the single most significant county in statewide Democratic primaries; more votes are produced there than anywhere else.

As we noted last week, it was the legislative allies of Big Steve and Joe D -- including the speaker of the Assembly (who has an $83,000 job as an Essex County administrator -- meaning she works under Joe D) -- who accounted for all of the Democratic "yes" votes from Essex County on the public employee benefits bill. This seemed to be only the latest sign of cooperation between Christie and the Essex powerbrokers. It can probably never be proven, but it's widely believed by insiders from both parties that Big Steve's organization "went to sleep" on Democrat Jon Corzine in the 2009 election, providing a boost to Christie, who won that race by 4 points. And Christie had long been cultivating a relationship with Big Steve; as New Jersey's U.S. attorney, he even attended the boss's annual St. Patrick's Day celebration, where politicians from around the state gather to make jokes and kiss Big Steve's ring.

All of this brings us to Monday night's vote on the future of NJN, which came a few weeks after Christie formally reached agreement with WNET and Adubato Jr.  Concerned legislators, smelling a fishy deal and fearing that WNET would short-change New Jersey viewers (as it did to Long Island viewers when it took over a public station there), had mounted a last-minute effort to block the sale, and the debate mostly broke along partisan lines (although the state's most conservative media voice also decried the looming sale). Last week, the Democratic-controlled Assembly passed a bill that would block the transaction. It moved to the Senate. There seemed to be momentum. And then ... it fell one vote short. A total of four Democrats ended up voting against the effort to block the sale. One of them was Teresa Ruiz -- the same Teresa Ruiz who just so happens to work for Joe D as his deputy chief of staff.

So that does it for NJN. But it's a banner day for Adubato Jr., who was described this way by the (Bergen) Record's Charlie Stile in a recent column:

Adubato — columnist, consultant for corporations, and author of career-betterment books like "You Are the Brand" — has thrived at the intersection of media, politics and corporate power in New Jersey.

To be sure, Adubato Jr., a one-time politician (he served a term in the Assembly from 1983 to 1985) who has long produced and hosted several shows for WNET and Comcast, has steadfastly denied that his father's ties to the governor had anything to do with all of this. And Christie has denied ever having a conversation with Big Steve about any of this. (This prompted conservative Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine to write: "I believe him. No one ever gets to discuss anything with Adubato Sr. You just sit and listen.")

I believe Christie, too. After all, that's how politics works, right? The smartest players know the deal without anyone having to spell it out for them.

UPDATE: There's another Joe D. connection from Monday night's NJN vote. State Senator Nia Gill, another of the four Democrats to vote with Christie, works as a lawyer representing an Essex County agency. That Gill is now so dependent on Joe D and his empire is a jarring development for those whose memories of New Jersey politics go back a few years. Back in 2003, when she sought reelection to the Senate for the first time, Gill found herself targeted by the heavyweights of the Essex Democratic organization, Joe D (then in his first year as county executive) included. They sponsored a primary challenger against her and she lashed out publicly against them -- even including images of Joe D and Big Steve in campaign mailers that suggested she was being singled out for not being part of the old boys network. Gill ended up surviving that 2003 primary by ten points and has not faced a serious reelection challenge since.

Of course, Sarah Palin is not actually (yet) running for president, unlike Bachmann. It's still not clear that she will run for president. Palin's in Iowa promoting the third or fourth "premiere" of the silly documentary about how she used to be considered competent and independent. It's sort of sad. Dave Weigel's comparing Palin to Norma Desmond.

Bristol Palin (promoting her book) says her mother has made a decision about the campaign. Which could mean an ill-advised decision to run, probably only to make all the people predicting that she won't run look foolish. (If Sarah Palin is going to run for president, it will be out of spite, because she certainly doesn't seem interested in campaigning.)

Barack Obama, meanwhile, is touring a factory. He will be in Bettendorf for like an hour or two. (There's not much reason for a sitting president to campaign in Iowa, though I guess every electoral vote counts.)

After she watches the movie about herself again, Palin will be at some sort of cookout that will be closed to the press, so don't expect a major announcement tonight.

President Bush And First Lady Laura Bush Filmed Parts Of Their Campaign Ads In The White House Residence -- The Bush Campaign pointed to 31 White House images used by the Clinton campaign In 1996 for precedent.

