Earlier this month I received a shiny red, white and blue flyer from something called the Save America Foundation, otherwise known as "Patriots in Action!" They want to save the country, which sounds like a pretty good idea to me, owning a house and all.

And they think they know just how to do it: Get rid of President Obama in November. The flyer told me that we have a problem, and that "it is a huge, monumental, fundamental crisis, because Obama, given another four years in office, will effectively destroy the fabric of everything good that set America apart from the rest of the world."

Well, it's nice to finally know why my garage door sticks. It's the fault of that black bastard "BHO," as the flyer calls him. (You'd think they'd prefer just BO.) That quote comes from a Joseph Farah, who, I am helpfully informed, is the "editor and founder of WND."

Huh? Whazzat? Weapons of No Destruction? Turns out WND is short for "WorldNetDaily," an Internet nut-right publication, and Farah is a longtime journalist and extreme evangelical Christian with a degree in communications from a small college in New Jersey.

Farah is a "birther," someone who believes the president wasn't really born in America. No, never mind that it has been proven time and time again that Baby Barack came into the world in Hawaii.

Never mind that his long-form birth certificate is now available for inspection on the Internet. Never mind that a conservative Republican governor of Hawaii has said there was no doubt he was born there. She's part of the conspiracy too. Never mind that there is no way that two poor students stuck out in the middle of the ocean could have gotten anywhere else, especially back in August 1961.

Nope; the irrational just "know" Obama had to be born elsewhere. But that's not the only reason he shouldn't be president, according to many other nuts nationwide, of whom Farah is only one of the more enterprising and eloquent spokesmen.

They also question "his Social Security card, his status as a college student, his adoption by an Indonesian, etc. etc. etc. They don't question his religion; they are all sure that he is secretly a radical Muslim, or, as one chain e-mail I have gotten over and over for years says: His mother's second husband "educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools."

Why, he is so devious that he had Osama bin Laden killed, presumably to throw true patriotic Americans off the scent!

None of this is true. None of these things are even remotely true. Yet millions of Americans actually believe much of this. One survey this year showed a majority of voters in Mississippi, and almost that many in Alabama, think our president is a Muslim.

What's going on here?

Very simple, children, though nobody will say it out loud:

There are millions who still can't stand the thought that we have a nigger in the White House. Sorry for the shocking word.

But that's what they think. I've even heard a very few admit it openly; that's one of the advantages of being an old, white male.

That we have a black president drives them crazy, just crazy. The racists know, however, they can't say that publicly. They also know he didn't steal the election; Obama won by nearly 10 million votes in a landslide four years ago. They can't face that either.

They only way they can cope with this is to believe that there is something wrong with him. He can't be legitimate. He can't be a real president – this all has to be a horrible nightmare that must be purged from the history books, or we are all doomed.

Some of them even believe he is the Antichrist. My favorite moron in Toledo soberly assured me that the Book of Revelation predicted that the evil one would be a young, charming Muslim.

Never mind that it says no such thing, or that Islam wasn't invented till more than 500 years after Revelation was written.

What's scary is how desperate some of these people are. Joe Farah, who ironically is himself of Syrian and Lebanese descent, is a good example. In his warped brain, having Obama as president is having the same effect on us that Gollum's melting down the Ring of Power had on Sauron, just a little more slowly.

"We have no more anchor for self-government, the rule of law and governance through the will of the people," Farah said.

"The Constitution is being rendered meaningless."

Evidently, however, he doesn't think the almighty dollar is meaningless, at least not quite yet. The enterprising Mr. Farah wants us all to send him money – a cool million or so would do – to help put up billboards "to plaster this message across the country so it cannot be ignored." Send him a second million, and he vows "to produce and air hundreds of television ads about the eligibility issue."

Right. My guess is that you'd have better luck investing your money with those rich Nigerian widows who are always spamming us.

Hopefully, the government or someone will inspect or audit the WND's books. What worries me is what will happen if the American people ignore all these voices that the nuts hear in their heads.

Suppose the people sensibly conclude that President Obama is a good man who has done a pretty good job, and instead of destroying our nation, saved the auto industry instead.

Suppose we re-elect him. What will the nuts do then?

Right from the start, many of us have been scared that someone would try to kill this president. Possibly nobody has made a serious effort yet, partly because they don't want to risk making him a martyr.

That may give the wackos more intellectual credit than they deserve. Yet I worry they may become desperate. Hopefully the Secret Service, no longer partying with hookers, worries sufficiently too.

* * *

And, speaking of intolerance: The Michigan Catholic Conference, together with other Roman Catholic groups across the nation, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration on a health care issue that's not related to the Affordable Care Act.

The Catholics are upset because President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services has a rule requiring all employers who provide health care to have that coverage include contraceptives.

The Roman Catholic Church opposes any use of contraception, (even though most of their members ignore this.) They have plenty of employees, not all of them Catholic, and they say that being forced to cover the cost of birth control violates their religious freedom.

BS. The government is not saying that the church or anyone else has to use contraception, or even approve of it. What they are saying is that insurance plans have to cover the cost of birth control.

There's evidence indicating they should. Back in 1965, in a case called Griswold v. Connecticut, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in essence that contraceptives were a right that couldn't be outlawed.

Denying the right to insurance that covers birth control would be violating the principle of church and state separation. The Catholics aren't having their freedoms violated; they want to squelch the freedoms of others, something the church has attempted for centuries.

Let's hope the courts quickly dismiss this case.

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About author Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Detroit's Metro Times.