The circus that is the Republican presidential primary campaigns rolls on, with every day bringing more bizarre and extreme claims from candidates desperate to motivate the far-right activists.

That’s not just a liberal claim. Mainstream publications are pointing it out too. Check out this column by Rick Ungar on Forbes.com over the weekend.  Here’s how it begins.

You have to want to be President awfully badly to purposely scare the hell out of parents whose children face illness and disability in their lives. You also have to be a perfectly despicable human being.

The first line of this morning’s Winston-Salem Journal editorial is a pretty good summary of the way the General Assembly has been run recently.

House Speaker Thom Tillis apparently doesn’t much care for the democratic process, especially when people disagree with him.

In case you missed it this weekend, the Charlotte Observer’s Sunday editorial took House Speaker Thom Tillis to task for kicking peaceful protestors off the second floor of the Legislative Building last Thursday. The first paragraph says it all.

The special N.C. legislative session that convened Thursday didn’t feature another sneaky, post-midnight vote on controversial legislation, making a mockery of transparency in government and the public’s right to know. But House Speaker Thom Tillis still managed to shunt the public aside last week with another ill-advised move.

The New York Times editorial this morning explores the pernicious role the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is playing in state legislatures around the country. 

It’s based on a report from ProgressVA that found many bills in the Virginia General Assembly were lifted almost word for word from proposals from ALEC on issues like voter ID, anti-health care reform, gun rights, and for-profit virtual charter schools.

Sound familiar?

You might have missed it in all the talk about Governor Bev Perdue’s decision not to seek reelection, but the unhinging of House Speaker Thom Tills continued this weekend.

Tillis, who a few weeks ago compared the Charlotte Observer to roadkill because of its coverage of the unannounced midnight legislative session, this weekend sent out a Facebook message “resigning” himself to this:

The continued partisan and sometimes ruthless antics of the left aided by some in the mainstream press, will continue to threaten or stifle legitimate efforts to improve the situation in North Carolina for all involved

Mark Binker has the story on his Capital Beat blog, but Binker’s colleague Doug Clark, an editorial writer at the News & Record,  has the best take on the latest Tillis tirade. 

WSOC-TV in Charlotte talked with Tillis’ spokesman Jordan Shaw, who tried to explain what Tillis really meant and finally said “it’s just his personality.”