The White House spokesperson added that the raffle does not count as "the kind of fundraising prohibited under the law" and that the president did not make a direct appeal for donations.

"Dinner with Barack and Joe" may be a harmless way to raise some quick funds before the close of the second fundraising quarter this Thursday, but the fact that it is not "direct" solicitation is not much of a defense. After all, indirect solicitation is just the sort of thing that campaign finance laws are in place to avoid.

Watch the video here:

I, Lynne Torgerson, am running for Congress in Minnesota, against radical Islamist Keith Ellison.  Keith Ellison fails to oppose banning Islamic Sharia law in the United States.  He accuses people of trying to ban it as "conspiratorilists." [sic] Keith Ellison also fails to support that the United States Constitution should be supreme over Islamic Sharia law. 

Torgerson actually ran last cycle, garnering 4 percent as an independent. A Minneapolis criminal defense attorney, her campaign website was dominated by critiques of Islam:

"And, what do I know of Islam? Well, I know of 911."

And here's a video uploaded yesterday of Torgerson asking Ellison at an event whether he believes Shariah or the U.S. Constitution should be supreme in the United States.

"I believe that the United States Constitution, which has been amended well over 25 times, is the bedrock of American law," Ellison says. "This whole movement to ban Shariah -- bills like this have been introduced in 22 states -- in my view is a very thinly disguised effort at religious persecution of people that are Muslim."

Pawlenty is a very talented guy, and I respected his opinion. His first question was, "What's your position on choice?" I hadn't ever been asked the question quite so pointedly. "You've got to take a stand on that first," he said. "Well," I said, "OK. I don't like abortion; I think it's a really tough personal decision, but not something the government should be getting into one way or the other, so I guess I'm pro-choice."

He looked at me over his lunch and said, "Well personally, so am I, but here's the thing. You've got to find a way to get your mind around the language of saying 'pro-life.' It's in how you phrase it."

I've since learned I'm not the only one Pawlenty has said this to.

The closet moderate

Parsing semantics and taking a stand seemed to me like two very different things. But to Pawlenty, the closet moderate, they had become one and the same, and this has come to define his political career.

I asked Sarah Stoesz, the executive director of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, her impressions of Pawlenty's closeted pro-choice "stance." She reminded me how "he turned away federal funds for abstinence-only sex education before he got the right-wing religion bug," and says "he even supported a special, one-time $1 million appropriation for family planning back when he had some true common sense."

This integrity issue doesn't seem to bother Pawlenty the way it bothers me. He's wanted to be president for as long as I've known him, and ambition can cause principles to take a back seat. He has shown a similar cynicism in his more recent about-faces on climate change and healthcare, stunning many Minnesotans and former allies and causing some to wonder: Do you really have to sell your soul to succeed in Republican politics?

Brawny has the strength you expect for those demanding jobs

This facility lends considerable irony to Pawlenty's political autobiography, "Courage to Stand." That irony is contained not only in the title but in the cover photo, which features an apparently doctored image of a barrel-chested Pawlenty, tough as a lumberjack from the Northwoods, and so strikingly similar to the Brawny Man paper towels logo that people started calling him "Scrawny Man."

The Brawny brand implies qualities Pawlenty describes in himself on the campaign trail: strength, fortitude, toughness. But the image, like the candidate's persona, is manufactured. In reality, Tim is a likable but often sarcastic, snarky, slender attorney who prefers dark suits, and looks somewhat less brawny – closer to Dennis Kucinich, perhaps, than the Brawny Man.

Pawlenty used a similar tactic in the video announcing his exploratory committee.

The video has Pawlenty in a macho-looking beige jacket that appears to be copying the one Scott Brown famously trademarked while campaigning during his special Massachusetts Senate race, a move Minnesotans, who know Pawlenty doesn't dress like that, found amusing.

Cynical pandering is the stuff of political cliché. But some Pawlenty observers think he is overeager to abandon principles, positions, allies and identity to curry favor. This is mystifying since he has talent if he would just be himself. Since he is marketing himself for president as a truth teller who has the courage to stand, the question becomes important. Which version of Pawlenty is the real one: the one he projects, or that of his critics, old and new?

