Teabaggers disrupt Carnahan event; six arrested.

Six people, including a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, were arrested at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s forum on aging at Bernard Middle School in Mehlville, Mo. last night. An astroturfing campaign organized by Freedomworks as a response to coming health care legislation has resulted in disruptive gatherings by right-wing teabaggers who have shut down events across the country with shouting and, increasingly, physical violence.

Carnahan’s statement this morning: “Sadly we’ve seen stories about disrupters around the country, and we have a handful of them here in Missouri. Instead of participating in a civil debate, they have mobilized with special interests in Washington who have lined their pockets by overcharging Americans for a broken health care system… I will continue to engage with constituents that I am honored to represent in Congress and fight to achieve long-overdue health insurance reform in our country.”

Here’s coverage from Talking Points Memo and STLtoday.

Finally, Washington Post Deputy Business Editor Steven Pearlstein, who has been a critic of Democratic health care reform, writes in the Post today:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they’ve given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They’ve become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems.