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Tea party-backed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) on Thursday told a conservative conference in Washington, D.C. that "restoring faith in government" was the "wrong solution" and that lawmakers should instead be encouraging "distrust."

Speaking to the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority conference, Johnson said that too many Americans had forgotten the "foundational premise of this nation," that the Founding Fathers understood government was "something to fear."

"Americans are willingly trading their freedom and ours for the false sense, for the false promise of economic security," he opined.

Johnson asserted that congressional approval ratings of 9 percent were "too high."

"So what surprises me is, why does at least a majority continue to elect politicians that are dedicated to growing this place?" he asked. "I have no idea. It utterly baffles me."

"We are witnessing the IRS scandal, we are witnessing the lies surrounding Benghazi, we are witnessing the very legitimate concern and debate about the NSA," the Wisconsin Republican added. "We have got to be looking at the big picture, we need to apply this dysfunction, this moment in history when America is rightfully distrusting the federal government over these other scandals -- we have got to make sure they apply that to the government in total."

"When I hear politicians talk about restoring faith in government... no, no, no, no, no. That is the wrong solution! We need to engender that healthy distrust, that healthy distrust that our Founders found with government."

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As we already discussed here, House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings appeared on CNN this weekend, and told host Candy Crowley that if Chairman Darrell Issa did not release all of the testimony from the IRS employees that their committee interviewed, he was going to do it -- and that the testimony given clearly shows that the White House was not involved in directing the IRS to target any tea party groups.

Of course, that doesn't fit the narrative they're still trying to push at Fox, so how do they handle it? By taking Rep. Cummings out of context and pretending not to know that the employee who directed his employees to look at these groups is 21-year veteran of the IRS and a self-described conservative Republican.

This interview on America's Newsroom was pathetic by even Fox's "standards" in that the lies are so bad you can tell host Bill Hemmer and his guest Stephen Hayesa are so full of it, they're having trouble pretending they believe the garbage they're shoveling here.

And as Media Matters noted, it's not the only segment like this one they aired this Monday: Fox Ignores Details To Dismiss Congressman's Claim That IRS Targeting Mystery Is Solved:

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First of all, if Bloody Bill Kristol is serious about the notion that Republicans are making a mistake by conflating any of these various "Obama scandals" he might want to ask Chris Wallace to go have a little chat with Neil Cavuto and tell him to simmer down.

Second, it's pretty obvious that his advice is going to fall on deaf ears, because he was promptly ignored by Lady McCheney Mary Matalin who, while sitting on the same panel with Kristol, proceeded to do just that.

And third, of course Kristol doesn't think that scooping up the data from millions of American citizens by the NSA is any big deal, but the drummed up IRS "scandal" where those poor teabaggers had to wait for a tax exempt status they never should have been granted in the first place, that is supposedly a national tragedy and a "very serious" abuse of power. Par for the course, it's upside down land over at Faux "News."

I was hoping we wouldn't see much of Matalin after she and her husband parted ways with CNN. Looks like she landed right where someone as toxic as she is belongs -- on Fox.

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During his New Rules segment this Friday evening, Bill Maher wrapped things up by taking both Bob Dole and President Obama to task for their praise of the one who shall never be spoken badly about in Republican circles, St. Ronnie Reagan.

As Maher rightfully pointed out, former Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole's claim on Fox News Sunday last month that Reagan could not have survived in today's Republican party doesn't exactly hold water if you actually bother to take a look at how Reagan behaved when he was in office.

MAHER: This has become a kind of conventional wisdom, that the Republican party has gone so far right, Reagan himself wouldn't fit in. But I'm here tonight to call bullshit on that.

Ronald Reagan was an anti-government, union busting, race baiting, anti-abortion and anti-gay, anti-intellectual, who cut rich people's taxes in half, had an incurable case of the military industrial complex, and said Medicare was socialism, that would destroy our freedom.

Sounds to me like he would fit in just fine. [...]

