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It’s unfair to spend too much time highlighting the ravings of unhinged cranks, especially if it’s done with the unstated implication that they speak for a broader political movement. But then again, sometimes it’s worthwhile to let people know just how demented things are getting out there. Here’s a small excerpt from a fundraising email sent out by the crackpots at Teaparty.org highlighting a new video from Jerome Corsi, one of the masterminds behind the 2004 swiftboating of John Kerry:

Wasn’t that the plot of Salt? Angelina Jolie really kicked some ass in that movie. I guess Corsi and the Teaparty.org folks thought it was a documentary.

Elsewhere, Steven Taylor passes along the news that certified nutcase Alex Jones doesn’t believe the mass shooting in Aurora was the act of a demented maniac, but was “planned by the Obama administration (along with Fast and Furious and the Gabrielle Giffords shooting) as a plot to let the UN take our guns away.” Perhaps Jones will ask Ron Paul what he thinks of that the next time he appears on the show.

I wish it were hard to see where this stuff comes from, but Corsi’s lunacy is only a few ticks away from birtherism and Jones’s lunacy is only a few ticks away from the idea that Fast & Furious was designed from the start to help make the case for more restrictive gun laws. Both of these are fairly widely held beliefs on the right, which makes it pretty easy to see how Corsi and Jones got where they did.