In just the past two weeks, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln became the latest Democratic incumbent to attract a primary challenger, anti-abortion Democrats fought hard to derail President Barack Obama’s health care measure, and civil rights advocates and environmentalists likened the Democrat to George W. Bush.

Few pieces of the mosaic that is the Democratic Party seem happy.

Labor and gays are restless. Blacks and Hispanics are grumbling. Liberals and moderates are battling. Even some in Hollywood are disappointed.

Obama must bring together – and fire up – the many Democratic coalitions if he hopes to minimize expected losses for his party this fall in his first midterm elections. The risk if he doesn’t is that Democrats could become so disaffected that they stay home in November.

It’s far from too late. Passage of the health care overhaul would mean a monumental victory for Obama just when he needs one. This president will have accomplished what others before him couldn’t, a triumph that would give the fractured rank and file something to rally around.

David Axelrod, a senior White House adviser, isn’t panicking.

“We are a broad party,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s always going to be some degree of tension.”

Axelrod voiced confidence that the vast majority of the party’s loyalists will get behind its candidates this fall because the philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats are so great.

“Whatever divides us,” he said, “that fundamental split is still animating.”

Despite the dissension, 84 percent of Democrats approve of Obama’s job performance in the latest Associated Press-GfK poll.

Republicans are wrestling with their own deep splits. There’s a family feud over whether the GOP should strictly adhere to conservative principles or be more inclusive. That infighting is prominently on display in a slew of contentious primary contests.

But the fissures among Democrats, festering for months, are striking because the party controls both the White House and Congress, and unity was in style just a year ago as Democrats celebrated the first months of Obama’s tenure with bigger majorities on Capitol Hill.

Then, the governing began in earnest – and so did the complaining.

Some of it was expected.

The Democratic Party has always been more of a coalition party than the GOP, bringing together varied factions that include labor, minorities, civil rights activists, social progressives and anti-war protesters. Each part seldom gets everything it wants. Expectations were lofty, with given the Democratic control of the government. A high bar brings the potential for serious letdowns and, thus, infighting.

“I don’t think you can say that the party’s in any state of disarray,” said former Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, a past chairman of the House Democrats campaign committee. But, he added, there are clearly divisions and divisive primaries are “not helpful.”

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the Democratic splits than the Senate race in Arkansas.

A moderate, Lincoln infuriated liberals by backing the 2008 Wall Street bailout while opposing a public insurance health care option and key union-organizing legislation. She was considered among the party’s most vulnerable incumbents for months when Democratic Lt. Gov. Bill Halter got in the race.

Now, Lincoln is promoting her independence, saying in an ad: “I don’t answer to my party, I answer to Arkansas.”

Halter has the backing of the liberal MoveOn.org and is collecting big money from labor groups.

Two other Senate Democrats facing tough races – Sens. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado – also have primaries even though the White House is backing the incumbents.

The fractures have been on display in other ways as well this month:

-The American Civil Liberties Union ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times showing Obama morphing into Bush and asking “Change or more of the same?” The ad criticized Obama for even considering military tribunals for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

-Defenders of Wildlife ran a TV ad featuring actress Ashley Judd assailing Obama for not reversing a Bush decision lifting the federal protection on wolves in parts of the Northern Rockies. Judd says: “You promised change. But by adopting the Bush plan, your administration weakened our endangered species law and has allowed this killing to happen.”

-A dozen or so anti-abortion House Democrats are opposing Obama’s health care overhaul plan – and putting its passage in jeopardy – because it includes a provision they don’t like. The absence of a public insurance option in the legislation also has angered the left.

-Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against a jobs bill that they said didn’t focus enough on job training programs or summer employment. They complain that they’re getting too little support from the country’s first black president. Obama met with them last week.

-Hispanics privately continued to question – after a year of virtual inaction – whether Obama is sincere in his promise to overhaul the immigration system even as he met with senators trying to write a bipartisan bill on the issue and repeated his pledge.

-Unions said they will take sides in primary races and labor officials complained that the White House hasn’t pushed legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize workers. The AFL-CIO also rebuked Obama for condoning mass firings at a poorly performing Rhode Island high school.

