Vitter's hypocrisy exposed in dealing with healthcare teabagging crowd.

Crooks and Liars:

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.