In light of Tea Party favorite Rand Paul's overwhelming victory over the Republican establishment candidate Trey Grayson in Kentucky yesterday, it's worth taking a brief trip with the Ghost of Republican Past back to the first of many conservative purges in the modern era.

[CUE PSYCHEDELIC FLASHBACK TRANSITION]

As if its draconian immigration law weren't sufficient to demonstrate Arizona's profound appreciation for its Latino minority, the state has just enacted a second law to make the point. The new law prohibits Arizona schools from teaching "ethnocentric" courses that:

If you harbor any doubt about the racist undercurrent driving right-wing immigration concerns, listen to Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh knows his audience, and when he discussed Arizona's immigration law on Monday, he gave them the red meat, or rather the black-and-brown meat, that they were looking for:

Having grown tired of sending links about my book to friends, I decided to set up a facebook fan page for my book, How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas and Other Right-Wing Persecution Fantasies, where I can collect relevent links, pictures, events, rants, and Republican concern trolls.

Who loves a Tea Party? A recent NYT/CBS poll punctured a couple of myths about the makeup of today's paranoid right-wing activists.

Myth #1. Tea Party supporters are motivated by economic anxiety

Today's New York Times explored the topic of trash incineration, an increasingly popular method of waste disposal in Europe. These are not your daddy's incinerators. The new "waste-to-energy" plants filter pollutants and produce electricity. Cities can save landfill space, avoid expensive trash transport, and produce alternative energy at the same time.

Erick Erickson, the founder of political blog RedState.com, which CNN calls "the preeminent right of center community online," has threatened to drive off census workers with a shotgun if they ask him how many times he flushes the toilet and other highly classified information.

Last summer, a number of advertisers boycotted Glenn Beck's FOX News show after he accused Obama of being a "racist" with a "deep seeded [sic] hatred for white people or the white culture." Since then, Beck has avoided overt race-baiting, focusing instead on Obama's affection for Marxism, progressivism, fascism, totalitarianism, and many other unsavory "isms," not to mention a few unpleasant "y's" like oligarchy, tyranny, and the Democratic Party.

Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) is desperately fighting off an election challenge from MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow. Though Maddow insists that she has no interest in running for Senate, Brown is not deceived by her evasions.

The New York Times and dagblog's own Larry Jankens reported today on the recent growth of the "states' rights" movement among right wing militants and Tea Party activists opposed to big government. The states' rights supporters are known as "Tenthers" for their veneration of the 10th Amendment, which reserves for the states all powers that the Constitution does not explicitly grant to the federal government.

Readers, I apologize for my slow posting lately. I've been hunkering down to work on my upcoming book, How Bill O'Reilly Saved Christmas. But I'm popping my head up briefly to announce my first piece of press, a blog article at the Washington Post.

After their slam dunk with anti-tax kamikaze Andrew Joseph Stack, liberals hoped to rack up more political points with another right-wing act of terror. When the news broke of a gunman loose in Washington, breathless liberal bloggers and political email spammers burst into action.

According to blog enthusiast cheneyMUSTdie, who subscribes to over 1500 blogs and frequently posts the same comment on each of them: "OMG TEH WINGNUTS ARE KILLING AGAIN!!! THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!!"

What is the most persecuted demographic in the nation? It's not the blacks, the Jews, or the Hispanics, and certainly not the gays. One victim stands out in the gruesome annals of discrimination: the Beauty Queen.

The latest sacrifice to the bottomless hunger of the gay liberal hate monster is Miss Beverly Hills, Lauren Ashley. Ashley simply quoted an innocent line from the Bible:

This morning, I emailed everyone I know to try to sell them Viagra. Ex-bosses, ex-friends, ex-random-people-that-I-met-once-in-a-cafe, and ex-girlfriends (who really don't want to hear from me, let alone buy Viagra from me).

Sorry.

I didn't mean to. In fact, I don't remember doing it. But the incriminating evidence is sitting in my Yahoo "Sent Mail" folder. Six emails sent collectively to everyone in my contacts list between 10:09 and 10:10 am. All hocking Viagra.

I've been trying to write this follow-up post for some time. It's long and personal--only for those who are curious about what happened to me since April.

Last spring, I wrote about leaving. Professionally unfulfilled and socially disconnected, I agonized over whether to flee my adopted home of New York City...

Dear Mr. Alexander,

A conservative "civil liberties" group has challenged the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act. The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center is suing U.S. government on behalf of three pastors and the president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

The media's focus on Justice Samuel Alito's head shaking dissent during President Obama's State of the Union address has overshadowed many other breaches of decorum from both sides of the aisle. State of the Union expert Dr. Isabel Strong called the reaction to Obama's speech "the most indecorous since President William Henry Harrison's infamous 'the state of the union is phlegmatic' speech of 1843."

The Tea Party, a potent collection of dyspeptic right-wing populist groups, was on the verge of national conquest. Having defeated a Republican candidate in a New York House election and a Democratic candidate in the Massachusetts Senate election, it seemed that there was no stopping this crew of tax-rejecting, socialist-hating, health-care-not-wanting defenders of the Constitution and all that is good in America.

Yesterday's Massachusetts' election affects me personally. I'm self-employed and have a cheap health plan. Within the first few months of beginning a new plan, I'm already involved in a dispute with the provider, Golden Rule, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare. My health plan, I recently discovered, doesn't cover preventive care in the first three months. I don't know why they have this restriction. It would not be a big deal except that no one told me about it, not when I signed up and not when I called to confirm that my physician was in network.