Caldara opens with a new Independence Institute motto: “Come for the public policy, stay for the sexual harassment.” Then he makes some office jokes.

“The Herman Cain sexual harassment accusations just hack me off. What? Do I actually have to run for president to get the women in my office to expose my proficiency in unwelcome snuggling? So far the only person to come forward and accuse me of unwanted advances is our Research Director Dave Kopel. And he’s making half that crap up.”

The Institute is holding an event this month honoring Colorado Springs Gazette conservative politics cartoonist Chuck Assay. The Institute email posts a sample of Assay peer Henry Payne‘s work for the Detroit News, apparently because it advances the sexual harassment comic thread.

On his radio show this week, Limbaugh put on an unwitting clinic in the kind of attitudes legal scholars have been lamenting for years as a hurdle to encouraging victims of sex crimes from leveling charges and testifying against attackers, attitudes that make victims feel sex-tainted and complicit. Limbaugh’s schtick concerning Cain accuser Sharon Bialek included him pronouncing her name “Buy-A-Lick” and slurping into his microphone.

He also mocked accuser Karen Kraushaar for suggesting that the growing number of Cain’s accusers should hold a joint press conference.

“What’s the big deal with the panel here?” he said. “Do they want to synchronize their menstrual periods? Why appear together?”

Republican debate audiences this year cheered Texas Governor Perry for signing off on 230 state executions, they booed a gay U.S. soldier and applauded Cain for saying unemployed Americans should just get a job.

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Bachmann made her remarks immediately following Monday’s tea party debate. She had dogged Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the issue of the vaccine during the debate because she disagreed with Perry’s past attempts at mandating it for public school children.

“The problem is it comes with some very significant consequences,” Bachmann said of the vaccine on FOX news following the debate. “There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences. It’s not good enough to take, quote, ‘a Mulligan’ or you want a do-over. Not when you have little children’s lives at risk.”

It wasn’t simply a gaffe, because on Tuesday morning Bachmann repeated the same story on the Today Show, alleging that the vaccine can have “very dangerous side effects” and that ”people have to draw their own conclusions.”

Later Bachmann added, “There is no second chance for these little girls if there’s any dangerous consequences to their bodies.”

‘Dangerous and Irresponsible’
On Tuesday evening, Dr. O. Marion Burton, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement criticizing Bachmann’s statements.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation,” Burton said. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement. Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been administered, and it has an excellent safety record.”

Burton pointed out that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Family Physicians all recommend that girls receive HPV vaccine around age 11 or 12: “This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer.”

The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership also released a statement.

“Congresswoman Bachmann’s decision to spread fear of vaccines is dangerous and irresponsible,” said Evan Siegfried, a spokesman GRASP. “There is zero credible scientific evidence that vaccines cause mental retardation or autism. She should cease trying to foment fear in order to advance her political agenda.”

Dr. Paul Offit, author of Autism’s False Prophets, told Mother Jones that Bachmann’s comments could misinform people who are genuinely trying to educate themselves about vaccines.

Even Merck, the maker of Gardasil, the brand name for many HPV vaccines used by American physicians, weighed in. “We are confident in the safety profile of Gardasil,” Pam Eisele, a spokeswoman for the company told Financial Times. “Leading health organisations throughout the world have reviewed all the safety information available and continue to recommend its use.”

By Tuesday night, the Washington Post already had published an editorial harshly criticizing the congresswoman.

“Ms. Bachmann’s hysterics about hapless little girls being forced to get injections has us wondering if she would roll back requirements for what has come to be routine immunizations against polio, chicken pox, measles and other diseases,” the paper wrote. “‘Cervical cancer is a horrible way to die,’ Mr. Perry said Monday. Equally horrible is the thought that small-minded political arguments could sabotage the means that are on hand to stop the spread of this deadly virus—and could undermine the control of many other diseases besides.”

Conservatives React
Right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh said the Bachmann jumped the shark with her statement.

“Alright, now she had scored the points in the debate. But now this comment has become a news item for Bachmann today, rather than what she said at the debate last night,” Limbaugh said. “That’s what I mean by ‘jumping the shark.’ She scored the points and should have left it there.”

Perry himself attacked Bachmann’s comments.

“You heard the same arguments about giving our children protections from some of the childhood diseases, and they were.. autism was part of that. Now we’ve subsequently found out that was generated and not true,” Perry told NBC. “I would suggest to you that this issue about Gardasil and making it available was about saving people’s lives.”

Conservative blogger and Minnesota native, Ed Morrissey, was perplexed by Bachmann’s statement.

“The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television,” Morrissey wrote. “It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didn’t bother to check the facts, and didn’t care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either. Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.”

