Why Does the United States Need This Rally For Sanity?

Tony Hopfinger, an editor for the on-line magazine Alaska Dispatch, was handcuffed and detained by private security after he attempted to interview Republican senate candidate Joe Miller at an Anchorage town hall event. Miller refuses to answer questions about his personal life after it was revealed that he was nearly fired from his attorney job in 2008 for a serious ethics breach.

Miller has also suggested that to put an end to immigration, the U.S. should build a wall to keep people out.

"If East Germany could do it, we could do it."

Poor Joe, who was endorsed by Sarah Palin, doesn't realize that the Berlin wall was put up to keep people in.

But as to the handcuffing of the journalists, apparently many Republican candidates are refusing to talk openly to reporters who don't work for Fox News. Fair enough. They know how to handle the crazies.

Carl Paladino, Republican candidate for NY, has taken a page from Jim Flaherty's playbook and wants to establish "welfare camps". He says: "Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene . . .the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes." He wants to put them all in underused prisons. He also claims that “There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual.” How about a dysfunctional candidate?

Nevada GOP Senate nominee and Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle, said recently: ''People ask me, 'What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?' Well, that's not my job as a U.S. senator.''

She also told a group of Latino students, asking about her prejudice, that they shouldn't worry, saying that "some of them look Asian".

But Angle didn't stop there. She claimed that Dearborn, Michigan and Frankford, Texas, are instituting Islamic sharia law, and demanded to know "how that happened in the United States." It didn't happen. She singled out Dearborn because it has a large Arab American population, and Frankford no longer exists. It was annexed by Dallas in 1975.

Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party candidate didn't know the first amendment.

In Colarado, Republican candidate Dan Maes is warning voters that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's efforts to boost bike riding, is "converting Denver into a United Nations community." He claims "This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,"

Eugene Robinson for the Washington Post wrote: "the big political story of the year may turn out to be the consequences of the GOP's foray into extremism and wackiness."

It's absolutely frightening.

Tomorrow’s Rally for Sanity led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert is going to be the most-covered event in Washington D.C. since the inauguration of President Obama.

There will be more than 1000 journalists and Oprah Winfrey is arranging transportation for thousands of Americans.

Will it work?

The Americans had better hope so. This is a Reform Party rerun.