Michele Bachmann was the target of harsh criticism Tuesday after she asserted that the human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine could cause mental retardation. For once, people from both sides of the political spectrum, health professionals and advocates for people with disabilities all agreed: Bachmann got it very wrong.

Bachmann made her remarks immediately following Monday’s tea party debate. She had dogged Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the issue of the vaccine during the debate because she disagreed with Perry’s past attempts at mandating it for public school children.

“The problem is it comes with some very significant consequences,” Bachmann said of the vaccine on FOX news following the debate. “There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine. There are very dangerous consequences. It’s not good enough to take, quote, ‘a Mulligan’ or you want a do-over. Not when you have little children’s lives at risk.”

It wasn’t simply a gaffe, because on Tuesday morning Bachmann repeated the same story on the Today Show, alleging that the vaccine can have “very dangerous side effects” and that ”people have to draw their own conclusions.”

Later Bachmann added, “There is no second chance for these little girls if there’s any dangerous consequences to their bodies.”

‘Dangerous and Irresponsible’
On Tuesday evening, Dr. O. Marion Burton, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement criticizing Bachmann’s statements.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics would like to correct false statements made in the Republican presidential campaign that HPV vaccine is dangerous and can cause mental retardation,” Burton said. “There is absolutely no scientific validity to this statement. Since the vaccine has been introduced, more than 35 million doses have been administered, and it has an excellent safety record.”

Burton pointed out that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Academy of Family Physicians all recommend that girls receive HPV vaccine around age 11 or 12: “This is a life-saving vaccine that can protect girls from cervical cancer.”

The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership also released a statement.

“Congresswoman Bachmann’s decision to spread fear of vaccines is dangerous and irresponsible,” said Evan Siegfried, a spokesman GRASP. “There is zero credible scientific evidence that vaccines cause mental retardation or autism. She should cease trying to foment fear in order to advance her political agenda.”

Dr. Paul Offit, author of Autism’s False Prophets, told Mother Jones that Bachmann’s comments could misinform people who are genuinely trying to educate themselves about vaccines.

Even Merck, the maker of Gardasil, the brand name for many HPV vaccines used by American physicians, weighed in. “We are confident in the safety profile of Gardasil,” Pam Eisele, a spokeswoman for the company told Financial Times. “Leading health organisations throughout the world have reviewed all the safety information available and continue to recommend its use.”

By Tuesday night, the Washington Post already had published an editorial harshly criticizing the congresswoman.

“Ms. Bachmann’s hysterics about hapless little girls being forced to get injections has us wondering if she would roll back requirements for what has come to be routine immunizations against polio, chicken pox, measles and other diseases,” the paper wrote. “‘Cervical cancer is a horrible way to die,’ Mr. Perry said Monday. Equally horrible is the thought that small-minded political arguments could sabotage the means that are on hand to stop the spread of this deadly virus—and could undermine the control of many other diseases besides.”

Conservatives React
Right-wing talker Rush Limbaugh said the Bachmann jumped the shark with her statement.

“Alright, now she had scored the points in the debate. But now this comment has become a news item for Bachmann today, rather than what she said at the debate last night,” Limbaugh said. “That’s what I mean by ‘jumping the shark.’ She scored the points and should have left it there.”

Perry himself attacked Bachmann’s comments.

“You heard the same arguments about giving our children protections from some of the childhood diseases, and they were.. autism was part of that. Now we’ve subsequently found out that was generated and not true,” Perry told NBC. “I would suggest to you that this issue about Gardasil and making it available was about saving people’s lives.”

Conservative blogger and Minnesota native, Ed Morrissey, was perplexed by Bachmann’s statement.

“The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television,” Morrissey wrote. “It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didn’t bother to check the facts, and didn’t care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either. Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.”

After campaigning over the last month on social media, Rep. Michele Bachmann secured enough votes from followers to be included in TIME magazine’s list of the top 100 most influential people of 2011. Controversial conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh wrote the profile on Bachmann for the magazine, and Bachmann is the only 2012 hopeful to make the list.