-The gay community is fretting over the pace at which Obama has addressed their top issues such as repealing the 17-year-old law that bans gays from serving openly in the military. Obama needs Congress’ blessing to do that, but there’s resistance.

“There are frustrations that we haven’t been able to get as much done that we would like to, especially as health care drags on,” acknowledged Gov. Martin O’Malley, D-Md. He predicted “less griping and more coalescing” once that’s completed, and unity come November.

Ford had voted twice for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Speaking Wednesday to the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York, Ford was interrupted numerous times by protesters. They said they don’t trust him and shouted that he is “anti-gay.”

Ford said all he can do is explain he was wrong in the past and has changed his mind.

Ford is considering challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in this fall’s Democratic primary. He moved to New York after losing the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Tennessee.

He says he is close to deciding whether to run.

Mosbacher died after a yearlong battle with pancreatic cancer, family spokesman Jim McGrath.

The Texan was a powerful Republican fundraiser who served at the top echelons of Bush’s presidential campaigns and most recently served as a general campaign chairman for 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

As commerce secretary, Mosbacher helped lay the foundation for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But what many did not know is that Mosbacher also walked a “delicate line” between the GOP’s right wing views on gays and his own personal views, which were shaped when his daughter Diane, known as Dee, came out as a lesbian.

Said the Washington Post:

At the Republican National Convention [in 1992], conservative television pundit Pat Buchanan declared “cultural war” on homosexuals and delegates waved placards reading “Family Rights Forever/Gay Rights Never.”

In support of his daughter, Mr. Mosbacher agreed to meet with gay leaders, reportedly making the Bush administration the first to be briefed on gay issues.The party’s evangelical right pilloried Mr. Mosbacher. His daughter told The Post, “Dad said … he didn’t know what else family values is if it’s not supporting your kids and who they are.”

Mosbacher was born in Mount Vernon, N.Y. and grew up in White Plains. He graduated from the Choate School and earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from Washington and Lee University in 1947.

The following year, he moved to Houston and built a highly successful oil and gas company that would have interests in U.S. and international markets. Bush described Mosbacher as “an honorable and a first-rate businessman, and perhaps the shrewdest dealmaker I ever knew.”

Mosbacher got into politics in the early 1960s, working as a fundraiser for various Republican candidates in southeast Texas and also managing then Vice President Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign in Harris County, which includes Houston.

Mosbacher was chief fundraiser of Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign, and after Bush’s victory, was appointed commerce secretary. He was the main official responsible for promoting NAFTA, which was later signed into law during the Clinton administration.

In 1995, Mosbacher supported efforts to eliminate the Commerce Department, saying it was no longer necessary and a “prime example of how the federal bureaucracy has gotten too big and too expensive.”

In his political career, Mosbacher managed the national fundraising operations of five different GOP presidential campaigns – from Gerald Ford in 1976 to McCain.

Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker worked with Mosbacher on several campaigns and in Bush’s cabinet and was a friend.

“He always provided candor, intelligence, and a special sense of joy for life that was Texas-sized in its grandness,” Baker said in a statement. “My wife Susan and I are saddened by his death. We have lost a special friend, and our prayers are with his family.”

Mosbacher was also an accomplished sailor, amassing numerous titles in New York and Texas. He was involved in charitable projects, helping start the Odyssey Academy Charter School in Galveston and supporting the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, said Bush, who borrowed a phrase from his 1989 inaugural address in describing Mosbacher as “a true Point of Light.”

Mosbacher was married four times, including to Georgette Mosbacher, a flashy socialite and cosmetics entrepreneur whose animated personality and red hair made her a popular subject of gossip columnists when the couple was in Washington, D.C. The couple divorced in 1998.

Let’s start this Christmas week with some crazy family mess from Illinois. Jim Madigan, an openly gay Illinois politician, wants to unseat 7th District State Sen. Heather Stearns. No problem there unless you are Stearns’ husband, Leo Smith. Last week the challenger held a fundraiser in a gay bar called The Call. Madigan was minding his business, doing what pols do when they want you to open up your wallet, and who shows up? Leo Smith.

