you took issue with Bachmann being referred to as a vegetable.  This is based not just on the police stuff but on her history of comments and actions.  While I don't believe she is literally a vegetable, I believe just her views on homosexuality means she not be given any credibility as someone who should have a significant voice in the public discourse. 

Now you can provide evidence why we should consider Bachmann as someone to take serious (hence not a vegetable).  But just because someone on a political site has already come to a conclusion about a politician's worthiness to be listened to is not a fault.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time on blog sites with a left lean knows why Bachmann is viewed the way she is.  We can't be going into the full list everytime she is brought up for people such as yourself who seem not willing to familiarize yourself with rationale prior to commenting. 

So rather than just attacking Ramona's characterization of Bachmann, please provide examples why Bachmann should be characterized in any other way.

Another way to put it: you seem to have the expectation that each blog and comment on a thread be a stand alone assertion on par with a 350 page political dissertation, where the author goes into the multitude of considerations and shades of grey, while acknowledging that the whole truth cannot be known, and that obvious assumption is explicitly acknowledged as such.  Blogs and comments work in the context of the whole.  Read all of Romona's blog and all of the blogs on this site, and all of the comments, and suddenly things start to come more into focus.

I'm having a hard time figuring out how you draw equivalence between the Tucson shootings and this. It seems kind of crassly bullshitlike. In the context of this forum, it's almost as if you are trying to pick at a perceived recent emotional wound than actually make a salient point about Bachmann. So, for that: asshole. But I am neither a liberal nor a Democrat so the tragedy likely doesn't resonate with me in the way you are hoping ... in that regard, you shoot rather wide of your mark.

It certainly does seem kind of brazen for someone using such a tactic to accuse others of intellectual dishonesty.

Bachmann made her police complaint well after the alleged incident had resolved, and after reportedly having received apologies/clarification of intent from so-called assailants. As such there was zero physical danger that obviated making a criminal complaint. Clearly, Bachmann was able to extract herself from the the situation without difficulty, file a police complaint, have the police investigate and reply with a polite variation of "There is no merit here, lady. Why are you wasting our resources in this age of wacko republicans slashing public service budgets left right and center?" What a total dip-shit.

I find it difficult to believe that a secreted ultra-liberal Scandia police force blew-off her complaint to further their socialist-communist agenda and make her look silly .... and now she can't ever go safely to Scandia no more.

For myself, I take pride in the ideas of effectiveness, sound judgment and a lack of bullshit. I think that may be where some of your confusion arises. Why the hell am I going to respect something that is totally lame? I may be required to tolerate it's existence ... but that doesn't mean I'm not going to mock it. Welcome to America. We're a pretty brutal lot once you get out of liberal-land.

If you want me to show respect for a party's politicians, the party shouldn't run people like Bachmann. If your(?) guys insist on this shit you should expect nothing but well-deserved ridicule from me. The woman is pretty much an embarrassment, that's why the Dems love to obsess on her. Defending her as serious only reduces your own credibility.

there are certain places where one asks society to draw the line.  From your perspective, which is in the end the logical extreme of relativism that the conservatives used to bash liberals, you would defend those who do genital mutilation on young girls because it was their cultural ways in the "old country."  Who are we to disagree.  I support the pro-lifers to state their case (but to shoot abortion doctors, nor to terrorize those seeking legal operations).

She can discuss it as a pathology, etc. but based on the evidence, she might as being saying that evolution is a falsehood or...maybe look at some of her best quotes:

2. On evolution (October 2006): Bachmann provoked viewers by claiming that a significant portion of the scientific community rejects the theory of evolution: “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.”

3. On Terry Schiavo (October 2006): Bachmann provoked ridicule by describing Terry Schiavo, who lived in a permanent vegetative state, as “a woman who was healthy. There was brain damage, there was no question. But from a health point of view, she was not terminally ill.”

4. On anti-Americans in Congress (October 2008): “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?”

5. On the threat of a ‘global currency’ (March 2009): “I’m very concerned about the international moves they’re making, particularly … moving the United States off the dollar and onto a global currency, like Russia and China are calling for.” 

6. On the effects of greenhouse gases (April 2009): “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” 

7. On Democratic presidents and swine flu crises (April 2009): “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”

8. On the threat posed by the U.S. census (June 2009): “I think there is a point where you say enough is enough to government intrusion.… Does the federal government really need to know our phone numbers?”  

9. On the government bailout of GM (June 2009): The congresswoman famously called the Obama administration a “gangster government.”  

10. On health-care reform’s potential to dupe parents (October 2009): “Does that mean that someone’s 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have [her] abortion, be back and go home on the school bus? That night, mom and dad are never the wiser.”  

But if you want to grant her opinion equal to all other opinions on the matter as matter of affording her the dignity deserved a human being, well...go for it.