Besides people in the Malkin-sphere, I don't know too many people who consider Paul wacky because he opposes the war in Iraq or passionately critiques the administration's abuses of the Constitution and civil liberty.

I do know people who consider him wacky because of stuff like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UydCZJeQPPQ

"Congressman Paul, can you speak as you have in the past, to the New World Order's plan for a one world government? Will they succeed? Will they [inaudible]"

Paul: "They're going to succeed if we don't do something about it."

Stuff like that, and stuff like speaking at a CoCC event (which is basically a white-washed version of the KKK, and the obsession with gold are why people are weary of Paul.

This isn't just a matter of liberals disliking Paul for political differences.

There's been posts up at Positive Liberty (a libertarian blog) about Paul's flirtation with neo-confederate beliefs.

So there was a conspiracy to create the EU? The "global elites" foisted it on member nations?

Look, if you go through the Newiert posts Glenn links to you might notice that I contributed some of the stuff that Glenn called a smear of Paul.

Yet I see no need to start attacking Glenn for being a "libertarian", nor do I feel any animosity towards him. He doesn't find that stuff compelling and said so. What's wrong with that?

It seems clear to me that Glenn's concern is that Paul's sorely needed outspoken criticism of the Bush administration's lawlessness is being marginalized by unfair attacks on Paul's character. That's completely consistent with what he's been doing with U.T. since the start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_I4WgBfETc

Substitute the Iranian Guard for Russian soldiers and that's about what their world view looks like.

Yes, my admiration for Rush Limbaugh went through the roof when I heard him tell me that carrots are deadlier than second hand smoke.

Anyone who doesn't recognize Limbaugh as the idiot monster that he is has lost pretty much all of my respect.

Do you think Shooter reads what is written here with the intent to argue against it no matter what it says? His commentary on the Ivins excerpt is surreal.

Gordon's review of Tragic Legacy is timely given its focus on the Iran chapter and the newly released NIE showing Iran to have stopped its nuclear program in 2003. Like good Manicheans, Bush and Thompson and Bolton (the worst of the three) have intepreted the NIE as evidence of the NIE as Evil attempting to lull them into falling off the chosen path of Good (aka bombing the shit out of Iran.)

In 2002 Republicans used the AUMF as a lose-lose political ploy against Democrats. Relying on the advice of their strategists, they threw the Constitution under the bus. In 2006 Republicans repeated the trick with the Military Commisions Act, and Democrats again threw the Constitution under the bus, listening to the same strategists.

This is what they do. They let Republicans do their fierce ideological ruthless partisan firebreathing to shift and shape public opinion, then let their pollsters tell them that they better roll-over for Republicans.

The 2006 election in the long-run may be one of the worst things that can happen, because I suspect it reinforced to Democrats that their strategy of acting like lukewarm Republican is effective, when in reality they one a bare majority in Congress because of the self-destruction of the most disastrous administration and Congress in US history.

Until Democrats that are elected that are willing to vote with the courage of their conscience and speak out to affect public opinion rather than to meekly capitulate to Republican rhetoric little is going to change.

the actions of Harman and Rockefeller should be contrasted with the intelligence officials who threatened that they were willing to go to jail to ensure that the NIE would be released.

"Ultimately, what is most significant about all of this is how the most consequential steps our government takes -- such as endless expansion of its domestic spying programs with literally no oversight and constraints of law -- occur with virtually no public debate or awareness."

Why would the public need to know? The people it concerns are the ones with the money to get our gov'ts attention ... the rest - they're just proles:

In reality very little was known about the proles. It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern. They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middleaged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumors and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. ...The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them very little

"It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism, which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary ..."

That was in the ellipse in the other quote