Earlier this month, three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) was denied his party’s nomination by conservatives angry at Washington and Congress. Bennett’s loss raised questions of whether Utah’s other longtime senator, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), was “next in line for a pink slip.”

On her radio show today, Laura Ingraham asked Hatch whether he “would be re-elected” if he “were up for re-election in November.” “Yeah,” said Hatch, saying that he agreed with voters who believe that “these people in Washington are running this country right into the ground.” When Ingraham reminded Hatch that he was “part of Washington,” he denied it:

INGRAHAM: But aren’t you part of Washington?

HATCH: Hell no. I’ve never been. I’ve never considered this a job. I’ve had, people have asked me, they said, “say Senator Hatch, don’t you just love being a U.S. senator?” My constant answer is this. No, I don’t love it at all, but I’m good at it. And I’m here for a reason. And all I can say is I’ve never changed my reason. Now, I am fair. I’ve got a reputation for being fair and honest and decent. But the fact of the matter is, if you get Orrin Hatch on your side and he really gets, he really gets his back up, watch out. It’s just that simple and I’ve done it time after time after time.

Listen here:

Hatch’s claim that he’s “never been” part of Washington is laughable. Hatch, who was first elected in 1976, is the longest-serving senator in Utah history. He has been chairman of both the Judiciary and Labor committees and even ran for president in 2000. He participates in elite Washington events like the Gridiron Club and made an appearance in the movie Traffic in a scene re-creating a Georgetown cocktail party. In 2002, Hatch released a book, Square Peg: Confessions of a Citizen Senator, in which he admitted that living in Washington had “changed” him:

“You’ve forgotten us, Hatch,” one man screamed. “What are you, Hatch? Yelled another. “You’re sure not one of us anymore.”

I felt awed, overwhelmed for a moment by the force of their belief. Were they right? Had I really changed that much? Had I abandoned what — and whom — I stood for?

I thought back to the woman with the five dollars, whom I sometimes imagine sitting in judgment over everything I do as a senator. It’s not like that, I wanted to say — I haven’t forgotten you. Sure, I’ve changed. I’ve spent a quarter of a century in Washington, and over time you learn things. I’m more open to different ideas than I once was, more interested in the substance of a proposal than its author.

In the book, Hatch also said that he believes it is “important” for members of Congress to “move your family to Washington” because their “presence during the week is critical to keeping a sense of balance and perspective.” Indeed, Hatch’s family is now part of the Washington establishment. His son Scott is a partner in a Washington lobbying firm, Walker, Martin & Hatch, that was reportedly started with the senator’s “personal encouragement.”

Noting that Hatch has “been a Senator longer than I’ve been alive,” Matt Yglesias writes that Hatch is “a long-serving veteran legislator with a record you can defend or attack. But he’s definitely part of Washington.”

Our guest blogger is Joe Sonka, who is reporting on the ground from Kentucky. Sonka also maintains his own blog at Barefoot and Progressive.

U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul (R-KY), a darling of the tea party movement, has gained notoriety for his extreme views and close relationships with fringe leaders like Alex Jones. Part of Paul’s appeal has been his supposed support of individuals over large interests, like the government. But Paul appeared to reveal his true priorities during an interview with the candidate in Lexington over the weekend.

Paul was asked whether he supports the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark 1990 legislation that established a prohibition of discrimination on the basis of disability. Paul said he advocates local governments to decide whether disabled individuals deserve rights. Requiring businesses to provide access to disabled people, Paul argued, isn’t “fair to the business owner.” Later in the interview, when asked if he believes Americans have a right to use the 2nd Amendment to violently overthrow the government, a Paul staffer physically intercepted the recording and shuffled Paul away:

PAUL: You know a lot of things on employment ought to be done locally. You know, people finding out right or wrong locally. You know, some of the things, for example we can come up with common sense solutions — like for example if you have a three story building and you have someone apply for a job, you get them a job on the first floor if they’re in a wheelchair as supposed to making the person who owns the business put an elevator in, you know what I mean? So things like that aren’t fair to the business owner. [...]

Q: Do you think Americans, based on the 2nd Amendment, do you think they have a Constitutional right to violently overthrow the government?

PAUL STAFFER: Alright, we’ll have to stop recording.

Watch it:

While Paul is proud of his radical pro-business agenda, he is less willing to talk about his ties to the militia movement and violent anti-government groups. In March, Paul addressed a gathering of militia groups for an “open carry” rally by the Kentucky state capitol. The rally included groups like the Ohio Valley Freedom Fights, an organization that has openly worked with and defended the Michigan-based Hutaree militia. During his address to the rally, Paul called the armed attendees — many of whom were wearing “I’m A Rand Fan” stickers — his “private security detail.”

Although he had hoped for support from the tea party movement to boost Republican Party candidates this year, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has aggressively opposed Paul’s nomination. As we reported yesterday, while much of the GOP established has organized and encouraged radical tea party protests, they have lost control of insurgent extremist candidates like Paul.

Earlier this year, Texas faced national scrutiny for the efforts of a determined bloc of far-right ideologues on the Texas State Board of Education to rewrite history in the state’s social studies textbooks and curriculum. They succeeded in making students learn about the “conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,” “documents that supported Cold War-era Sen. Joseph McCarthy,” and the difference “between legal and illegal immigration.” Because of the state’s size, Texas has significant pull in shaping what the nation’s social studies books will say. However, California state Sen. Leland Yee (D) has introduced a bill to keep Texas at bay:

Under Yee’s bill, SB1451, the California Board of Education would be required to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks. The board must then report any findings to both the Legislature and the secretary of education.

The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”

Tom Adams, director of the state Department of Education’s standards and curriculum division, said the Texas standards could make their way into national editions of textbooks, but those aren’t used in California. “Our main concern is whether materials meet California’s standards,” he said. “There’s nothing in our review process that says we should be following Texas or anything like that.”

A new report in the Guardian reveals that the Texas State Board of Education also “dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous ‘Atlantic triangular trade,’ and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.” The board will be meeting again this week and conservatives have promised to “keep working to the last moment to correct years of liberal bias in history classes.”