Now don’t go crazy. Smith is not living life on the down low.  He spent an hour drinking at the bar, another ten minutes in the bathroom (baby, I don’t even want to know) and then decided to go up to Madigan and tell him about himself.

“I’m not here for your event! I know you think you’re gonna get famous with all your bull***t! But those things are about me.”

The two men went back and forth, talking about everything from ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to gay rights. Smith doesn’t think Madigan has a gay rights record that is worth anything. A strange charge against a guy who was director of  Equality Illinois.

Well the two men went back and forth until they were separated by Madigan staffers. The challenger thinks the event says a whole lot about Stearns and her man.

“This is not what progressive, liberal Democrats do, in terms of how they interact with competition and challenge. This is what old-style, machine, intimidation-type politics is about. I hope this is actually a little revealing to [ people ]. They feel they’re entitled to their seat; this is their approach.”

Stearns sent out an email, calling her hubby chivalrous and a little dumb. What I wouldn’t give to hear what she actually said when he got home.

“My ambition, if you will, my desire is to help our country in whatever role that may be, and I cannot predict what that will be, what doors will be open in the year 2012,” she told Barbara Walters.

When asked whether she’d play a major role, the former Republican vice presidential candidate replied that “if people will have me, I will.”

Palin is making the rounds to promote her new book, “Going Rogue,” which came out Tuesday. On Monday, she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Palin said she’s gotten plenty of offers during the past few months, including to open up her family for a reality show, that she has rejected. She also said she wasn’t sure whether a talk show would be best for her family.

“I’d probably rather write than talk,” she told Walters.

The former Alaska governor said she’d rate President Barack Obama’s performance a 4 out of 10. She criticized the president for his handling of the economy and for “dithering” on national security questions.

“There are a lot of decisions being made that I – and probably the majority of Americans – are not impressed with right now,” she said on ABC. She said Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was “premature.”

Palin also discussed David Letterman, whom she criticized for a sexually suggestive jokes made at the expense of her teenage daughter in June. Letterman eventually apologized to Palin.

Palin told Walters she has ruled out an appearance on Letterman’s late night TV show. “I don’t think that I’d want to boost his ratings,” she said. “I do want him to sell my book, though I hope he keeps it up.”

The title of Palin’s book refers to a phrase John McCain’s campaign used to describe his vice presidential running mate going off message. In the book, she criticizes the people who ran McCain’s campaign and says she wished she had been allowed to speak more freely. But she told Walters the outcome probably would not have been different if she had.

“The economy tanked,” she said. “(The) electorate was ready, sincerely, for change.”

On the controversy about the $150,000 spent on her wardrobe by the campaign, Palin said there was a double standard: No one ever questions male candidates where their shoes or suits came from, she said. In the end, she added: “The clothes all went back. They were never my clothes.”

Despite the internal squabbling and ultimate loss, Palin said she would go through the experience again. “(I) would do it again in a heartbeat,” she told Walters.

And though she backed the first federal bailout, Palin says she would not support a second. “That did not put our economy back on the right track. So we learn from our mistakes.”

During her interview with Winfrey, which was taped last week, Palin said that it’s heartbreaking to see the road that Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson, has taken and that the soon-to-be Playgirl model hasn’t seen his baby in a while.

The new memoir doesn’t mention Johnston, who has sparred repeatedly with his former mother-in-law-to-be. When Winfrey asked about Johnston, Palin said she didn’t think “a national television show is the place to discuss some of the things he’s doing and saying.”

But Palin went on to say she finds it “a bit heartbreaking to see the road that he is on right now” and that “it’s not a healthy place to be.”

Palin also said Johnston remains a member of the family and that they can work out any troubles. She said she prays for him and that he has an “open invitation” to Thanksgiving dinner.

Winfrey began the interview by asking Palin if she felt snubbed at not getting an invitation to “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last year. Winfrey said she didn’t have any candidates on her Chicago-based show during the campaign because of her support for President Barack Obama.

Palin said she didn’t feel snubbed and told Winfrey, “No offense to you, but it wasn’t the center of my universe.”

