Following Rep. Michele Bachmann’s appearance with Chris Matthews yesterday, America is learning what many in Minnesota already knew, which is that putting Bachmann in front of a live microphone is like handing an excitable 15-year-old a bottle of gin and a loaded gun. The only question is when something unspeakable is going to happen.

Bachmann is no stranger to the hysterical off-the-cuff reaction. In her BC (Before Congress) incarnation, perhaps the most celebrated instance of Michele being Michele was a bizarre 2005 incident in a little town called Scandia. At the conclusion of a heated town meeting, then-state Sen. Bachmann retreated to a bathroom, where a couple of her constituents followed to continue the argument.

Then, according to a police report (PDF) that Bachmann later filed with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office:

BACHMAN [sic] STATED THAT WHEN SHE WAS GETTING READY TO LEAVE SHE WENT TO THE RESTROOM. SENATOR BACHMAN STATED THAT WHEN SHE WAS TRYING TO LEAVE THE RESTROOM, 2 WOMEN BLOCKED IN AND TOLD HER THEY WANTED TO CONTINUE TALKING. SEN BACHMAN STATED SHE WAS AFRAID AND SCREAMED FOR HELP. THE 2 WOMEN LET HER LEAVE THE RESTROOM WHEN SHE SCREAMED. THE WOMEN ARE BELIEVED TO BE W/ THE GLBT GROUP.

In short, Michele Bachmann claimed to have been briefly kidnapped, and caused to fear for her safety, by a pair of argumentative lesbian constituents. The incident never resulted in charges, in part because Bachmann’s own account of it kept shifting. (The Dump Bachmann blog has a good contemporaneous summary.)

Shortly after arriving in Congress, Bachmann briefly made headlines by revealing to St. Cloud Times reporter Lawrence Schumacher that the US government had agreed to a secret plan to turn half of Iraq over to Iran: “There is already agreement made,” said Bachmann. “They are going to get half of Iraq, and that is going to be a terrorist safe haven zone where they can go ahead and bring about more attacks in the Middle East, and come against the United States.”

From lesbian stalkers to secret US deals with terrorists — and now, anti-Americans skulking round Capitol Hill — few members of Congress have as keen an eye for threats no one else can see as Michele Bachmann.

And given as much, it has been amazing to see her emergence in 2008 as one of the most conspicuous faces of the Republican congressional caucus. Bachmann has been all over the cable networks for the past six months or so — bashing immigrants with Bill O’Reilly, holding forth on Sarah Palin and more with Larry King, chanting “drill baby drill” and “no bailout” on CNBC.

It was bound to come to trouble eventually, and it was Bachmann’s status as a second-line Sarah Palin surrogate that finally undid her. While pushing Palin’s Bill Ayers attack line, Bachmann did not restrict herself to the customary associations, such as “radical” and “terrorist.”

With her boundless enthusiasm for demonizing those she views as godless, Bachmann cheerfully broke new ground in the Ayers/Jeremiah Wright culture wars by forging a series of associations between “leftists” and “liberals” and “anti-Americans,” inside and outside Congress, who in Bachmann’s view ought to be investigated.

And all this as her campaign for re-election in the Sixth District was already facing a nascent pardon request scandal and tightening polls. No wonder Bachmann seems so tetchy and fearful these days. Someone — specifically, that woman in the mirror — is out to get her.