Wow. Meet Joe Miller, possible GOP nominee for the Senate, brought to you courtesy of the Tea Party Express, and rabid anti-abortion advocates in Alaska.

Among Miller's views: He wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn't pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it "may not even exist." Among the more mainstream GOP positions he's taken: Miller would cut welfare; eliminate health care for the poor by scrapping Medicaid; and the Anchorage Daily News reported that he has has called for sweeping cuts to Medicare and Social Security with a goal of phasing them out entirely in favor of total privatization.

A teabagger's dream, right there. Dick Armey with a beard, even. and it's just not that he thinks government shouldn't pay for unemployment insurance, but that he believes unemployment benefits are unconstitutional. In the words of Wickersham's Conscience when evaluating Miller's positions and background,

We’ve had more than enough liars. It’s a very bad sign if a candidate is padding his or her resumè from the start. And Joe, that’s a lot of different jobs in a relatively short period of time. Alaska also doesn’t need another quitter.

For a guy who wants to privatize Medicare and Social Security, he's got a lot of nerve to write this to senior citizens (PDF):

My own parents collect Social Security benefits and use Medicare. They, like millions of others, need and relied on the government's promise to provide these benefits when they were planning for their future. There is a contract between the federal government and those who paid into the system. That contract must be honored.

I am certain more will emerge on this guy. In the meantime, Democrat Scott McAdams was just given a decent shot at the Senate. More on him soon.

The man who produced the racist Willie Horton ad for Lee Atwater (allegedly) is back with a vengeance. He's taking his bigoted worldview and turning it against Muslims this time with a sick and twisted ad that attacks Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA).

McCarthy said the photo of Horton used in the ad was "every suburban mother's greatest fear."

Think Progress:

The ad ominously warns that, “for centuries, Muslims built mosques where they won military victories. Now, they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero…It’s like the Japanese building at Pearl Harbor.” It goes on to say that the “Muslim cleric building the mosque believes America was partly responsible for 9/11, and is raising millions overseas from secret donors.” It then says, “Bruce Braley supports building a mosque at Ground Zero."

There are so many lies in this ad that it should never get by network fact-checkers. We've bought many a Blue America ad and we have to show documentation to prove our points or they will be rejected.

To be able to put out a misleading ad smearing a minority group like the one above, AFF turned to a dubious cast of “experts.” One of the organization’s key media strategists is Larry McCarthy, who is president of media firm McCarthy Marcus Hennings. “In 1988, McCarthy produced the infamous, racially tinged Willie Horton television ad” in the Dukakis-Bush race that helped tank the Dukakis campaign by ginning up racial animus against African-Americans.

AFF’s founder Nick Ryan confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) that McCarthy produced the ad. Ryan also told CPI that McCarthy “does a lot of ads for the fund.”

Unfortunately, AFF is far from a fringe organization. This special interest group using racially-charged ads has deep ties to the Republican establishment. Although it has scrubbed its official website of the details of its lecture series, a search through its web cache reveals that in recent months it has hosted such GOP heavyweights as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad.

Islamophobia is hot and heavy at FOX News and it didn't take long for McCarthy to jump into action.

One of Fox News' affiliates, WNYW, sent out a reporter named Charles Leaf to conduct an "investigation" of the "money trail" in the patented Fox Ambush Squad style, and yesterday the results ran a couple of times on Fox itself: First Megyn Kelly carried it on her morning "news" show, then Laura Ingraham featured it on The O'Reilly Factor, including an interview with Leaf, who tried to pretend that what he was doing was real journalism.

What's peculiar about this report is that it zeroes in on a few minor functionaries in the financial chain behind the construction of the mosque -- loan guarantors and the like. Leaf invades their homes, follows them into foyers, and tries to run after them in parking lots. All this, ostensibly, to follow the "money trail" behind the mosque.

Of course, they somehow neglected to try talking to one of the imam's more generous backers -- Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. Maybe that's because Talal is the No. 2 shareholder in Fox News.

Indeed, as none other than Rupert Murdoch's New York Post reported last May, the Kingdom Foundation, al-Waleed's personal charity, has donated a total of $305,000 to Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, a leadership and networking project sponsored jointly by two of Rauf's organizations, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative. Al-Waleed owns a 7 percent, $2.3 billion stake in News Corporation. Likewise, News Corporation owns a 9 percent, $70 million stake — purchased in February — in Rotana, Al-Waleed's Saudi media conglomerate. Put another way: Rupert Murdoch and Fox News are in business, to the tune of billions of dollars, with one of the "Terror Mosque Imam's" principal patrons.

It's bad enough that they sicced their camera crews on a bunch of unsuspecting bankers, accountants and real-estate developers who are, unsurprisingly, not willing to have their lives destroyed by a scandal-mongering bunch of fake journalists on a witch hunt. But the pernicious part of this kind of reportage is the way that it implies guilt -- for some unnamed misdeed -- simply in the refusal to go on-camera.

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Glenn Beck expects 300,000 people in Washington, D.C., tomorrow for BeckStock. Really. Those are his own words. Calling it both the "Woodstock of the next generation" and "the anti-Woodstock," Beck expects "a miracle." It would take a miracle to get half so many people to ride a bus to D.C. and watch a three-hour Goldline ad.

