While last night was Rep. Joe Wilson’s national coming out party as the Republican’s new poster boy for mindlessness, the truth is he has been really stupid for a while now.

Much has been made of the previously unknown Congressman screaming out, “You lie!” during President Obama’s address to Congress last night. His outburst came as Obama was talking about barring illegal immigrants from receiving benefits in his health care reform plan.

As the non-partisan site Politifact pointed out, this was not a lie at all; it was completely true. However, that did not prevent Wilson from defending his assertion today as he fought back tears outside his office.

Not surprisingly, this is not Wilson’s first brush with ignorance. Here he is in 2002 calling Rep. Bob Filner a liar and accusing him of “hating America” for asserting that we originally gave Saddam Hussein most of his chemical and biological weapons (which, of course, we did.)

And then there was this embarrassing incident from 2003 which he also had to apologize for:

Flashback to mid-December 2003, when Essie Mae Washington-Williams came forward with the bombshell that she was the illegitimate daughter of the recently-deceased patriarch of South Carolina politics, Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Rep. Wilson, a former page of Thurmond’s, immediately told The State newspaper that he didn’t believe Williams. He deemed the revelation “unseemly.” And he added that even if she was telling the truth, she should have kept the inconvenient facts to herself:

“It’s a smear on the image that [Thurmond] has as a person of high integrity who has been so loyal to the people of South Carolina,” Wilson said.

Of course, Williams’ story was entirely true — and never really in doubt. Thurmond was 22 and Williams’ mother, a black maid working in his family home, was 16 when Williams was born in 1925. Thurmond supported Williams financially for decades.

“I have the utmost respect for Essie Mae Washington-Williams and wish her and the Thurmond family all the best,” he said.

Six days and several furious letters to the editor later, Wilson was forced to apologize. But, amazingly, he maintained that Williams should not have gone public.

(via TPM)