If you believe me, I’m guessing that this is an offer you can’t refuse. On the other hand, we know U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s answer to my question is "no." That’s because I really do have this drug. It’s called the HPV vaccine, which prevents cervical cancer. I administer it to teens (mostly girls, but increasingly boys) in my practice every day.

I won’t waste words refuting Bachmann’s ridiculous (and campaign-killing) claim that the HPV vaccine causes "mental retardation." But here are the facts: The American Cancer Society estimates that about 4,000 women die from cervical cancer in the United States each year. Approximately $4 billion is spent annually on these conditions. The HPV vaccine is virtually 100 percent effective in preventing infection by strains of the virus associated with 70 percent of cervical cancers. A second HPV vaccine is also highly effective, preventing more than 90 percent of infections. Researchers estimate that if widespread vaccination is achieved, cervical cancer could drop by as much as 77 percent. That’s as close to a cure for cancer as we’ve ever had.

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OK, so Bachmann won a meaningless straw poll in Ames, Iowa -- where old duffers get a free lunch and a bus ride to the state fair in exchange for their votes. Fellow no-hope candidate Ron Paul finished a close second. Even so, the unanimity with which GOP savants turned against the fair Michele after she got in Texas Gov. Rick Perry's face demonstrated how consent gets manufactured on the pseudo-populist Republican right.

She ought to have known better than to have heeded this column. "If Michele Bachmann can't make an issue of [Rick Perry's] ill-fated executive order requiring sixth-grade Texas girls to be vaccinated against sexually transmitted diseases," I had written, "she's got no business running."

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When confronted on this, after a few days of both liberals and conservatives decrying her, Bachmann did not really apologize or correct the record. Instead, she said it's OK for her to say things like that because she never told anyone she's a doctor. As long as you don't lie about a doctor, you can claim anything you like about medical matters, on TV, and it's OK! (I'm not a doctor but I heard that if you make your baby wear a onesie with a "funny" slogan on it your baby will die.)

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

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Lieberman, the "model purple senator" and avowed champion of moderation, is surely praising centrist Republican Jon Huntsman and pragmatic former blue-state governor Mitt Romney, right? Nope. Lieberman instead has kind words for Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, the 2012 race's two most outspoken conservatives.

Why does Joe Lieberman, former Democratic candidate for vice president, like Bachmann and Perry so much? (I mean besides because those two are the ones who inspire the more liberal fear and loathing?) Because Bachmann and Perry share Joe Lieberman's love of constant sanctimonious religious moralizing, of course.

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She accused Perry of only supporting the policy for money:

What I’m saying is that it’s wrong for a drug company, because the governor’s former chief of staff was the chief lobbyist for this drug company. The drug company gave thousands of dollars in political donations to the governor, and this is just flat-out wrong. The question is, is it about life, or was it about millions of dollars and potentially billions for a drug company?

She got worse after the debate, on Fox and the "Today" show, when she said an unnamed mother told her that her daughter became "retarded" after receiving the vaccine.

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You could tell when the Politico/MSNBC-sponsored debate began that the moderators wished there were fewer people onstage. Almost the first 15 minutes of the debate were spent on an argument solely involving the only two people with a shot at the nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney. Brian Williams and John Harris clearly preferred addressing their serious questions to those two, and many of the questions aimed at the others onstage were about one of those two ex-governors. Poor Michele Bachmann, heretofore the only credible non-Romney candidate, seemed barely to be present. Huntsman got a lot of airtime, but he's been getting plenty of press attention this whole time.

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More than 30 years after Britain's first woman prime minister entered Downing Street, America is still searching for its first female president. Sarah Palin has named Thatcher as one of her heroines, and Michele Bachmann compared herself to the former prime minister last week (and may well do it again during tonight's GOP debate). How do the Tea Party pretenders measure up to Britain's Iron Lady?

The important thing to realize about Margaret Thatcher is what a remarkable phenomenon she was. She fought her way up from a very modest background purely by merit, determination and hard work, at a time -- the 1950s and 1960s -- when women politicians were very few, mainly unmarried or childless and usually confined to "feminine" portfolios like education or government price controls. While her children were still very young she read for the bar, practiced as a tax lawyer, overcame the prejudice of selection committees to get herself elected to Parliament and quickly became a junior minister. Professional women juggling motherhood with demanding jobs are quite normal today; but Thatcher was a feminist pioneer long before she became prime minister.

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The race starts now in part because the field is settled and more debates will take place this month, but it is actually the "official" start to the race because everyone is back from summer vacation. Sure, there have been reporters in Iowa and New Hampshire all summer, but all the stuff that happened last month was just a preview for the for-real campaign that begins, like the school year, after Labor Day.

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It's not really new for "tenthers" like Bachmann and Perry to enlist the 10th Amendment as an argument against programs they dislike, although their tentherist utterances exceed similar impulses by yesterday's righties.

Don't get your hopes up, but wouldn't it be great if this campaign, especially the Bachmann and Perry campaigns, led the country to face the fundamental question of tentherism?

