Our Stupid Thing of the Week comes to us from the John Locke Foundation, the quasi-libertarian think tank headquartered in Raleigh. The Lockers’ Leslee Kulba, who manages the group’s Asheville blog, has been drifting into a Glenn Beck-ish La-La Land of twisted history and mind-blowing paranoia. Kulba’s posts reveal someone who shares Beck’s view that all government is inherently evil, while she emulates the Fox loon’s penchant for bizarre Nazi comparisons.

Kulba recently blasted the NC Logistics Task Force, a group chaired by Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton. That group wants to help businesses create new jobs, including the development of “a plan for the seamless movement of people, goods, and information throughout the state and beyond,” or, in plainspeak, a comprehensive transportation system. Kulba’s reaction? She “explained” that what the task force really means is, "As with all evils, our lust to tax and regulate will never be satisfied, so we must become a more onerous task master." Sounds like another victim of Ayn Rand Poisoning, but hey, I’m not a doctor. And the task force’s plan for a comprehensive transportation system? Kulba wrote, “this conjures images of trains in Germany (1933-45)."

How else can someone with his/her head screwed on straight react to that kind of deranged nonsense but by exclaiming, “WTF are you talking about?!” Seriously, as Chris Fitzsimon of NC Policy Watch wrote about Kulba’s hogwash, “It's simply dumbfounding that this kind of offensive blather comes from a paid staffer of a group that wants to be taken seriously in the policy debate.”

The Lockers like to present their far-right ideology as respectable conservatism, but if they want their fearless leader, John "Mr. Smirky" Hood, to continue appearing in mainstream N.C. newspaper op-eds, the group may want to get a grip on their staff and stifle this kind of lunacy.

• Locke Foundation's John "Mr. Smirky" Hood