In New York’s 23rd Congressional district, where longtime Republican Rep. John McHugh stepped down to be Army secretary, Dede Scozzafava, the candidate chosen by state GOP leaders to replace him, was forced out of the race by a surging Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman. High-profile national Republicans endorsed Hoffman, saying Scozzafava, a state assemblywoman who supports abortion rights and gay marriage, had abandoned core GOP values.

In the New Jersey governor’s race, independent Chris Daggett has gone from afterthought to player in a contest pitting the unpopular incumbent, Democrat Jon Corzine, against Republican Chris Christie.

Daggett is not expected to win the New Jersey contest, and the GOP split in upstate New York could throw the race to Democrat Bill Owens.

But the impact of those candidacies on the high-profile contests points to an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment sentiment that could be a prevailing theme in the 2010 congressional elections and beyond.

“What it says is the public is looking for less self-interested parties and candidates who can reflect the needs of a very frustrated public,” said Douglas Astolfi, a history professor at Florida’s St. Leo University. “We have two wars and we’re in a recession that neither party seems to address in any positive way. There’s a deep sense that government has abandoned the common man. People are frustrated and angry.”

Indeed, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll released last week found that trust in government is at a 12-year low, and half of all Americans now support the creation of a new political party.

Both parties ignore such sentiment at their peril in 2010 and perhaps into the 2012 presidential race.

In Senate contests from Florida and Kentucky to New Hampshire next year, conservatives furious at the Republican establishment are mounting primary challenges against more mainstream candidates favored by the national party.

On the other side, Democratic strategists worry that progressives, disgusted by the big money bank bailout and disillusioned with President Barack Obama’s lack of fight on issues such as a government-run health insurance plan, might keep some people from voting. That could cost Democrats seats up and down the ballot.

Political operatives are keeping an eye on independent voters – an important and growing group that often decides elections. Will these voters send a signal to politicians Tuesday as well or will they stay home and leave it to the more ideologically driven base voters in both parties?

That was the case in the New York race, where polling found Scozzafava had fallen well behind her Hoffman and Owens, making it essentially a two-man contest days ago.

Sensing opportunity, ambitious conservatives across the country have jumped on the Hoffman bandwagon. The most prominent is Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee and a potential high-profile contender for the White House in 2012.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, also looking at 2012, has announced his support for Hoffman. So has Chuck DeVore, a conservative California assemblyman hoping to run in a U.S. Senate primary against Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard executive backed by national Republicans to take on the Democratic incumbent, Barbara Boxer.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had endorsed Scozzafava, drawing the enmity of conservative bloggers scoffing at the possibility of a Gingrich presidential run in 2012.

Hoffman’s rise infuriated leaders of New York’s Republican Party, who insisted Scozzafava was a good fit for the district which favored Obama last year, but is one of the few still held by Republicans in the Northeast.

In New Jersey, Daggett, a businessman and former Environmental Protection Agency official, has appealed to voters who are turned off by both Corzine and Christie and fed up with the candidates’ campaign bloodbath. Daggett was widely believed to be the winner of a televised candidate debate and has been endorsed by The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., the state’s largest newspaper.

John Weingart, associate director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, said Daggett’s candidacy had succeeded in giving disillusioned voters a competent and credible alternative to Corzine and Christie.

But Weingart said lack of money, the institutional obstacles to a third party candidacy and a growing awareness among voters of the ideological differences between Christie and Corzine would cause Daggett’s campaign to stall.

“To vote for an independent candidate, you have to believe either that the person can win or that there is no difference you care about between the Democratic and the Republican candidate,” Weingart said.

A Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday found Corzine ahead of Christie by a 43-38 percent margin with 13 percent for Daggett and 5 percent undecided. But a majority of voters said they had an unfavorable view of both Corzine and Christie.

In the 1992 presidential race, money wasn’t an issue for billionaire businessman Ross Perot, whose rise was powered by the same kind of populist anger brewing today. Perot vastly altered the dynamic of that contest, running as an independent and winning 19 percent of the vote.

Democrat Bill Clinton was the beneficiary of that three-way contest, taking away the presidency from George H.W. Bush with just a plurality of the vote. Clinton did so in part by adding a populist flair to his message, drawing voters who had been attracted to Perot.