Rove, who served as a senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, made the comments Tuesday during an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

HH: Now I want to switch to politics, Karl Rove. Is it a concern of yours that Team Obama, headquarted up there in Chicago, will attempt to influence its activists to participate in Republican caucuses and primaries to help pick the Republican nominee, and perhaps select someone who is not as strong as another candidate might be?

KR: I think they’ve got to be careful about it, because if they suddenly try and do that behind the scenes, that’s one thing. But if they’re as ham-handed as they are in everything else, it’s going to boomerang badly. And my sense is these people don’t know how to do subtle. They sure know how to do boomerang. So if they do that, they’ll be in trouble.

HH: Now you remember when Rush did Operation Chaos…

KR: Yeah.

HH: And he was quite out front about it. You don’t worry about that in New Hampshire and Iowa?

KR: Well first of all, they don’t have anybody who has as big a voice and an influence as Rush Limbaugh. I mean, who the heck is Jim Messina for gosh sakes? I mean, so, and they could send out a little email and so forth and try and encourage people, but I think a lot of Democrats would just find it distasteful to participate in Republican primaries unless they’re union steward, or a shop steward told them to do so.

Messina, who previously served as chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), helped run Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign. With the exit of Rahm Emmanuel, Messina has switched from his deputy chief of staff position to that of reelection campaign manager. Only weeks ago Ari Berman of The Nation published a scathing report of Messina, labeling him as responsible for nearly every controversial move made by the Obama administration, and questioning what damage a 2012 campaign with Messina at the helm could do for Obama’s reelection chances.

Although local Republicans (as well as some 2008 Hillary Clinton supporters) have long mused that Obama, who hails from neighboring Illinois, played loose with the Iowa caucuses by busing in supporters during 2008 to earn his Hawkeye State win, there has never been any evidence that out-of-state supports did more than knock doors, drive supporters to caucus locations, phone bank and observe on caucus night. Regardless, such rumors have persisted, and a campaign video released in late April by the Obama campaign and featuring Messina (embedded below) has done little to quiet the speculation since it tells core supporters to “act like an insurgent campaign.”

Messina, according to Rove, might be the current messenger of such a strategy, but he isn’t necessarily a good one — or at least one as widespread known and respected as Limbaugh. Instead, Rove suggests that the best hope for Democrats, if they wish to engage in such a risky strategy, is to engage labor union leaders — perpetrating an ongoing GOP myth that the only reason Republicans have not been able to claim majorities across the nation is because working class Americans have been allowed to negotiate for better pay, working conditions and benefits; and that the end result of such organizing luxuries are the forced filling of Democratic candidates’ coffers.

Here’s Limbaugh’s review of Bachmann:

I don’t mind telling you that I’m a great admirer of Michele Bachmann’s. Far from being the fringe outlier depicted by the mainstream media — and all too often by some on the right — she is a strong spokeswoman for unapologetic conservatism. She is neither extreme nor unreasonable, which is why her philosophy has resonated with grass-roots conservatives. She is unafraid to speak out against the crushing debt crisis we face. She is energized, rather than deterred, by the caustic criticism she constantly endures.

Michele, 55, had ambition from the get-go. A stay-at-home mom of five children and 23 foster kids, she ultimately became a tax attorney, small-business owner with her husband and political firebrand who runs rings around her opponents. If she were liberal, she’d be celebrated from the mountaintops. But she’s conservative. So because she is smart, talented and accomplished and a natural leader — not to mention attractive — the left brands her as a flame-throwing lightweight. They underestimate her at their own risk.

Bachmann may have pushed for inclusion, but in a statement she said she’s “humbled to learn of my selection and grateful to be named among such a variety of notable people affecting our world.”

“My inclusion on this list is a reflection of the growing voice of everyday Americans who desire to preserve and further the liberty on which our great country was founded,” she added.

In a Facebook message on Thursday morning she was more pointed.

“While Democrats may call us extreme, we know our Tea Party values reflect the best of America — being included on TIME’s list is a welcome affirmation,” Bachmann wrote. “Click ‘like’ if you agree with Rush Limbaugh that the Left underestimates us at their own risk.

Bachmann campaigned hard on Facebook and Twitter to get included on the list. TIME ran a contest among readers who could vote from a list just shy of 200 figures. Over the last few weeks, she send out reminders urging her supporters to vote her up the list.

“Today is the last day to take a stand in the 2011 Time 100 Most Influential Poll,” she wrote earlier this week. “Show liberals & the mainstream media that constitutional conservatives are influential. “Like” this if you’ll consider supporting me.”

And on Twitter her campaign team wrote, “Michele is an American leader. Tell Time’s editors she belongs on their 100 list http://ti.me/gWwngy #TIME100?

Bachmann finished 45th on the list with 12,889 votes.

Sure, they like a little Rush once in awhile, even a little Glenn, but at the end of the day it’s just not enough. They also want their crop reports, their state legislative coverage and, yes, their CarTalk.

