'It's astounding. Time is fleeting . . .'

". . . Madness takes its toll":

To Sen. [Sheldon] Whitehouse, "the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety" means ramming through a 2,000-page health-care bill before Christmas, by any means necessary, so that President Obama will have a major accomplishment to celebrate in his State of the Union Address next month. That is perfectly rational, according to Sen. Whitehouse and the Democrats, and therefore it is crazy to oppose them. . . .

That's from my Hot Air Greenroom post, which references the Rocky Horror Health Care Debate and links my latest American Spectator column:

Even before the Senate voted on cloture, the Democrats' health-care legislation was already delivering benefits in the form of a free mental-health screening delivered by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: If you oppose this bill, you're a dangerous nut.
Such was the essence of Sunday's floor speech in which the junior senator from Rhode Island quoted at length from Richard Hofstadter's 1965 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and offered it as a diagnosis of the health bill's opponents.
Whitehouse paraphrased Hofstadter's thesis, warning of "the dangers of an aggrieved right-wing minority with the power to create what [Hofstadter] called a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible." . . .

Read the whole thing. I'm not exactly sure why those old lyrics from "The Time Warp" popped into my head in the wee hours. Probably because Sheldon Whitehouse is right: I'm crazy.

But you already knew that, didn't you? It's a pre-existing condition! We're all going to get free health care! And if you believe that, you're crazier than me . . .

UPDATE: Reaganite Republican:

You know, it takes one hell of a lot of nerve to ram deeply-unpopular spending down our throats . . . then engage in character assasination when we finally speak-up about it.

Yid With Lid is also on the case, linking Kerry Pickett, who actually interviewed the Yalie yutz:

I approached Senator Whitehouse following his speech on the floor, and his responses to my questions were puzzling, to say the say the least. Mr. Whitehouse said he stood by his speech, but would not admit that he was accusing anyone who was against the health care bill as racist. He did reiterate that birthers are part of the group that is against the bill and are attacking president.

Supporters of the bill include the SEIU thugs who beat up Kenneth Gladney, but nobody's blaming Sen. Whitehouse for that. Maybe they should.

More at Memeorandum., including commentary by Mark Steyn and Erick Erickson.