Between the dismal WaPo and the fading New York Times, we’re getting a growing number of stories reporting on extreme right wing fantasies as though they’re serious news, and not just absurd right wing fantasies. C&L’s Dave Neiwert picks up the conspiracy aspects on Countdown.

Today’s Times features a story on nullification. It seems there are a "growing number" of folks who are so enraged by the prospects of national health care reform that they’re considering state "nullification," a term that hasn’t been around since the Civil War.

The nut jobs still haven’t forgiven Lincoln for freeing the slaves, and they’re probably still unhinged about the income tax and Social Security, and don’t even mention allowing the "coloreds" to use our drinking fountains or attend our schools. But now the feds want to require us to purchase health insurance? That’s the tipping point, so it’s time to spark a Constitutional Confrontation and who knows what else.

Now, I’m not a fan of how Congress is proposing mandates to move towards greater coverage. But the notion that there’s no way the Constitution would allow Congress to structure a tax to pay for health insurance for another 30 million souls is ludicrous. If that were unconstitutional, Social Security and Medicare would have been ruled out decades ago.

Right wing extremists have always hung around the fringes of civilization, and in the darkest economic and political times, they can gain ascendancy and wreak terrible damage on a nation, its people and founding institutions. We are trying to emerge from one of these periods.

But it doesn’t follow that legitimate media need becomes so confused or intimidated by their bullying that news editors feel obliged to treat them as anything more than delusional nut cases. Yet for some reason, that is what they are doing.

Now that the editors of WaPo and NYT have been bullied into treating seriously people who never got over the Civil War, we’re seeing more and more of these stories on places other than Fox News. And every time that happens without a clear indication from the editors that they’re describing people who should never be regarded seriously and whose ideas are either stupid, dangerous or both, we lose another brick from the foundations.

More:
Jamison Foster, Media Matter, on WaPo ombudsman and ideological diversity
Digby, Fair and Balanced
Rick Pearlstein, Q&A on Acorn and Wapo
TPM, Right-winger compares US to Nazi Germany, Says "Buy More Guns"
Digby, A vast failure
Atrios, Big Papers All Agree: Need to Listen to Even Nuttier Rightwingers