JamieWeinstein.com

As the American public gradually turns away from Obamaism, the Obama Administration is on the ropes. But instead of taking the opportunity presented to proclaim the conservative vision to the American people, some Republican leaders have opted to latch on to wild conspiracy theories promoted by the fringes of the Republican Party. Or, at the very least, some of our leaders have allowed such wild theories to fester by not proactively combating and denouncing them.

Just last month, for instance, Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan Administration Defense Department official and purported conservative intellectual, actually wrote in The Washington Times that Barack Obama might very well be a secret Muslim. Among Gaffney’s “mounting evidence” was the fact that President Obama referred to the Koran as the “holy Koran” during his June speech in Cairo, Egypt. It’s called pandering, Mr. Gaffney. It no more helps prove that President Obama is a secret Muslim than President Bush speaking in Spanish to a Latino audience proves he is a “secret Hispanic.”

Closely associated with this Obama conspiracy theory, is the “Birther” conspiracy theory that alleges that Obama is not eligible to be president because he was not born in the United States. Despite proof from the state of Hawaii that Barack Obama was actually born there, these nuts argue that he was actually born in Kenya.

I suppose all of this could be possible. That is, if you believe that 48 years ago, a group of Islamists conspired to take over America by making Barack Obama president. Having the incredible foresight in the 1960s too see that a black man would be the obvious choice for president of the United States in 2008, their strategy would be to hide his foreign and Muslim identity by having his parents name him Barack Hussein Obama. Somehow, they knew this young child would be smart and talented enough to get into elite colleges and become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. The men behind this clever movement to take over America wisely encouraged a young Barack to take drugs in his youth and then to later write about his drug-taking days in a memoir because, presciently, they understood that writing about one’s drug-taking past is usually a successful presidential strategy.

Whether people who propagate the Barack Obama is a Muslim/non-American citizen theory realize it or not, this is basically what they are suggesting. It is clinical insanity.

Conservative commentators, leaders and thinkers have a responsibility to denounce idiocy put forward under the conservative banner. And make no mistake, these theories are textbook examples of idiocy.

Republicans and conservatives have a real opportunity to take back the country in 2010 and 2012. But we aren’t going to do it through outlandish conspiracies.

[This post was adapted from my North Star column Conservatives Must Denounce Right-Wing Nuttery]

Follow me on Twitter @ Jamie_Weinstein

With the US Senate Judiciary Committee currently in the midst of a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, some may wonder how many Senators went to law school? Most probably don't. Either way, the answer is 56 out of 100. 57 if you count Vice-President Joe Biden who is officially also President of the Senate.

Here is a list of where our Senators went to law school:

Harvard University (5)

University of Virginia (4)

Georgetown University (3)

Yale University (3)

George Washington University (2)

Stanford University (2)

The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (2)

University of Alabama (2)

University of Arkansas (2)

University of Mississippi (2)

American University Washington School of Law

Boston College

Boston University

Creighton University

Florida State University

Howard University

New York University

Rutgers University

St. Mary’s University School of Law

The Ohio State University

Tulane University

University of Arizona

University of California Los Angeles

University of Chicago

University of Kansas

University of Kentucky

University of Louisville

University of Maryland

University of Missouri

University of Nebraska

University of New Mexico

University of Oregon

University of Pittsburgh

University of South Carolina

University of South Dakota

University of Tennessee

University of Texas-Austin

Wake Forrest University

Williamette University

And Joe Biden went to Syracuse University for law school.

Among MJ's confessions: "Despite being called the moonwalk, that is not actually how people walk on the moon."

Check out the rest of the document here.

If one were asked to bet last week on who would be the first Republican governor to have the “former” modifier appended to their governor title, South Carolina’s Mark Sanford or Alaska’s Sarah Palin, conventional wisdom would have suggested Mark Sanford because of his recently exposed extracurricular activities as the self-appointed South Carolina Ambassador to Argentina. But with Sarah Palin’s surprise announcement on Friday that she would be stepping down as governor at the end of the month, it looks like conventional wisdom, in this instance, has been proven wrong.

But conventional wisdom, like conventional politics, isn’t always wrong.

Conventional wisdom dictates, among other things, that one should not use electrical appliances while taking a bath, that when you go skydiving you should probably take along a parachute, and that you shouldn’t attend a White House Halloween party dressed as Osama Bin Laden. In these instances, conventional wisdom seems pretty much spot on.

As does conventional politics when it comes to the practice of serving out one’s full term as governor unless some compelling reason – serious illness, election to higher office, etc. – intercedes. If you quit the post you were elected to without such a compelling reason, you become a quitter.

So when Sarah Palin said in her nonsensical speech on Friday that her decision to resign was consistent with her commitment to “no more conventional politics as usual,” I suppose she expected Americans to accept without scrutiny a slogan that is sometimes a positive as something that is self-evidently right. Sorry Sarah, but if politics as usual means not quitting your job mid-term, then sign me up as a fan of politics as usual.

It is impossible for one to look at Palin’s July 3 resignation announcement as sincere and genuine. She is not resigning at the end of the month because she thinks her resignation is in the best interest of her state, as she claimed Friday. She is resigning because she thinks her resignation is in the best interest of Sarah Palin – and, perhaps, her family. The rambling and incoherence and silly reasoning that defined her speech was nothing more than a failed attempt to bolster a weak justification for getting out of a commitment she no longer wants to keep. We have all seen such sorry justifications before and probably have offered a few of our own, though doubtfully to get ourselves out of a commitment as significant as governor of a state.

[This post was adapted from my North Star column Palin’s Ambitions Buried, As They Should Be]