But it's sure hard to ignore the blogging/Facebook/Twitter clamor. Any extreme weather event nowadays immediately brings up a consideration of its relationship to climate change and heat waves are especially conducive to such chatter. On this point, liberal-minded bloggers have been boringly unanimous in their careful equivocation. Nearly every single commentator takes pains to note that no single weather event can be conclusively tied to climate change. At the same time, it would be criminal not to observe that this year, so far, is on track to be one of the warmest years on record, and blistering heat waves are the kind of thing one might naturally expect as temperatures rise. (China, by the way, is also experiencing a record heat wave this week.)

Contrast this measured treatment to the outpouring from right-wing bloggers during the winter snow storms, when the impressive precipitation was immediately seized upon as evidence that global warming was indisputably a crock. And not just by bloggers! Conservative politicians were quick to follow along. South Carolina's Jim DeMint tweeted: "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle.'" Sen. James Inhofe's grandchildren built an igloo with a sign on it proclaiming it "Gore's New Home."

But so far as I can tell, Inhofe and DeMint are keeping mum on the great East Coast heat wave. Their twitter-streams are silent. The joking banter is nowhere to be seen. Maybe they're suffering heat stroke from too much time out under the sun during July 4th BBQs, or maybe they're just so confident that climate change legislation is dead in the water that they don't even feel defensive.

Whatever the case, I can't, of course, pretend that I expected Inhofe or DeMint to retract their fervent belief that global warming is a hoax just because New York air-conditioner-driven electricity consumption may have broken a one-day all time record today. But where are the Democratic ripostes? Why isn't Senator John Kerry tweeting something lame like : "It's so hot I can feel Congressional resistance to cap-and-trade melting away"? Why isn't Barbara Boxer tweeting: "California Gurlz showdown: Heat wave will melt Carly Fiorina's climate skeptic popsicle for sure."?

I can dream, can't I?

One thing is for sure: DeMint is one of the people with the most to celebrate as the strange saga of Alvin Greene, the unemployed Army veteran who is (for now) the Democratic Party’s Senate candidate in South Carolina, drags on. Why? Because despite South Carolina’s reputation as a Republican redoubt -- and despite the growing national buzz around DeMint -- the senator’s home-state standing had begun to look surprisingly shaky.

A Public Policy poll in May indicated that only 43 percent of South Carolinians approved of the job DeMint was doing in the Senate. Thirty-nine percent said that DeMint was not spending enough time focusing on his state's interests while in Washington, whereas only 38 percent said his level of commitment to advocating for South Carolina was "about right." Public Policy’s Tom Jensen wrote on his blog that these amounted to "pretty underwhelming approval ratings" for DeMint.

But with Greene as the Democratic candidate, DeMint's safety is utterly assured. A Rasmussen poll released on Tuesday showed him ahead of his peculiar challenger by a 58 to 21 percent margin. So DeMint is seemingly free to continue his march toward the center of the national stage without fear of embarrassment in his backyard.

His progress so far has been rooted in his ability to raise bucketfuls of cash. His leadership PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, has mined new and old seams of right-wing support with startling results.

According to the most recent figures filed with the Federal Election Commission, DeMint’s PAC has raised slightly over $2.4 million. It has disbursed much of that money to candidates in the right wing of his party, several of whom have a relationship of mutual antipathy, or at least suspicion, with the GOP's Washington leadership.

The performance of the fund also outpaces that of similar PACs associated with Republicans who are ostensibly bigger national figures. Among those whose PACs trail in its wake are Eric Cantor ($2.18 million), John McCain ($1.97 million), Jon Kyl ($791,000) and even McConnell himself ($684,000).

"Someone who raises a lot of money has a lot of clout," David Frum, the conservative author and former Bush speechwriter, says. "Chuck Schumer has an influence on the Democratic side that he would not otherwise have because of his ability to raise money for colleagues. And it is the same for DeMint among Republicans."