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I guess ABC thinks that Fox employees Karl Rove and Paul Gigot aren't getting quite enough air time on their Republican propaganda network, because they decided to allow the two of them to continue to dumb down the public dialog on this Sunday's This Week With George Stephanopoulos.

Rove in particular was especially toxic during this portion of the show, where heaven forbid Arianna Huffington and David Plouffe dared to point out to Turdblossom that his his Crossroads GPS is all about politics and that if Rove wants to complain about conservative groups being targeted by the IRS, he doesn't have any room to talk after what we saw from the Bush administration.

Karl Rove Melts Down When Confronted With Evidence of Bush IRS Investigation:

When David Plouffe confronted Karl Rove with evidence that his Bush administration used the IRS to investigate the NAACP, Rove melted down and stammered baloney. [...]

Rove lied about his association with GPS by leaving out one important detail. Rove isn’t on the board, but GPS works in direct conjunction with the group Rove founded and still advises, American Crossroads. Rove saying that he isn’t involved with GPS was just like Mitt Romney claiming that his presidential campaign wasn’t involved with the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future.

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Someone needs to ask Sen. Chuck Schumer to watch a few of Lawrence O'Donnell's recent segments on this so-called IRS "scandal" regarding the tax exempt status of these "social welfare" groups that are really just political organizations that want to hide their donor list.

Had Schumer been watching O'Donnell's show, he'd already know that the law on the books says that 501(c)(4) groups are supposed to be operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. We don't need a new law allowing them to have 10 percent of their activities involved in politicking as Schumer suggested on this Sunday's Meet the Press. We need to ask the IRS to start following the law as it is written already.

GREGORY: You lobbied the IRS to look into these groups. You didn't specify conservative groups, but there are those on the right who say that you and others effectively did, that you were really targeting conservative groups not to be given that tax exempt status.

SCHUMER: No, that's absolutely not true. First our letter came a year and a half after they started targeting the tea party, so it couldn't have caused it. That's for sure. But second, look at what our letter said. It says form a bright line and determine how much political activity a so-called social welfare organization can do before they lose their tax exempt status.

Our letter is actually the solution. I would propose that we say, we pass legislation that more than 10 percent, if more than 10 percent of your activity is political activity, you lose your tax exemption. And if you had a bright line, it wouldn't be up to some bureaucrat to make their own determination, perhaps wrongly based on political leans. It would be the same standard for all groups, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican.

That's what we need and our letter is actually the solution to the problem.

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A speaker at a tea party event in Texas recently suggested that that anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist was a secret Muslim because "he has a beard."

In a video posted by the Far North Dallas Tea Party on Thursday, Texas Eagle Forum President and former Chairman of the Texas Republican Party Cathie Adams presented evidence that Norquist was part of a "stealth jihad" in the United States.

Adams said that Norquist, who is married to a Muslim woman, was "trouble with a capital 'T'" because "he's showing signs of converting to Islam himself."

"As you see, he has a beard," she pointed out. "He's married a Muslim woman. But he denies that he has converted himself. He denies that."

"He and Karl Rove are very good friends. I don't like Karl Rove, and I certainly don't like Grover Norquist."

Adams went on to suggest that CIA Director John Brennan could also be a secret Muslim.

"Where is the outcry?" she asked. "Thank God that Ted Cruz is now in the United States Senate!"

Norquist, along with conservative activist Suhail Khan, are often labeled as stealth Muslims by Islamaphobic conservative activists led by Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer, most recently at at 2013 CPAC panel.

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

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Tea party-backed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday warned President Barack Obama that he was in danger of "losing the moral authority to lead this nation" because the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unfairly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.

"I don't know if people were targeted for conservative religious values or just conservative political values, and sometimes there's an overlap," Paul told ABC's Martha Raddatz, adding that the IRS scandal, last year's terrorist attacks in Benghazi and the news that some journalists were investigated for national security leaks were all taking away from "the president's moral authority to lead the nation."

