After barnstorming through southeastern Wisconsin talking about health care reform before returning to Washington D.C., Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, is now at the center of the immigration debate back home.

His appearance last month, along with several other members of Congress, at an event in Washington, D.C. has angered members of a local immigrant rights group.

The Milwaukee-based group Voces de la Frontera is organizing local high school students to march outside Ryan's Racine office Tuesday to protest his appearance at the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" event in September sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Organizers said the event was intended "to remind Congress and the new administration that rampant illegal immigration, efforts to grant amnesty, and taxpayer-subsidized health care benefits to millions of law-breakers are hot button issues for the American public.

FAIR has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its position on immigration issues and its founder's views on a wide variety of issues.

Dr. John Tanton, M.D., FAIR's founder and now a member of its board of directors, is the organization's intellectual leader, according to Heidi Beirich, research director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"He's a central player in the organization. He's not some ancillary guy. He's got this terrible legacy," Beirich said of Tanton, who ran the organization for a few decades and now serves on its board. "Frankly he's an extremist. He's funded white supremacist groups. He's hung out with white supremacists.

Keep in mind that Paul Ryan was going after ACORN long before any videos showed up, for "voter fraud" --- and you know what that means: the felons and the illegal aliens are trying to take everything you worked for by voting illegally. That he appears at a FAIR event, which is tantamount to appearing at a KKK rally, is pretty unsurprising.

Something strange has happened to rank-and-file Republicans since President Obama took office. These past few months, standard-issue gray lawmakers have sounded like fire-and-brimstone demagogues. Conspiracy theories and over-the-top legislation to fix imaginary wrongs are flying wildly around formerly mainstream GOP circles.

It turns out that like so much of what ails the world today, this can be traced back to Glenn Beck. Some fifth-term Iowa senator might be railing against death panels, but it's really Beck's voice you're hearing. With his show on Fox News, Beck has successfully positioned himself as the weirdo right's ambassador-at-large to the rest of the world. When the patron saint of the Tea Parties lets his freak flag fly, seemingly normal right-wing functionaries have been known to line up and salute. Republicans parrot Beck's crackpot notions and pet issues routinely -- sometimes running with his manias the morning after he first airs them.