Here’s Limbaugh’s review of Bachmann:

I don’t mind telling you that I’m a great admirer of Michele Bachmann’s. Far from being the fringe outlier depicted by the mainstream media — and all too often by some on the right — she is a strong spokeswoman for unapologetic conservatism. She is neither extreme nor unreasonable, which is why her philosophy has resonated with grass-roots conservatives. She is unafraid to speak out against the crushing debt crisis we face. She is energized, rather than deterred, by the caustic criticism she constantly endures.

Michele, 55, had ambition from the get-go. A stay-at-home mom of five children and 23 foster kids, she ultimately became a tax attorney, small-business owner with her husband and political firebrand who runs rings around her opponents. If she were liberal, she’d be celebrated from the mountaintops. But she’s conservative. So because she is smart, talented and accomplished and a natural leader — not to mention attractive — the left brands her as a flame-throwing lightweight. They underestimate her at their own risk.

Bachmann may have pushed for inclusion, but in a statement she said she’s “humbled to learn of my selection and grateful to be named among such a variety of notable people affecting our world.”

“My inclusion on this list is a reflection of the growing voice of everyday Americans who desire to preserve and further the liberty on which our great country was founded,” she added.

In a Facebook message on Thursday morning she was more pointed.

“While Democrats may call us extreme, we know our Tea Party values reflect the best of America — being included on TIME’s list is a welcome affirmation,” Bachmann wrote. “Click ‘like’ if you agree with Rush Limbaugh that the Left underestimates us at their own risk.

Bachmann campaigned hard on Facebook and Twitter to get included on the list. TIME ran a contest among readers who could vote from a list just shy of 200 figures. Over the last few weeks, she send out reminders urging her supporters to vote her up the list.

“Today is the last day to take a stand in the 2011 Time 100 Most Influential Poll,” she wrote earlier this week. “Show liberals & the mainstream media that constitutional conservatives are influential. “Like” this if you’ll consider supporting me.”

And on Twitter her campaign team wrote, “Michele is an American leader. Tell Time’s editors she belongs on their 100 list http://ti.me/gWwngy #TIME100″

Bachmann finished 45th on the list with 12,889 votes.

Laura Melnick’s piece, “Michele’s Precious Moments,” features various infamous quotations from the second-term Republican on topics such as global warming and human evolution:

The other piece, “GOP Sideshow,” is a triptych by St. Paul artist Teresa Anderson. It features Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

See more political seed art at our Flickr page.

Photo: whitehouse.gov

Vice President Joe Biden has been booked for Al Franken’s swearing-in as a U.S. Senator, and Franken says he will be accompanied at the ceremony by former Vice President Walter Mondale and Sen. Amy Klobuchar. It “looks like” it will happen next Tuesday, he said — a date that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office told the Minnesota Independent is “likely.”

Franken was asked in a Thursday afternoon interview on The UpTake whether he was pinching himself.

“I am. There’s something surreal about all this. I don’t think it would been quite as surreal if I’d just won on election night,” Minnesota’s senator-elect said. “Finally, so suddenly, just boom! It happens.”

The six-month delay in getting seated rankles Franken. He called his absence — while a committee he’s assigned to (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) tackles health care — “one of the things I’m most upset about not being seated right away. … I’m going to sit in on the [health care bill's] markup but I’m not actually a member of the committee until [after] they get this finished.

“I am very predisposed to a public option [for health care reform],” Franken said. “But the devil’s always in the details.”

Franken was interviewed by phone on the citizen-journalism website that streamed live video of most of the recount and election-contest trial. ”I want to thank you and The UpTake,” Franken said, “for showing the process for what it is.”

Did he watch the post-election proceedings on The UpTake? “I did watch. In fact, you ruined my vacation,” Franken deadpanned. “My campaign manager made us take a vacation the first week of the trial. We just couldn’t enjoy ourselves at all.” Apparently he still has a tanline from his laptop.

If Norm Coleman runs for governor, what advice would Franken have for a DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) candidate running against him?

“To call me,” Franken quipped.

What does he think of Rush Limbaugh comparing Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election to Iran’s recent presidential election?

“That’s one of the great things about running for public office,” Franken said. “You don’t have to listen to Rush Limbaugh. That’s one of the great pleasures of not being on the radio, where it was kind of the easy thing to do, listen to it and react to him.”