Detachment from the major parties some of the success of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire who appealed to a city craving for competence in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.,

Bloomberg, who ran as a Republican that year, announced in 2007 that he would switch parties and become and independent, leading to speculation he would run for president at some point. Bloomberg is expected to cruise to a third term on Election Day.

The Rachel Maddow Show first aired on television in 2008.  She was first seen as a guest political analyst on MSNBC and CNN, and first heard on her syndicated radio show, The Rachel Maddow Show, in 2005.

Rachel Maddow was born in California and came out as a lesbian when she was a teenager. When in college at Stanford University, she was one of only two openly gay freshmen, according to her university paper.

At Stanford, Maddow majored in public policy and she was an AIDS activist.

In 1995, she received a Rhodes Scholarship to travel to Oxford for graduate studies at Lincoln College. She earned her doctorate degree in political science with a concentration in prison reform and AIDS.

The ringing endorsement for the 47-year-old Westerwelle, who is widely expected to be tapped for the high-profile post of foreign minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new government, in the Bild daily also highlighted his personal life in a way he rarely has.

“His man makes him so strong,” Bild wrote about Westerwelle, declaring that his 42-year-old partner Michael Mronz was not only his most important adviser during the campaign, but also “gives him security and … supports him when he suffers a setback.”

Despite eight years as leader of the pro-business Free Democrats, Westerwelle’s homosexuality has generated relatively little discussion. But with his party set to become kingmaker to Chancellor Merkel’s conservatives and him foreign minister, it has been thrust into the spotlight.

On Monday, a local official had to apologize for an anti-gay remark he made about Westerwelle on election night. Peter Langner, the city treasurer of the western city of Duisburg and a Social Democrat, had said that “I don’t want a gay foreign minister.”

Germans have been generally tolerant of openly gay politicians and others have paved the way, including Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, who already declared back in 2001 that “I’m gay, and it’s good that way.”

While Westerwelle’s certainly no gay activist, he has said before that his lifestyle may be “encouraging for some young gays.”

“I can only tell all young gays and lesbians to not be disheartened, if not everything goes their way,” Westerwelle told the Berlin’s gay magazine Siegessaeule this month. “This society is changing for the good in the direction of tolerance and respect … though slower than I would wish.”

Westerwelle has been known to be gay since 2004, when he brought his partner to Merkel’s 50th birthday party.

“I’ve never been hiding my life,” Westerwelle said back then. “I just lived it.”

Mronz, who met Westerwelle in 2003 according to Bild, is an event manager who also organized the athletic world championship in Berlin this summer. He recently joined the Free Democrats, saying that after having listened to 120 speeches of his partner, “I am completely convinced.”

Westerwelle, who has led the Free Democrats since 2001, also spoke out for stronger civil rights during the election campaign and has criticized in the past that German law does not give complete adoption rights to gay couples.

The Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany welcomed Westerwelle’s victory and hoped his election would become a motor for gay rights in Germany.

“We think it’s awesome that it has become so normal that an openly gay man becomes foreign minister,” said Klaus Jetz, the head of the association, adding that the gay community expected him to advocate gay rights in Germany and abroad as well.

“It’s important that as foreign minister he will openly talk about human rights and the persecution of gays and lesbians in other countries.”

Anyone voicing hateful or violent rhetoric, she told reporters, must take responsibility for the results.

“I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, suddenly speaking quietly. “This kind of rhetoric was very frightening” and created a climate in which violence took place, she said.

Former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White was convicted of the 1978 murders of Mayor George Moscone and openly gay supervisor Harvey Milk. Gay rights activists and some others at the time saw a link between the assassinations and the violent debate over gay rights that had preceded them for years.

During a rambling confession, White was quoted as saying, “I saw the city as going kind of downhill.” His lawyers argued that he was mentally ill at the time. White committed suicide in 1985.

Pelosi is part of a generation of California Democrats on whom the assassinations had a searing effect. A resident of San Fransisco, Pelosi had been a Democratic activist for years and knew Milk and Moscone. At the time of their murders, she was serving as chairwoman of her party in the northern part of the state.

On Thursday, Pelosi was answering a question about whether the current vitriol concerned her. The questioner did not refer to the murders of Milk or Moscone, or the turmoil in San Francisco three decades ago. Pelosi referenced those events on her own and grew uncharacteristically emotional.