Did you know that Goldline sponsored both the Wright Brothers and the moon landing? I didn't. Much more -- including an original video -- after the jump.

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I had initially thought to write on the content of this segment, but after sleeping on it, it occurred to me what bothered me the most about it: is it possible for Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan to talk about Sarah Palin without sounding like they were going to need some "private time" immediately after the segment?

I'm seriously thinking about taking up a collection to get them a pair of Sarah Palin look-alike blow-up dolls and a copy of the "Nailin' Palin" porn video and spare us their verbal masturbation on air. As BlueGal joked with the team, it's easy to believe that Tweety didn't get a date in high school or college with the way he gets visibly excited talking about women politicos.

And Sarah Palin isn't alone. Little Tweety has asserted itself into conversations with or about Michelle Bachmann, Erin Burnett and Laura Ingraham as well. In fact, I'm willing to bet that some of his Hillary hate has everything to do with the fact that Hillary doesn't move him in that special thrill-up-his-leg kind of way.

Ben Quayle may have survived his Republican primary race in Arizona but his Democratic challenger has decided to make an issue of his contributions to the racy web site DirtyScottsdale.com. Eventually he's going to have someone ask him some tougher questions about this than Greta Van Susteren asked him in this interview Wednesday night. I guess it was too much to ask that she go look at what the man posted before she had him on the air so she'd have some idea if he was lying or not, or she does know full what he posted and was just feigning ignorance that she hadn't seen the blog posts herself. That or maybe Greta just didn't want anyone to know she was looking at that many pictures of women with big breasts showing them off after drinking heavily if she did do some follow up on Quayle's contributions to the site.

That site is no longer available but its successor The Dirty still has some of as they call it Ben Quayle's "best work" posted -- Ben Quayle Is Brock Landers (warning, may not be safe for work).

No free pass to Congress for Dan Quayle's son:

The son of former Vice President Dan Quayle may be the front-runner to replace retiring Rep. John Shadegg in a GOP-leaning Arizona congressional district, but he'll have a battle on his hands from a well-funded Democrat who wasted no time Wednesday slamming him for his connection to a racy website. [...]

Five of nine questions Quayle took at a victory press conference on Wednesday were about the website controversy, including ones on how his involvement would play with conservative Christian voters and on his varying answers about the extent of his involvement.

"I've been consistent from the very beginning on this issue and I've answered questions from numerous people," he said to the latter.

That's not true. Quayle first denied then admitted writing for the website previously called DirtyScottsdale.com, which describes the raunchier aspects of the city's nightlife.

As to the conservatives he'll need: "I'm going to continue to talk to them and earn their trust, earn their faith in me. That's all I can do."

Hulburd's campaign is questioning Quayle's character.

"This election is now between Jon Hulburd and Brock Landers," a statement from Hulburd's campaign screamed. "It's between a young man who fabricated a family, degraded women, and then tried to lie about it, and a small businessman and father of five who has been dedicated to his community.

Hulburd himself wouldn't repeat those allegations in an interview, but he did say he would use the 10 weeks before the general election to help push the issue.

As the article notes, Quayle's opponent Democrat Jon Hulburd has got a huge uphill battle since the district is redder than red. So it looks like odds are we're going to get ourselves another phony "family values" hypocrite in the House of Representatives.

Transcript below the fold.

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Figleaf's Real Adult Sex: Good, celibate clergy being hard to recruit, it's no wonder the Church behaves as if it hates women

The Reaction: Democracy denied: David Broder, John McCain, and the delusional politics of difference-splitting centerism

Politics in the Zeros: Obama backstabs the environmental movement

Alternate Brain: Fraidy cats and victims

distributorcap NY: The Last of the Mohicansteins

The Big Picture: Some good reads...

It's okay, Mehlman, even before you overshared your "journey," it was a Shatner / Common People / Animated Trek kind of night. h/t Dangerous Minds.

Open thread below.

Massive Attack's Mezzanine is one of my favorite albums of the 90's and this song is my favorite on the record. The track features vocals by Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins and is said to be written about her good friend Jeff Buckley. Let's get ethereal!

In 1956 the big question was, after 165 since it's adoption, was the 4th Amendment being abused? In light of the era in which that question was brought up, the answers were many and varied. And in this particular panel discussion, it got a little prickly, even down to the wording of People versus Criminals.
On the panel, part of the American Forum Series of April 15, 1956 were Judges Musmanno and Plaskow. Congressman Harold Velde, member of the HUAC Committee and F. Joseph Donohue, associate of Estes Kefauver, who was Investigating Organized Crime in the early 1950's. The panel was moderated by Robert McCormick of NBC News.

Judge Mussmano: “Mister McCormick – both you and Judge Plaskow begin with a premise that is not admitted, that criminals are escaping, that evil individuals are walking the streets, untrammeled by the punishment they deserved. And I come back to the proposition that it is the court that determines whether a person is innocent or guilty. And by your changing the question by using the word people instead of criminals, you haven’t improved it one bit.”

I don't think anyone walked away with a changed mind as a result of the half hour exchange, but it makes for interesting listening and realizing aspects of our Bill of Rights have always been up for argument.

1956 was no different.