DeMint has also taken risks that have paid dividends. Almost exactly a year ago, he became the first sitting senator to support Marco Rubio in the bitter battle for the Republican Senate nomination in Florida. Rubio's rise ultimately pushed Gov. Charlie Crist, who was then the hot favorite, out of the GOP primary. (Crist is still in the race for the Senate seat, of course, but is now running as an independent.)

DeMint was also a fervent supporter of Rand Paul in Kentucky -- a position that was especially notable given that Paul's GOP primary opponent, Trey Grayson, was the anointed choice of McConnell. DeMint’s endorsement of Paul came the day after McConnell had declared for Grayson.

Of course, there are also DeMint-backed candidates who have failed to ignite, notably Chuck DeVore in California and Marlin Stutzman in Indiana, both of whom were recently defeated in Senate primaries. These setbacks provide ammunition for those who charge that the South Carolinian's influence is exaggerated, not least by him.

DeMint denies that he is aiming to wrest the GOP's Senate leadership slot from McConnell, but his protestations are disbelieved by many.

"He says he is not going to challenge McConnell. Whatever!" one GOP strategist, who asked not to be named, says with a laugh. The strategist also noted that DeMint, "like many other Republicans, probably sees that the 2012 [presidential] field is very open."

Despite DeMint's climb to prominence, it is a stretch to see him as a real presidential contender. The underlying shape of the race weighs against him, since he would appear to have a shot -- and a long one at that -- only if better-known conservative standard-bearers like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee took a pass. At the moment, he barely rates an asterisk in most 2012 polls.

But if presidential politics might be a step too far for DeMint, this hardly leaves him powerless. It seems conceivable that November's elections will deliver some new Republicans to the Senate cut from similar ideological cloth to the South Carolinian.

Rubio, Paul, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey and Nevada's Sharron Angle all fit this description. DeMint’s PAC has contributed significant money to both Rubio and Toomey. Figures from the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets project show that, when direct contributions and so-called independent expenditures are combined, the Senate Conservatives Fund has helped Rubio to the tune of $324,000. The corresponding figure for Toomey is $82,000. The PAC does not appear to have assisted Paul, while Politico reported on Wednesday that, having remained neutral until the Nevada GOP primary was decided, DeMint has now raised more than $60,000 for Angle through his PAC.

Were all four to be elected, they would represent the beginnings of a "DeMint bloc" -- a small but not insignificant power base.

The election of even one of those candidates would be "a big deal," the Republican strategist notes, not just because of the boost it would give to DeMint's standing but because of the template those campaigns would seem to offer for other politicians who might be inclined to ignore the wishes of their party leadership: "His being the first mover behind Marco Rubio increased his stock price among Senate Republicans dramatically, and it opened people's eyes to see that the political model has changed. Once DeMint raised millions of dollars, it shook stuff up and changed the political chemistry."

It is precisely this willingness to put himself on the line that has endeared DeMint to Tea Partiers and Republican dissenters alike.

Sal Russo, a California-based Republican operative who now works as a key strategist for the Tea Party Express, is one such fan:

"I have never been one to believe that if someone has all the authority then you should defer to them. He has been willing to lead rather than just follow, and we appreciate that."

DeVore, the vanquished California Senate candidate, insists that the South Carolinian's influence within the GOP is "in the ascendant." He adds with evident admiration that DeMint is "someone who is willing to mix it up a bit."

DeVore says DeMint's public announcement of his backing of DeVore was "a pretty significant boost. His PAC immediately contributed the maximum. About $150,000 of the $2.5 million (raised in total), I can directly attribute to his endorsement."

Whether DeMint's approach is so keenly appreciated in Washington itself is rather more open to question. In reporting this article, Salon contacted 20 Republican senators -- exactly half the caucus if DeMint himself is not counted. Not one took up the invitation to talk. (A spokesperson for DeMint also declined an interview request on his behalf.)