“I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made,” Pelosi said. Some of the people hearing the message “are not as balanced as the person making the statement might assume,” she said.

“Our country is great because people can say what they think and they believe,” she added. “But I also think that they have to take responsibility for any incitement that they may cause.”

Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for examples of contemporary statements that reminded the speaker of the rhetoric of 1970s San Francisco.

The public anger during health care town hall meetings in August spilled into the House last week when South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at Obama, the nation’s first black president, during his speech. On a largely party-line vote, the House reprimanded Wilson.

In a sea of American (and many Confederate) flags waved by more than a few secessionists, Obama was pictured as Hitler and portrayed as Stalin. The federal government was likened to an alien invader run by an illegitimate, foreign-born black president, who just happened to be elected by the American people.

I wish I could say that this unruly behavior is an anomaly, but it seems to be a growing and vocal part of the Republican Party. In the 1980’s, Rev. Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed used direct mail and talk radio to organize what were previously known as busybodies into the Moral Majority. Today’s GOP has harnessed the power of the Internet and cable television to lure the loons and create a constituency of crackpots.

The result has been disastrous for this nation. Our healthcare system is broken and we are rated near the bottom when compared to nearly every other industrialized country. We pay more per person for healthcare and we live shorter lives. There is instability, as families often go broke when a loved one falls ill and there is insecurity because losing a job means forfeiting coverage. American businesses are saddled with growing healthcare costs, which make it more difficult to compete in the global marketplace.

Yet, instead of an adult conversation about an issue that is crippling our nation, our dimmest citizens have derailed the debate. These out-of-control, severely under-medicated, surreptitious partisans hijacked town hall meetings and may cost the rest of us decent healthcare reform. Obama’s powerful speech last week helped mitigate the damage, but having frittered away the summer, it may be too late for the president to regain momentum.

At fault is the media – who routinely offer right wing sickos a stage to air the most outrageous allegations. Max Blumenthal, author of the new book, “Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party,” discussed the media’s culpability last week on National Public Radio.

“The mainstream media attempts this veneer of balance of entertaining both sides,” said Blumenthal. “But when one side is completely hysterical, conspiratorial, and leveling baseless attacks, should it be taken seriously? And what are the consequences for taking these attacks seriously in a democracy?”

The result, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is an explosion of militias and hate groups. In a new report, the SPLC documents at least, “50 new militia training groups — one of them made up of present and former police officers and soldiers.”

“Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country,” says the report. The bizarre theories include:

1) Nativist theories about secret Mexican plans to “reconquer” the American Southwest

2) A secret network of U.S. concentration camps to imprison “patriots” who stand up to the federal government

If these were just harmless blowhards, that would be one thing. The problem is, these nuts are heavily armed and are a staple at shows that hawk firearms. SPLC reports that, “Sales of guns and ammunition have skyrocketed amid fears of new gun control laws, much as they did in the 1990s.”

Unless the media culture changes, there will be another Oklahoma City-type disaster or even an assassination attempt on our President. Responsible media outlets must stop offering platforms to serial distorters such as Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter and Glenn Beck. The next time Sarah Palin makes up a lie, such as death panels, the story should be about how she twisted the truth. Not a single story should be written or broadcast giving legs to the lies and allowing mistruths to run amok.

Thanks to the press winking and nodding to the nuts, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) felt empowered to heckle the President during his healthcare speech. More disturbing are reports that say many people in Wilson’s district applaud his sophomoric actions.

Clearly, it is time we stop calling these people “conservatives.” True conservatives, who believe in respecting authority and protocol, would have been appalled at the example Wilson set for children. After all, how can young people be expected to obey parents and teachers when the president is catcalled in the halls of Congress?

I’ve had it with such antics. This crowd destabilized Bill Clinton’s presidency. Then, they stole the 2000 election, by sending partisan thugs down to South Florida to disrupt the recount. Now, the paranoiacs are in a full-blown panic over the first black president.

This fight is no longer about healthcare, nor is about deficits. It is about the very health of the political process and turning back the deficit in decency exemplified by Joe Wilson, Sarah Palin and the demagogues out to undermine our system of government.