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Max Blumenthal at The Daily Beast has a damning expose of Louisiana Sen. David Vitter's incredible hypocrisy in dealing with the health-care teabagging crowd.

First, Vitter crows to the press that, unlike some of his fellow congresscritters, he's not afraid to have teabaggers at his town hall meetings:

“Please know that this and any other angry mob is welcome at my town-hall meetings whenever you want to come,” Vitter declared, bringing the audience to its feet with a raucous ovation.

But what he apparently is afraid of is dealing with any Democrats who favor health-care reform -- because he excluded them from his town halls:

At a town-hall meeting on August 10 in Jefferson Parish, many local constituents were reportedly turned away while Tea Party activists were allowed to enter. When the event concluded, Vitter rushed out of the back door and away from the press and his constituents, guarded by a phalanx of police officers.

But the most disturbing part of the piece featured Vitter actually promoting the effort by right-wing extremists -- which has been similarly encouraged by both Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, and Sean Hannity -- to advocate "state sovereignty" as a means of defying the federal government:

Vitter earned even more enthusiastic cheers with a not-so-subtle appeal to states’ rights. When an audience member asked him if Louisiana could withdraw from Obama’s health-care plan if it passed, Vitter proclaimed, “The first thing we need to do is elect members of Congress who respect the Tenth Amendment.”

Invocations of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution” to the “states respectively, or to the people,” have become common among secessionists seeking a veneer of constitutional legitimacy.

As I explained when Beck did this, these "10th Amendment" theories are not only highly dubious, they actually originated in the 1990s with the black-helicopter/militia crowd:

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May 08, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show

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...during her confirmation hearing today was really too unbelievable to comprehend. Watching the man in the center of a huge Hookergate scandal sitting there trying to destroy Bill Clinton's Global Initiative was like staring at Salvador Dali painting in the halls of Congress.

Even Sean Hannity and Kathryn Jean Lopez -- not exactly right-wing shrinking violets -- were urging Vitter to resign.

Moments ago, Republican Senator David Vitter held his first press conference since his admission that he cheated on his wife by using an escort service in Washington D.C.. Vitter claims he is the victim of his political enemies and just like all good, hypocritical Republicans these days, he's not going to the right thing.

He pays no price for his hanging with hookers by the traditional media and he's acting like a smug jackass to Hillary.

Digby has more:

Whenever I see some little diaper wearing toady like David Vitter get all filled with righteous indignation about conflict of interest and setting precedents I just have to laugh. George W. Bush's entire family was a walking conflict of interest for eight years --- his father even accepting money directly from the Saudi Arabian government for his own personal use. It was assumed that Poppy was clean because well .... he was one of them, if you know what I mean.

The village doesn't like Clinton doing this work because it makes their obsessive loathing look petty and shallow, which it is. They insist that there must be something nefarious about it, because they are still convinced that Bill Clinton came to town and trashed the place and they cannot rest until everyone in the world agrees with them. Which it never will.

December 11, 2008 C-SPAN