Consider this almost unbelievable example. Pawlenty is speaking at a Republican Party gathering in Iowa -- but with a Southern accent.

It's hard to understand why he would do this. It seems almost self-destructive in its potential to turn him into a laughingstock. It's true that, like most leading Republicans, Pawlenty was raised in the South -- South St. Paul, Minn., that is. Affecting a Southern accent in Iowa of all places seems especially odd. Iowans don't talk like that, so it's not as if he was trying to fit in. And they know Pawlenty was the governor of Minnesota -- immediately to their north. One listener could only suppose he was trying to sound like George W. Bush. Really?

I remember returning from a Texas vacation as a kid. I nursed a drawl that made me feel like a cowboy. But I was a kid, not a serious candidate for president of the United States. What seems natural in a young boy whose identity is just forming is concerning, even mind-boggling, in someone running for the most powerful job on the planet.

Kissing the rings

Arne Carlson, the well-loved Republican former governor of Minnesota, sees Pawlenty's cynical and sometimes baffling approach to politics as evidence of integrity sacrificed on the altar of ambition, and a lack of an internal compass.

"On the day before the GOP convention," Carlson told me, "my wife and I were driving in Southern Minnesota and listening to Gary Eichten of MPR interviewing Pawlenty and [Brian] Sullivan -- both gubernatorial contenders. At one point, Eichten asked Pawlenty if he were a Carlson moderate. The reply was absolutely not -- no -- Pawlenty and Brian Sullivan were identical in their (far right) social views.

"A day or so following the convention, Pawlenty and a young aide came to my business office for a visit. Pawlenty was gleeful over his victory and declared he could now move to the middle. I reminded him of the radio broadcast and he turned very sober. I then asked how he could move to the middle after he 'kissed the rings' of the far right. It was at that point that the reality sunk in."

Paper prisoner

Carlson's point is especially well-taken in a run for president. The president is subject to immense pressures from all angles, ranging from special interests to foreign powers. Pawlenty's readiness to sacrifice principles for favor, to get his "mind around the language," to project a manufactured image or deliver a major speech with an affected drawl, to kiss the rings, could perhaps limit his ability to think and act independently, and make him vulnerable to capture by whatever special-interest group appeals most forcefully.

That happened when the Taxpayers League of Minnesota was implementing Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge and Pawlenty signed it days before the GOP endorsing convention to curry favor with the far right, in the same way that he had gotten his mind around the language on abortion. But after he was elected the pledge captured him. TLM's then-leader, David Strom, came to be known in some policy circles as the shadow governor and at times arguably wielded more power over the legislative process than Pawlenty did.

Pawlenty's response was, once again, to finesse the semantics. A new cigarette tax became a "health impact fee." He raised other "fees" and cut intergovernmental aid, forcing local governments and school districts to raise property taxes and levies to pay for services and schools that were previously funded by the state, arguing that the new taxes were their fault, not his.

Ronald Reagan once said that another way to spell "fee" is T-A-X. Pawlenty's semantical arguments were contradicted by that Republican axiom, and his claims of holding the line on taxes are contradicted by the math put out by his own administration. Consider the following chart -- derived like similar ones in this piece from Minnesota Management and Budget's Price of Government report, released while Pawlenty was still governor, which tracks the percentage taxes take out of total Minnesota income -- this one comparing property and income taxes:

Pawlenty used short-term accounting shifts and semantic gimmicks to balance the budget over and again in a sort of bubble-gum-and-baling-wire approach to keep the old jalopy going until the economy improved or he got out of office. The tactic struck many finance experts as dishonest and caused former Republican and Democratic finance commissioners to join forces in criticizing the patches, which included raiding the state's $1 billion tobacco settlement fund, the shift of $1.9 billion in school funding from before to after July 1, shifting it technically into the next biennium and effectively borrowing it from the schools, as well as accounting practices no business executive could get away with, such as accounting for inflation on the revenue side of the budget but not the expense side.

Carlson reminds readers of his blog that Moody’s lowered Minnesota’s bond rating as a result of Pawlenty's actions.

In the end, property taxes soared 102 percent, as Minnesota's state auditor Rebecca Otto points out.

"Fees" and tuition soared as well, and a structural hole was left in the state budget for others to fill.

