Over the past few weeks, Glenn Beck and Fox News have been pushing a totally baseless smear against Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh and the Obama Administration. Their essential claim: that through Koh, the White House was seeking to impose Sharia law in the United States.

Despite being fueled by a New York Post column written by a former Bush speechwriter, the absurd smear has mostly fizzled. Earlier this month, former conservative attorney Ted Olson, who served both Reagan and Bush, endorsed Koh.

Now, the Yale Daily News reports Kenneth Starr has also endorsed Koh:

As conservatives continued to attack outgoing Yale Law School Dean Harold Hongju Koh’s nomination to the Department of State last week, an endorsement came from the unlikeliest of people. In a speech at Yale Law School on Thursday, conservative icon Kenneth Starr announced his support for Koh before an audience of about 95 students and professors, two people in attendance said. The endorsement from Starr — whose report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal paved the way for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton LAW ’73 — comes as right-wing critics continue to allege that Koh will place international statutes above American law. According to the two audience members, Starr said the Senate should defer to the president’s nominations, especially those in the executive branch. As long as the nominee demonstrates integrity and competence, Starr added, the president deserves to appoint his own assistants and advisers.

We've now got two leading conservative legal minds who have rejected the loony attacks advanced by Fox News against Harold Koh.

Neither Starr nor Olson agree with Koh on every legal issue; they are conservatives, he is not. But at the same time, Starr and Olson recognize that Koh is perfectly qualified for the job, and absolutely capable of preserving and protecting the Constitution of the United States.

The fact that taking such an eminently reasonable position sets them apart from the bulk of the conservative movement is all you need to know to understand just how extremist and nutty the right-wing has become.