Disgusting allegations from a bona fide crackpot

First, let me say that THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING MUSLIM. Or an Arab. They are people just like you and me, with families and hopes and dreams.

Nonetheless, there are people like the woman in this video who - in ignorance and due to hateful propaganda - are afraid of Muslims and Arabs. And there are also people who are claiming that Barack Obama is secretly an Arab or a Muslim, and has plans to somehow turn the U.S.A. into a Muslim nation when he is elected president.

Where does this crap come from? And who's pushing it??? The New York Times investigates:

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

While Andy Martin is definitely the story here, I don't want you to miss the fact that Fox "News" gave this idiot a platform to spew his false information, and did not challenge it. But back to Martin:

He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.”

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as a writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Now I know right now you're probably thinking to yourself, "But I thought Republicans hate people who are constantly suing other people!" I guess it depends on whether they feel they have something to gain. But honestly, this man is as repulsive as they come:

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

In an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993, he affirmed a different anti-Semitic part of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

So if or when someone sends you an e-mail stating or implying that Barack Obama has some kind of secret Muslim or radical agenda, please think long and hard about who the source may be.