What the @*!%*?

Last night on Hardball I watched as Pat Buchannan officially (according to me) went totally, absolutely and completely insane. While on a NATIONALLY TELEVISED talk show he advocated that because he disagreed with *20* state and federal judges President Bush should call in the marshalls, storm the hospice where Terri was and proceed, at gunpoint I assume, to ABDUCT her and forcibly reinsert the feeding tube AGAINST her wishes as determined by those 20 judges and the also against the wishes of her husband and guardian and I quote:

What George Bush ought to do right now is send federal marshals in and pick up Terri Schiavo and put that breathing tube back into her—excuse me, the food and hydration tube back into her, as this is taken up to the United States Supreme Court. He took an oath, Chris, to defend the Constitution of the United States. He has got an obligation, as well as these judges do, to defend that Constitution. And that means to protect this woman‘s life.

MATTHEWS: What happened to the 10th Amendment?

BUCHANAN: Look, the 10th Amendment has been dead as a door nail, Chris.

WHAT THE #!**^*?

To his credit Chris Matthews tried to reign him in but Pat was having none of it.

Go read the transcript here if you want to see the whole thing. It gets better, or goes from bad to worse depending on your point of view.

Later in the show Chris paractically calls another conservative guest a LIAR ...

MATTHEWS: Sir, let‘s stipulate some common sense here. The Senate met on Sunday night, Sunday. They had Rick Santorum read the prayer, the senator from Pennsylvania, because there wasn‘t any chaplain present. There was only three or four people there, and they had a voice vote.

(CROSSTALK)

CONNOR: If somebody in the Senate had been intent on derailing it, it would have been an easy thing to do.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Will you allow the fact that this was an Republican initiative?

CONNOR: I certainly believe it was an initiative where Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, could get behind the notion that an innocent person like Terri Schiavo...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Why are you saying this?

LYNN: That‘s ridiculous.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Which liberals got behind this? Which liberals got behind this?

(CROSSTALK)

CONNOR: How about Tom DeLay? Excuse me.

LYNN: He‘s not a liberal.

CONNOR: How about Tom Harkin?

MATTHEWS: You won‘t even stipulate to the commonsense fact here that this was driven by Tom—by Hastert, the speaker of the House, by Tom DeLay, by Bill—Dr. Frist. Those were the ones that pushed this measure through the Congress.

CONNOR: Almost half the votes in the House were by Democrats. And Tom Harkin...

MATTHEWS: And none of them—and, sir, none of them spoke out for the bill.

CONNOR: Well, they didn‘t speak against the bill either.

MATTHEWS: It‘s called CYA.

CONNOR: And that‘s because they understood that...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: What I like about this show, sir, is when somebody comes on and doesn‘t even speak the truth, because then I can show them for what they are. You don‘t allow that this is a Republican initiative, backed by the president, who flew back from Texas to push this thing?

Katrina Vanden Heuvel said during the interview that we were witnessing the implosion of the Republican Party and I have to agree. The right wing pundits on TV last night were more than shrill, they were hysterical.

IA

[*UPDATE*]    Turns out Buchannan isn't the only one losing his marbles, Fox's John Gibson is officially a member of the loony club .... and I quote:

Just to burnish my reputation as a bomb thrower, I think Jeb Bush should give serious thought to storming the Bastille.

By that I mean he should think about telling his cops to go over to Terri Schiavo's (search) hospice, go inside, put her on a gurney and load her into an ambulance. They could take her to a hospital, revive her, and reattach her feeding tube. It wouldn't save Terri exactly; she'd still be in the same rotten shape she was in before they disconnected the feeding tube.

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