"Nobody questions his legal authority," the Kentucky Republican explained. "But I think he's really losing the moral authority to lead this nation. And he really needs to put a stop to this."

"If no one is fired over this, I really think it's going to be trouble for him trying lead in the next four years," Paul added.

The president announced earlier this month, that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had asked for and received a letter of resignation from Steven Miller, the IRS acting commissioner.

(h/t: Mediaite)

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MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry had a few words of advice for the right-wing nominee for lieutenant governor in Virginia, who, as we have noted here, is more than just slightly nuts. As she reminded him, if he actually wants to be taken seriously by the voters for one of the more important jobs in his state, maybe he should be a little more worried about all of the crazy crap that comes out of his mouth.

Given his track record so far, which she laid out here very well, I think the chances of him toning it down before the election are somewhere between zero and none.

Here's her letter to Jackson from her post this Saturday: Really, Virginia GOP? E.W. Jackson is your nominee?

Dear Bishop E.W. Jackson:

It’s me, Melissa.

May I call you “Ewww…”?

Because I’ve heard what you’ve had to say about your politics. And quite frankly, it’s pretty disgusting. I wanted to begin my advice to you with the reminder that–as a candidate for public office — you must choose your words carefully.

But it’s a little late for that, isn’t it?

The Internet has already caught wind of some of your greatest hits. You know, like the time you called the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell “a disaster of historic proportions,” and said that “it must be reinstated.” Or when you said that gays and lesbians are “perverted…very sick people.”

Can’t forget your conspiracy theory classic about President Obama having “Muslim sensibilities” and seeing the world from a “Muslim perspective”! Oh yes, and then there was that time you claimed that “liberalism and their ideas have done more to kill black folks…than the Ku Klux Klan, lynching, slavery, and Jim Crow ever did.”

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Hey what do you know -- someone on Morning Joe got to call out a Republican for pulling factoids out of their posterior without Scarborough there screaming over them and interrupting. I guess he was taking a break during this segment. Don't worry though, his co-host Mika Brzezinski did her best to keep up scandal-mongering in his absence.

As a rule, you may as well turn on just Fox and be done with it than to sit through any of this show on MSNBC, but you do have some rare occasions where something like this happens: MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ Slams GOP Chair For Insinuating Obama Is Involved In IRS Scandal:

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday morning, panelist John Heilemann got into a heated argument with GOP Chairman Reince Priebus over President Obama’s role in the targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)4 status. Priebus offered a series of comments trying to tie Obama to the scandal — which Republicans have attempted to frame the IRS scandal as Obama’s ‘Watergate’ moment — leading Heilemann to shout “that’s an assertion that’s not actually borne out by any of the facts”:

HEILEMANN: Okay. You used two phrases just now saying we have to wait for the facts but I’m entitled to my opinion and before we have the facts just wait. You then said it’s lawlessness and guerrilla warfare and Obama is in the middle of. You say we need to have all of the facts before we can determine whether President Obama is in the middle of it and now you’re asserting the fact he’s in the middle of it. That is your public tweet.

PRIEBUS: I would say it is consistent. When I start out an investigation and say it’s low level employees in Cincinnati and then you find out there are senior level people in Washington. Then Pfeiffer goes on five Sunday morning shows and says the White House didn’t know anything about this and two days later you figure out that the chief of staff actually knew about it. You have a hundred and, what? 15 visits from Shulman to the White House and 132 Democratic senators pleading with the IRS to investigate this. And the Chief of Staff of the White House is now involved or at least knew about it when — two days earlier Pfeiffer said they didn’t know about it.

HEILEMANN: I thought you said you have the facts you need. If you don’t have the facts you need why are you saying he’s in the middle of it?

Never mind as they noted that the IG's report found nothing of the kind, and as Lawrence O'Donnell has been pointing out over and over again, the real scandal here is that any of these organizations doing political activities have been given tax exempt status as "social welfare" groups.