As the President so deftly said last night:

…when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter — that at that point we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.

So in a way, thanks South Carolina Rep./Hillbilly Joe Wilson, for proving the President's point. Andrew Sullivan would like to add…

But there was something clarifying about a Southern good ol' boy yelling "Liar" at the president over illegal immigration. That's what the GOP now is: the worst aspects of the old Democratic party combined with a nihilism that is only eclipsed by its catastrophic governance for the past eight years. Defeating these morons and actually creating a discourse for reform is what we elected Obama to do.

But they still insist on doing it to themselves, don't they? That's the silver lining.