Writing in today’s New York Times, Timothy Egan says the conservative attack on NPR is misguided at best and counterproductive at worst.

POCATELLO, Idaho – It gets pretty lonely out here on the lava beds of the Snake River Plain if you’re looking for something other than a right-wing rant for company on the car radio. From Twin Falls to Idaho Falls, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck rule the airwaves. Beck is on two stations in Pocatello, case you missed one of his conspiracy theories.

The public airwaves that brush over this beautiful piece of high country carry a monopoly of thought — that is, until you pick up the first scratchy sounds of KISU-FM. It’s run by a proud conservative, Jerry Miller, but he serves up something different for Eastern Idaho.

You get a music program called “Potato Head Blues,” maybe some city hall news — up to 30 hours a week of home-grown programming. On top of that, KISU-FM delivers “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “Car Talk,” “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” from the stellar lineup of NPR. Late at night, the crisp, authoritative tones of the BBC can be heard in the Idaho Rockies.

It seems illogical that when the Republican Congress took aim at public radio, they were going after an audio lifeline much loved by their own constituents in Red State America.

…

The amount of money at stake in targeting small stations — about $430 million — would have zero effect on the budget deficit, the Congressional Budget Office reported.

By comparison, the state of Idaho got $2.7 billion in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies from 1995 to 2009, according to the excellent data system compiled by the Environmental Working Group. This at a time when crop prices are at near-record highs and big corporate farms are flush.

So why go after such a meager sum for public radio, when it means so much to the least-populated areas of America?

Spite. Ideology. Choose your poison, it’s there. Some conservatives just hate public radio. They think it’s elitist, snooty pants, full of borrrrrrrring civil discussions and, OMG — that 20-minute piece on chanterelle mushrooms! Surely no one in Idaho Falls cares what the BBC World Service has to say about Ivory Coast.

He notes that urban public radio stations would survive without the federal subsidy, but that the rural stations, one of which serves an area the size of Ohio in the heart of Republican Alaska, would be off the air without federal money.

So, the people the attacks on public radio will hurt most are those who tend to vote Republican, while listening to the best radio friend of Red State America — and see nothing inconsistent about it.

In Colorado, Rep. Doug Lamborn has been one of the most vociferous members of Congress in attacking NPR, but the rest of the Republican delegation has followed along. Meanwhile, urbanite Dianne DeGette has said enough is enough and stood squarely with rural conservatives who want a little news and culture in between blasts of bombast.

“You cannot solve issues of this magnitude without presidential leadership,” he told conservative radio jockey Mark Levin during a discussion of the national debt. “This president isn’t just leading. He’s missing in action on this issue.” #

That prompted Levin to ask him: Why haven’t you considering running for president? Rush Limbaugh began piling on: #

“Marco Rubio has had it, and it hasn’t taken long for Marco Rubio to have had it,” conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said on his show Tuesday. “Marco Rubio says, ‘What is this continuing resolution crap? I didn’t come in here to fund the government every two to three weeks, and $6 billion here and $6 billion there. What the hell is going on here?’” #

“Wish the damn guy, wish the guy would run for president,” Limbaugh added. #

During his Levin appearance, Rubio called for cuts in discretionary programs — 14 percent of the budget that he said is “not an insignificant thing,” along with overhauls of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which make up a much larger share of the federal budget. #

“If we do not reform those programs, they will bankrupt themselves and bankrupt America, and nobody around here wants to talk about it,” he said. #

Rep. Mark Kirk, who could become the next senator from Illinois, said at a recent debate, “I think all of the groups entering Illinois to support my opponent and the ones trying to support me should reveal their donors and be fully transparent.” Likewise, Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck: “I think it is important that people know who is paying for the ads.”

So do we. If Mr. Kirk or Mr. Buck end up in the Senate, we hope that they – and other colleagues will cut off the flow of secret money before even more gushes forth in 2012.

You could make a case for adding Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul to the list, too, at least when it comes to the issue of barring federal contractors from lobbying or contributing to congressional campaigns.

“What I would do is that for every federal contract, if you sign a federal contract and we pay you, the taxpayer pays you a million dollars, I would put a clause in the contract that you voluntarily accept that you won’t lobby or give contributions,” he told Rush Limbaugh, “because I think it galls the American people that taxpayer money is paid to contractors who take that taxpayer money and immediately lobby for more money.”

And even Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller has been up in arms about a new Super PAC, Alaskans Standing Together, which is spending loads of corporate money from the parent companies of federal contractors to back his opponent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. He’s even gone so far as to file a complaint about the issue to the otherwise loathed Federal Elections Commission.

