"The people Barack Obama is associating with are anti-American, by and large... I’m very concerned that he may have anti-American views...  I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that."  - Rep. Michelle Bachmann.

This election has inspired a lot of frightening bits of insane treacle from Republican candidates, but congressional candidate Michelle Bachmann took the fruitcake on Friday's Hardball. These accusations of anti-Americanism are crazy at best and dangerous paranoia at worst, hearkening back to the bad old days of McCarthyist politics. Associating Obama with terrorism is a sick bit of down-to-the-wire negative campaigning, another bit of hateful distraction that only serves to skirt the issues and continue down the path of right-wing "us vs. them" delusion.

Even local Republicans like senator Norm Coleman and governor Tim Pawlenty have distanced themselves from Bachmann's witch-hunt statements. However, many right-wing bloggers have come to her defense, proving that no matter how insane you are, there's always people out there insane enough to support you. Bachmann herself refuses to retract her statements in a response made to the Pioneer Press yesterday, saying she "never called all liberals anti-American, I never questioned Barack Obama's patriotism, and I never asked for some House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt into my colleagues in Congress," (though I urge you to watch the interview again and see that that's a bold-faced lie).

Once again, Minnesota looks like it's full of crazies thanks to media portrayals of our dimmest bulbs. Sigh. I think I preferred when everyone thought Minnesota was like this.