You ever see a brain scan of him just now? Whew!

John Spencer, who’s running against Sen. Hillary Clinton this fall, sometimes references being a recovering alcoholic. After reading Monday’s account in the New York Daily News, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to ask whether the Republican challenger took up crack when he gave up booze.

Hillary Clinton’s Republican challenger is getting personal and it’s not pretty: He says the senator used to be ugly — and speculates she got “millions of dollars” in plastic surgery.

“You ever see a picture of her back then? Whew,” said John Spencer of Clinton’s younger days.

“I don’t know why Bill married her,” he said of the Clintons, who celebrated their 31st anniversary this month.

Noting Hillary Clinton looks much different now, he chalked it up to “millions of dollars” of “work” — plastic surgery.

“She looks good now,” he said.

Spencer’s bizarre comments came during a conversation with a reporter seated beside him and his wife, Kathy, on the 10:30 a.m. JetBlue flight Friday to Rochester, the site of the race’s first debate.

You have to wonder how Mrs. Spencer feels about her husband’s overarching criteria for women as marrying material — that they incontrovertibly be a “hottie,” to make plain what the GOP Senate wannabe really meant.

Bet that’ll go over really well with “values voters.”

That said, above is a picture of Hillary Rodham, the future first lady and U.S. senator, at Wellesley College in 1967. She looks all right to me, and obviously she looked all right to Bill, whom I defer to as a far greater expert than myself in such matters.

I’ve never been a particular fan of either Clinton politically (though I’d like to imagine I’d have a perfectly pleasant time knocking back a beer or two — or a breve or two — with either as we solved the problems of the world). But Spencer’s remarks not only were gobstopperingly idiotic, they were cruel and unworthy of a grade-school playground, much less a candidate for United States Senate.

But, hell. I’m sure Spencer has the “stuff” to fit right in among the past greats of the institution. Like Gary Hart and Wilbur Mills.

WWJCD?

What Would Jesus Camp Do? Apparently, nothing that has much to do with what Jesus actually told us to do.

You see, one of the directors of the controversial documentary Jesus Camp has some interesting things to say about the making of the film. Look here, but I’ll give you a taste right now from the Catholic News Service article:

“My one disturbing encounter was at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs (Colo.) with Pastor Ted Haggard,” head of the National Association of Evangelicals, who is “the senior minister of the church,” [co-director Heidi] Ewing said.

“I was in the service, and we had three cameras rolling, and there were 3,000 people in the church, and my cameraman was on the stage shooting him, and Pastor Ted started teasing the cameraman: ‘Where are you from? England? Do you go to church?’” she recounted.

When the cameraman told Rev. Haggard that he goes to church when he’s in England, the minister said, “So you’re in the Church of England.” The cameraman replied, “No, I’m Catholic,” according to Ewing. “Pastor Ted turned to the congregation — and I have this on tape — in a very mocking tone, he said, ‘Oh, we l-o-o-o-ve the Catholics, don’t we?’ and people started laughing.

“Why would he whack another religion?” she asked. “There was a disparaging way about how everyone reacted. As the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, he is a representative of 30 million people and a religiously respected person in the movement. For him to joke like that, I was pretty alarmed.

“In a statement on the group’s Web site, Rev. Haggard said, “This movie manipulates facts like a Michael Moore film and works the camera like ‘The Blair Witch Project.’ It’s one more ‘documentary’ that seems to miss the point intentionally.

“Moore has produced a number of documentaries including the controversial 2004 film “Fahrenheit 9/11.” “The Blair Witch Project” was a 1999 low-budget horror movie presented as documentary.

Ewing said she was also disturbed by the comic-book tracts published by Jack Chick Publications in Chino, Calif., which have been a staple among some strains of Protestant proselytizers for decades.

“I did start reading the little Bible tracts the kids would pass out. and we ordered a bunch because the kids always passed them out,” Ewing told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview.

“There were like 30 of them that described the pope as the anti-Christ,” she said. “I was struck by that. I called Becky Fischer and I asked her about that. She said, ‘I have no idea why’ (they would be so anti-Catholic). I called Levi’s father and Rachael’s father, and they said they had no idea, and they would stop ordering Chick tracts. [They] were extremely upset and apologetic about that.”

We Catholics l-o-o-o-ve you, too, Pastor Ted. This Catholic thinks you’re an egotistical, posturing, vapid Pharisee, but that can be fixed.

“Repent and believe in the Gospel.” There’s a nice commentary on doing so here, Pastor Ted.

Read it. You won’t catch cooties; I promise.