The result was a hollowing out of state finances under an eight-year drift toward -- what? We didn't know. Pawlenty never articulated a clear vision of where the state should go under his leadership.

The budget mess he left behind still haunts the state. Here are the results in summary:

On both a per capita basis and as a percent of the general fund, Minnesota rang up the fourth largest budget deficit in the nation.

The hollow candidate

To have a vision, you have to know who you are and what you want to accomplish. To lead, you have to articulate that vision and have the stubbornness and conviction to push past opposition to the goal.

Tim Pawlenty is arguing that he has that, but his vision seems to be that he wants to be president. He wants it so badly that he's willing to do anything, say anything -- be anything.

Even now, his self-proclaimed "courage to stand" -- for example, telling seniors in Florida that he'd raise the retirement age -- is often simply more semantics. Telling that to seniors doesn't take all that much courage; they are already retired.

Perhaps there is no room left in the world for Republicans who are not willing to "get their mind around the language." Judging from the ridiculousness of the climate science deniers and creationists in Congress that might very well be the case. To me, the story is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.

The Minnesota press loved Pawlenty and cut him a lot of slack. The less friendly national press is calling him boring and saying he doesn't stand for anything.

They're wrong. He does. It's just that he doesn't know what it is.

Shawn Lawrence Otto is a Hollywood screenwriter, a national science advocate, and the author of the upcoming book "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America." He blogs at neorenaissance.

She can say the media seized on a simple mistake, distorted her words, messed up the story they were "correcting" her on (John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, not Waterloo, Iowa, as various outlets initially reported), and she'd be pretty much right about all of it. And right or wrong, a conservative base that already hates the lamestream media will grow fonder of her the more the press highlights her loopy extremism.

Michele Bachmann is, at this point, incapable of making a true mistake. Short of admitting to being a secret Satanist or revealing that she killed her 23 foster children in order to emulate her hero, John Wayne Gacy, there's nothing she can say that will harm her political career. She's already got a history of inflammatory and untrue statements, and bizarre behavior, and fringe beliefs, and all the press can do is simply throw up its hands and say "she's more serious than you think!" (The liberal press just endlessly repeats the tales of her insanity in the hopes that people will eventually stop telling us that she's more serious than we think.)

Bachmann actually got Chris Wallace to apologize to her, for asking what Conor Freidersdorf correctly labels a softball question. ("Are you a [bad thing]?" is the softest softball in the world, even if it carries a tinge of insult.) Think about that: Have you ever heard of Chris Wallace apologizing to anyone he interviewed before? He is a smarmy jerk to everyone he talks to. (Did Wallace ever apologize to Bill Clinton for blaming him for 9/11?)

In a post-Palin world, conservative candidates no longer need to convince anyone that they're sane or rational or intelligent. There's just no point to it. Tim Pawlenty is "serious," and look how well that's working out for him.

Bachmann could announce a "final solution" for gays and promise to build an ark to house two of every American animal should be be elected and the ensuing press pile-on would just make her an even stronger bet to win Iowa. She could raise a fortune by saying something racist. Once you make the psycho neo-Bircher thing work for you, there's no longer any downside to sounding like a psycho neo-Bircher.

(I mean, she's obviously totally unelectable, but she'll quit the 2012 race next June and win against some nobody challenger in her safe Republican district. Unless she's Romney's V.P. pick!) (I'm still hoping Romney picks Cain, though.)

UPDATE: Bachmann attempted to prove my point this morning, defending her past statement about America's founders having "worked tirelessly" to end slavery by invoking John Quincy Adams, the son of a founder, as proof of her historical literacy.

Contrary to most reports, Bachmann is not "mistaking" John Quincy Adams for a founder. As Michelle Goldberg explained earlier this month, John Eidsmoe, one of Bachmann's right-wing spiritual mentors, has written that the Founders intended to end the institution of slavery. Bachmann was his research assistant on a book he wrote about how the nation was founded as a Christian theocracy. She's not messing up history, she's just sharing her (insane) alternate version of history.

"The question of whether J.Q. Adams should be considered a 'founding father' is something of a hair-splitter," Commentary says in a partial defense of Bachmann. Again: Nothing she can say will hurt her.