Franken offered no defense of the controversial Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). “I’m pro-same-sex marriage,” he said. “I think DOMA will be history soon.” He cited commentator George F. Will’s observation that to his daughter’s generation, being gay is about as interesting as being left-handed. “I actually think it’s more interesting,” Franken said, adding that despite predictions that his out-front support for same-sex marriage would sideline his Senate campaign, “it just never became an issue.”

UPDATE: Here’s a video of TheUptake’s online/radio interview with Al Franken on July 2:

But changed to what? Is he cozying up to the Republican base, as opposed to Minnesota voters who trend to the center, now that his Senate bid seems to be winding down? Angling for a party job?

Photo: MPR Polinaut

Gov. Tim Pawlenty is no longer swimming at the deep end with the Republican Party’s top 10 ‘influencers,” says The Fix. But he had another visit from the person in the fish suit during his radio show today — a sure sign it’s time to declare a winner in last week’s caption contest.

The Washington Post blog The Fix posts a monthly ranking of top Republicans, but Minnesota’s governor — a fixture on the list — wasn’t named this month.

Pawlenty and Rush Limbaugh fell off the chart in favor of Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele and Utah Gov. John Huntsman.

Pawlenty may have hurt his chances by not following The Fix blogger Chris Cillizza’s instructions last month to hurry up and decide whether he’s running for re-election or president. 

Maybe the sauciness of his quips to the media tomorrow during his 3 a.m. fishing expedition on White Bear Lake will give some indication of his plans.

At last year’s fishing opener, his bawdy wisecrack about not having sex with his wife caused ripples of speculation about how such talk would affect his chances to become Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential pick.  

And speaking of White Bear Lake and fish and making decisions, here’s a winner in last week’s caption contest. (The photo was from Pawlenty’s appearance at the White Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce.)  

Photo: Tom Scheck, MPR Polinaut

While philosophically opposed to the Obama Administration’s TARP bailout, Gov. Pawlenty could not say no to the recently announced CARP stimulus package.

A box of MnIndy-brand fish sticks goes out to reader Bob Moffitt for that one. Thanks to all who submitted captions – they were funny.

Pawlenty interview, his third appearance on Maddow’s show, starts at 4:15:

(That quote seems appropriate to recall in view of tonight’s DFL Party precinct caucuses, but no disrespect is intended toward precinct chairmen and chairwomen of any party.)

Despite Limbaugh’s GOP preeminence and his having provided Franken with an entree into writing political books, Franken professes not to care about him anymore. From an Air America interview last month:

FRANKEN: … The only downside was, you know, the Republican talking point that I was a communist or a socialist or something like that on Air America, that I was the same as Rush Limbaugh. I would answer: “No, I’m the opposite of Rush Limbaugh.” I’m not the mirror image, I’m the opposite.

AA: Given your famous spats with Limbaugh and O’Reilly, what have they been saying about your success, or do you now tune them out?

FRANKEN: Well, you know what? I’ve already been doing that. I don’t know what they’ve been saying. I really don’t. I haven’t been paying any attention. That is the great thing about doing this. You really stop paying attention to that. … The past couple of days I’ve been going around talking to mayors in Duluth and Two Harbors, Minn., the mayor of Champlain, the mayor of St. Paul, the mayor of Rochester, county commissioners, et cetera, trying to figure out how they can get access to the stimulus package and what they need. That seems much more productive than trying to listen to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly and hear what they think about me. Actually, that was one of the nicest things that happened to me once I left the radio show — I stopped paying attention to them.

But if Franken doesn’t care about Limbaugh anymore, Republican National Committee Michael Steele has to. Steele beat a fast retreat, issuing a public apology after his post-CPAC comments that Limbaugh’s schtick is “incendiary” and “ugly.”

The winner of the straw poll was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, garnering 20 percent of the vote. He was followed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (14 percent), Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (13 percent), Texas Rep. Ron Paul (13 percent) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (10 percent).

Of the 10 contenders on the ballot, Pawlenty outpaced only Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who’s become a heretical figure in the GOP for supporting the $787 billion stimulus package.

In another shocking CPAC polling development, Rush Limbaugh was voted the most popular media personality by participants, taking 26 percent of the vote. He easily outpaced Glenn Beck (17 percent), Sean Hannity (11 percent) and Bill O’Reilly (10 percent).