For those of you coming late to the discussion, the Tenth Amendment, written by James Madison to fulfill a bargain even though he thought it unnecessary, states:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

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The Newsweek Michele Bachman cover posted newsstand sales no higher than most other Newsweek covers. The "crazy eyes" cover moved 47,225 copies, according to Newsweek, though AdWeek says other industry sources say it sold somewhere between 35,000 and 48,000. Is that good? Well, "the magazine's single copy sales averaged 46,561 per issue in the first half of 2011."

We are talking only about newsstand sales, not total circulation, but this does mean that Bachmann's incredibly controversial and very buzzy crazy eyes did not "move the needle," as annoying people say. Of course, the actual article about Bachmann, inside of the eye-grabbing cover, was pretty bland. But since when does the quality of the journalism have anything to do with newsstand sales?

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But Bachmann's will be widely remarked upon, picked over by bloggers and journalists, and probably a best-seller. It will also be just a boring as Bill Richardson's "Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life." Because the book marks the completion of Michele Bachmann's transformation into an establishment candidate.

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The critics are wrong. A president of the United States can drive gasoline prices down, and the promise to do so is not new. Though Bachmann did not immediately provide a plan on how she would drive prices at the pump lower, there have been many plans promoted to lower the price of gasoline, and she may have drawn from some of them.

She may have been listening to The Donald. In his short-lived run for the White House, Donald Trump said he would bring the price of oil down by seizing the oil fields of Iraq and Libya and putting total production of these two countries in our gasoline stations. Two problems with that scenario: First, the seized oil would have to first pass through the world market where it would be available to the highest bidder. And two, it would be a criminal act of the highest order. Details.

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All the attention came in the weeks before and after "The Response," Perry's highly publicized prayer rally modeled on what organizers believe is the "solemn assembly" described in Joel 2, in which "end-times warriors" prepare the nation for God's judgment and, ultimately, Christ's return. This "new" movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, is one strand of neo-Pentecostalism that draws on the ideas of dominionism and spiritual warfare. Its adherents display gifts of the spirit, the religious expression of Pentecostal and charismatic believers that includes speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing and a belief in signs, wonders and miracles. These evangelists also preach the "Seven Mountains" theory of dominionism: that Christians need to take control of different sectors of public life, such as government, the media and the law.

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Mr. Special Agent Grabby also threatened to break a reporter's arm. The reporter is both Norwegian and conservative, making him the least likely threat to Michele Bachmann alive.

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Why talk about it now? Well, as the presidential field winnows down to just one Minnesotan, and Bachmann is routinely described as a top-tier contender for the nomination, inquiring minds who haven't witnessed Bachmann's gravity-defying act from as close-up for as long as we Minnesotans have need our help in understanding just what the heck is up with her.

I covered Bachmann extensively from the year of her first congressional race until she stopped returning my calls, perhaps because of the story I'm about to recount. But the tale offers a detailed case study of one of Bachmann's signature traits. It's her pattern of saying things she can't back up and wiggling through the ensuing questions without ever acknowledging the falsehood or explaining how she came to say it in the first place.

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This is why the Journal's lead editorial today is worth paying close attention to. It comes after an eventful weekend in the GOP presidential race, one that clearly defined the race as a three-way competition between Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann. The Journal, though, isn't exactly impressed with any of them. When it comes to Bachmann, the editorial is at its most scathing:

Mrs. Bachmann has a record of errant statements (see Battle of Lexington and Concord, history of) that are forgiven by Fox Nation but won't be if she makes them as a GOP standard-bearer.

More substantively, her attempt to position herself at all times as the anti-establishment outsider has made her seem on occasion less principled than opportunistic.

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It's common for Christian politicians questioned about their adherence to submission theology to dodge a scriptural explanation, as Bachmann did. After all, while dominionist-minded evangelicals like Bachmann intentionally set out to bring their "biblical worldview" into politics, they recognize that it's bad 21st century politics -- especially for a female candidate -- to admit to a theology that could cause the same gasps and boos from voters who would recoil at the image of an obedient wife as president of the United States.

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Appearing on MSNBC's "Meet the Press," she told host David Gregory, "I don't judge them," when pushed to clarify her views.

Gregory noted that comments she made in 2004 certainly sounded like judgment (including her suggestion at the time that homosexuality was "personal enslavement" and a "sexual dysfunction.")

Bachmann tried to suggest that such issues were not important to her presidential run, but Gregory was quick to note that the congresswoman had in the past called gay marriage a "defining" political issue of our time.

When asked whether she would consider appointing an openly gay judge, Bachmann refused to give a firm answer, saying only "I have my criteria."

Watch the clip below: 

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Both candidates attacked each other's political records (Pawlenty as governor; Bachmann in Congress) and as Kornacki put it, "her words were strong, but so was her delivery.. Pawlenty’s delivery, on the other hand, called to mind a hostage tape, a man saying words that he knows he has to say, but doesn’t really want to or know how to."

We thought you might want to see the clip of the most heated moment in the Iowa debate, via Mediaite: 

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The National Organization of Women's Terry O'Neill disagreed, saying “It’s sexist...Gloria Steinem has a very simple test: If this were done to a man or would it ever be done to a man – has it ever been done to a man? Surely this has never been done to a man.”

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