DeMint himself has seemed to revel in his outsider status. In the wake of Rand Paul's victory in Kentucky's Senate primary, he gloated that "the Washington establishment threw everything they had at him and yet he prevailed."

To his detractors, his approach is evidence less of an impressive maverick tendency than a lack of political maturity. Dick Harpootlian, the colorful former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, and thus a logical DeMint foe, complains that the senator is able to disregard his party leadership only because he has no real interest in the legislative efforts that are supposed to be a senator's raison d'être.

"If you've no interest in actually passing legislation, it doesn't matter," Harpootlian says, referring to DeMint's shaky standing with the Republican hierarchy. "He doesn't care whether Mitch McConnell is happy, sad, angry or anything else -- it's irrelevant to him."

Harpootlian also suggests that DeMint's surprisingly anemic home-state poll ratings might be due to the credibility of the charge that he is more interested in burnishing his image than in tending to local concerns.

Harpootlian acknowledges his own policy differences with Republican officeholders, but says that most of them "are folks who went to Washington to do something that will have an impact on legislation. DeMint went to Washington to get on a soapbox."

David Frum is not so harsh. He suggests that the answer to the question of what DeMint wants is hiding in plain sight.

"He has told us what he wants," Frum insists. "He wants a much more conservative Congress, and he is willing to run the risk of a lot of defeats in order to get there."

As proof, Frum cites one of the assertions that has catapulted DeMint to the fore of the Republican Party's internal debates. DeMint has said that he would rather have "30 Republicans in the Senate who believe in the principles of freedom than 60 who don’t believe in anything."

Frum's antipathy to this kind of demand for ideological purity is well-known -- and it is reiterated when he drily tells Salon, "I think majorities are better than minorities."

But he also argues that DeMint's critics are wrongheaded when they suggest that his backing of candidates who have failed to win office renders him politically impotent.

"If you take a lot of risks, you are not going to succeed every time," Frum says. "But I don't think it would be fair to him to say that because a certain candidate loses, then he has failed. If he were winning every race, all that would prove is that he was not being ambitious enough."

Whatever Jim DeMint's other failings might be, a lack of ambition is not among them.

Michael Calderone reports that a Kos diarist knew something was up with Greene back in May. That post and a Columbia alt-weekly story that it inspired were the only pre-election stories on Greene. He was mentioned, and dismissed as unserious, a couple more times in the local press, but no one looked into the money question.

If he was a Republican "plant," no one seems to have put much work into telling anyone to vote for Greene. (I suppose it is possible that thousands of Republicans voted for Greene for a laugh, but, again, no one knew who he was, and there's no evidence of even a secret campaign.)

There is still the question of where Greene got the $10,000 he needed to file to run.

There's one possible non-nefarious source of Greene's money (and inspiration to run in the first place): his poor, sick dad. The Free-Times quotes a neighbor as saying Greene's father James was a longtime outspoken Democratic activist, with money put away.

In that same story, we learn that Greene has apparently not named his cats:

In a lighter part of the interview, asked the name of one of the cats that was playing around his feet, Greene looked down at it.

“Uh…” he said and paused. “Purry,” he said finally to the laughter of his friends and family around him, as if he’d just made it up. “Yeah, no, Purr,” he said. “Or Purr. Purr. Purr. The cat’s name is Purr.”

Between this and Shep Smith's inappropriately hilarious interview with the woman Greene allegedly showed pornography to, I think the Greene story is just going to get more and more uncomfortable for everyone.

I obviously don't know more about the situation in South Carolina than Clyburn, but I think the more pertinent fact is that nobody yet seems to know anything. So I'd like to mount a qualified defense of Greene.