Does this mean that any of these candidates would back legislation like the DISCLOSE Act in its present form? Probably not, but it shows that while conservative candidates who possess Paul’s libertarian streak might be all for free corporate spending, they’re not for cozy corporatist arrangements either. To the extent that these interests overlap with those of campaign finance reformers, you might yet see some cooperation after all.

Voters in Boulder City said they were trying to vote for Republican nominee Sharron Angle, but that Reid’s name was checked when they got to the electronic voting machines.

“Something’s not right,” voter Joyce Ferrara told the network, saying several people reported the same problem. “One person that’s a fluke. Two, that’s strange. But several within a five-minute period of time — that’s wrong.”

Next, provide a link to a longer story via the local Vegas Fox affiliate that quotes the registrar of voters debunking the claim and notes that not a single voter has reported any irregularities to staff at a polling location:

Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said those claims were “patently false” and said at no time did any of those voters report the incident to staff at their polling location.

“In fact, although over 160,000 people have voted early in Clark County, those allegations that have been made have gone directly to the media as opposed to election board officers,” he said.

Lomax advised voters to be aware that touch-screens on the screens are sensitive. For that reason, a person may not want to have their fingers linger too long on the screen after they make a selection at any time.

And let Rush Limbaugh take it from there:

So this woman goes in to vote — and it’s happening to a lot of people in Nevada going in to early vote and they are checking off their candidate, and it’s not Harry Reid, and then it shows up on the screen as though they have voted for Harry Reid.  And this is happening in North Carolina.  In New Bern, North Carolina, a lot of places around the country, reports are starting to trickle in that early voting cheating has already begun.  So what do you do?  What do you do when this happens?  The only thing I can think of is to call the New Black Panther Party for help.  These are the experts, ladies and gentlemen, at running fraudulent elections, and they have the imprimatur of the Justice Department.  They’re not charged with any crimes when they engage in this kind of stuff.

Seriously, this is starting to pop up all over the place.  The Democrats do not have one issue on which they can run with pride and say, “Look what we accomplished.”  Nothing.  All they can do is cheat.

From a woman in Nevada to a nationwide scheme on the part of Democrats, aided in part by the New Black Panther Party, to steal the elections. The outcome of the Nevada Senate race is going to be extremely close and both sides are going to have to accept the victory of the other candidate as legitimate in order to keep the situation within the bounds of a civil, democratic process. Stirring up fears that one party is trying to steal the elections is certainly not helping.

Chuck Grassley worries about scientists looking at porn.

An Elvis Presley impersonator — named Elvis Presley — is running for Arkansas governor.

McConnell also hopes the president will become a “born-again moderate.”

…while Bill O’Reilly wonders why Obama hasn’t come out in support of same-sex marriage.

Nobody wants to come to Charlie Rangel’s birthday party.

Wolves are back on the endangered species list.

In Virginia, Rep. Tom Perriello’s opponent wants to get rid of the IRS.

Rush Limbaugh thinks health care and beach houses are the same.

Milwaukee teachers want their insurance to cover Viagra.

Massa’s incredible radio meltdown over the weekend was tailor-made for talk radio and TV. It led the Drudge Report for much of Monday — today, Drudge is focusing on the not-so-subtle gay innuendo that Rahm Emanuel “thugs around gym showers.” And on the snippets I heard of talk radio yesterday, hosts delighted in how Massa validated their narrative of the Obama administration as a thuggish (always that word) Chicago mob that had the power to, say, initiate bipartisan ethics committee investigations of political enemies. Mark Levin, whose shtick is that of a brainy conservative lawyer who’s had enough, played clips of Massa bellyaching about the conspiracies against him — Levin, back in the studio, darkly intoned what this proved about the “Chicago machine.”

Fox News has had some trouble making this narrative stick. Last night’s episode of Greta Van Susteren’s show began with the host breathlessly reporting that Massa claimed to have been offered a “bribe” by unions — his word for union offers of electoral support if he voted for health care. When Van Susteren and guest Rick Santorum tried to delve deeper, they… well, here’s what happened:

SANTORUM: I — it’s — it’s irrational behavior. I don’t understand why he’s doing it. If he was as angry as he was at being forced out, he should have stayed. I mean…

VAN SUSTEREN: But was he really forced out? They’re having an investigation. I mean, his behavior — I mean…

SANTORUM: Yes. Investigating someone is not forcing someone out. I mean…

VAN SUSTEREN: Right. He was being investigated.

SANTORUM: He was being investigated. And I understand, you know, he’s obviously under a lot of pressure. There’s all these bizarre stories about Rahm Emanuel and — and what — you know — I don’t know. I don’t know…

VAN SUSTEREN: The nakedness in the shower. We got that on “Hannity.”

SANTORUM: Yes, OK, good. I…

VAN SUSTEREN: We don’t have to do the naked shower one.

This probably won’t end with a lot of glory for Massa or his short-term allies.