If you missed Rand Paul’s implosion continuing over the weekend, take 1:44 to watch Jillian Rayfield’s highlight reel. Put it this way, when Michael Steele is smacking you around, you know you’re close to rock bottom.

We heard about this story over the weekend. On the one hand it’s part of the on-going and rising drumbeat of The Crazy ™. But there’s also just something very Americana about this one, something I’d half expect to read about in a non-fiction novel by a Truman Capote or Norman Mailer.

Jerry Kane was another far-far-right extremist with a mix of anti-tax activism, fear of human-implanted microchips, all rooted in his mind in a biblical literalism and possible white supremacy. Kane’s own home in Ohio was under foreclosure and he was traveling the country with his 16 year old son giving free-form seminars on eliminating mortgage and credit card debt laced with imputations to “conquer” the IRS, kill IRS agents all packed together with various other far-right shibboleths. Not long again he spent three days in jail in New Mexico after getting stopped at what he called a “nazi checkpoint”; police called it driving without a license and concealing his identity.

It all came to an end on Thursday when police in West Memphis, Arkansas stopped Kane and his son and Kane opened fire with an AK-47 killing both officers and setting off a manhunt which ended a little more than an hour later in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot where Kane and his son were both killed.

I’ve been worrying a lot recently that we may be losing our liberty, either to a big road project or perhaps just to Obama in general. So I was interested to see this weekend’s Liberty Convention in Missoula, Montana which looks to have been something of a one day of Lollapalooza of The Crazy ™. They had everything from the Oath Keepers to the Tax and Fed protestor who says that the Holocaust was God’s judgment on the Jews.

A year ago South Carolina wouldn’t have even been in the top half of my list of states with the craziest politics. But in the interim a lot has happened, and South Carolina is now in my top 10 and after this morning’s developments it’s making a strong bid for top 5.

The day started with a prominent South Carolina politics blogger named Will Folks confessing on his blog to having had an “inappropriate physical relationship” with state Rep. Nikki Haley, who happens to be seeking the GOP nomination for governor. The affair took place before Folks was married, he says, but apparently while Haley was married. She remains married to this day, and Folks subsequently married. Read More

Disgraced former Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) acknowledges that the video of him and his mistress discussing the benefits of sexual abstinence is ironic — but says his fall is all the more reason to abide by the lessons in the video.

Freshman Democrats not eager to have Obama visit their districts. That and the day’s other news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.

Nevada elections officials have banned people wearing chicken costumes from polling places for the remainder of 2010.

The Republican Party has picked up a normally safe Democratic House seat in Hawaii — the district that is the birthplace of Barack Obama, no less — thanks to a split Democratic vote.

Josh Green has a theory about the Rand Paul implosion: the in-state Kentucky press has been so decimated by the newspaper crisis that there was no one to give him the kind of scrutiny Paul got on day one when he went national and had a head on collision with Rachel Maddow.

I usually find these sorts of explanations deeply unpersuasive, though one hears them more and more. Josh apparently does too, usually; but he spent some time down in Kentucky covering the Paul campaign and in this case he’s thinking there may be something to it. And because it’s Josh and because he’s actually spent some time down there, which I obviously haven’t, I’m inclined to believe him.

I’ve had another theory, though. And I think it actually dovetails nicely with the media crisis one. It’s basically this — all the stuff Paul is getting in trouble for now are things that would just be really tough to use against a candidate in a GOP primary in Kentucky, or frankly most red states, especially in 2010. Read More

I certainly don’t want to buoy this idea that Meet the Press is somehow sacrosanct and canceling on an appearance on the show is like violating a monastery or something. And frankly, I don’t know what Rand and his media handlers were thinking having him kick off his general election campaign with an hourlong appearance on the Rachel Maddow show (who, frankly, was eminently fair to him). But this canceling on his Meet the Press appearance just casts in really high relief how totally not ready for prime time Rand Paul is. Read More