First of all, upsets of this nature do happen once in a while, though rarely in statewide races. In 2009, Tom Suozzi, widely thought of as a possible future governor or senator in New York, lost reelection completely unexpectedly as Nassau County executive to an unknown. Suozzi was sitting on an unspent $2 million, presumably socked away for some future statewide race. In 2007, the New Jersey Republican stronghold of Morris County rejected Freeholder John Inglesino unexpectedly. Like some Democrats have done with the current South Carolina situation, Inglesino blamed his surprise defeat on his place on the ballot. (Note that there's actually good scholarship showing that ballot placement can have a real effect, though the argument is more about differences of a couple points in races between well-known candidates. It seems possible that it'd be dramatically magnified in races between unknown candidates, but that's just me speculating.)

More to the point, though, the South Carolina Democratic Party blew it, and is embarrassed. Of course its leaders are going to say Greene was a plant. That doesn't mean he is or isn't. It just means we shouldn’t take their word for it.

Instead, let's take note of the fact that the guy who was supposed to get nominated, Rawl, is one of those gray white dudes with a law degree who's spent the last 25 years sitting on commissions. There's nothing wrong with that -- it's called public service -- but there's no reason anybody should know his name. And, indeed, nobody does. In a poll of South Carolina Democrats last month, Rawl had a favorable rating of 4 percent. Eighty-two percent had no impression of him.

It's also important to remember that Rawl was never going to win the general election anyway. It's South Carolina in a Republican year. That would be almost impossible for a good candidate to overcome, and Rawl is a weak challenger facing an incumbent who's at least moderately well-liked. Rawl was a classic sacrificial lamb, selected because he's plausible enough on paper not to embarrass the party or hurt the down-ticket candidates. So it's not as if nominating Greene really will cost Democrats a shot at the seat. You have to admit: There's something vaguely joyous about a no-name guy who lives with his mom screwing up the best-laid plans of the pack of pragmatic losers that is the Democratic leadership of South Carolina.

Granted, Greene's main issue in the race appears to be the reunification of Korea. And while that marks him as a bit eccentric (in case you hadn’t realized), it doesn't exactly make him David Duke, either -- so far as I can tell from the very limited information we have and the very strange interviews he's given. Nor does an odd but kind of sweet concern with Korea match up too poorly against any of the wack-job ideas of incumbent DeMint, who once actually uttered the sentence, "The biggest tent of all is the tent of freedom," and has described our current government as "national socialism." (That is, Nazism.)

Obviously, it's still very possible that horrible things will emerge about Greene, and make me look like an idiot for writing this. (In fact, he already is accused of fairly horrible things -- though not convicted.) In the meantime, though, it's satisfying to see something as lower-case-democratic as a random black guy winning for no clear reason. We may not be able to interpret votes for Greene as any affirmative popular endorsement of whatever his candidacy stands for. But we sure can read it as a rejection of the dull, hackish cynicism of the Democratic Party and its expectation that South Carolinians will vote for some un-embarrassing nonentity. And if nothing else, that's kind of fun.

Here, he explains that he is running in order to bring out a unified Korea.

And here, he is asked point-blank what kind of campaigning he actually did, and does not really have an answer.

Meanwhile, the woman to whom he allegedly showed obscene internet pictures is opening up to the press. And TPM has an image of the check he used to pay the $10,440 filing fee. It is an official campaign check because he wrote "Alvin M. Greene for Senate" in the corner.

James Clyburn has accused Greene and two other mysterious black candidates of being "plants." The campaign manager for a party-favored candidate who lost to one of these mystery men is a bit suspicious:

Beser said that since election night the Burton campaign has been doing precinct tallies and has seen numbers that far surpass what turnout had expected to be, including all-white precincts where Greene beat Senate candidate Victor Rawl and Frasier beat Burton. Both Rawl and Burton are white. "None of it makes sense," she said.

There's no proof that South Carolina GOP operatives paid a black man accused of sexually harassing a young white girl to run for office as a Democrat, but to assume they didn't strikes me as an underestimation of the fucked-up-ness of South Carolina politics.