Without knowing anything about Sheriff Joe Arpaio or his cold-case posse's investigation into President Barack Obama's birth certificate, the great old newspaper columnist H.L. Mencken said, "The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind."

Mencken wrote this over 60 years ago. He died in 1956. He could not possibly have attended the sheriff's wildlyentertaining conspiracy-fueled "birther" news conference on Tuesday...

Or could he?

I'm sorry.

That wasn't nice. Here I am being sarcastic in a column meant to highlight the written comments of Sheriff Joe's Birther Brigade. (Again, apologies. I can't help myself.)

A number of the sheriff's true believers responded to an azcentral.com blog I wrote about Tuesday's news conference. It also was published in Wednesday's Republic.

The birthers are fierce and unrepentant. Other readers offered explanations and website suggestions that debunk the theory of the forged birth certificate, but the birthers were having none of it.

As reader Eric Livingston wrote, "You just keep drinking that Kool-Aid. Obama has hijacked the Office of the President using false documentation and bribery paid for by Saudis, and has cost America more than all REAL American Presidents combined. Sheriff Joe is merely trying to SAVE our nation from the illegal alien in the White House."

Like-minded believer Stacy Maydew added, "So I guess it's OK for the POTUS to have a bogus BC that was obviously forged. And it's ok for the POTUS to not provide any verifiable proof of his citizenship (we don't have that yet). Yeah, that's OK as long as we don't make racist waves for the precious first Black president. And by the way, leave your race card in your pocket, it's got nothing to do with skin color ... I just want to know the truth -- and that has not been revealed yet."

Others, like Shane Garrett, took the shoot-the-messenger approach. He wrote, "If there was an ounce of journalistic integrity in your body you would see through your obvious political bias and confront the information presented. Instead, you have attacked the man and ignored the message. Refute the message with proof ... otherwise you simply come off as a whiny, unintelligent blogger."

OK, he nailed me with those last three words.

The response from reader Keith Gallimore was all venom. He wrote, "Please give me more handouts, Mr. Obama. I don't care if there is a place outside the U.S. that swears (you were born there.) ... Please let my family come into America illegally so they can vote for you. Please help me keep my dead grandmother on the voter list so that she can vote for you also ... Really people are you so blind to what is going on ..."

Pam Wapniarski was more direct, writing, "It is NOT OK for any federal, state, or local government to knowingly commit fraud. Somebody has ... and somebody needs to be charged and tried. My hope is that Sheriff Joe's team has compiled enough evidence to initiate a congressional overview."

While Jeffrey Anderson went for the succinct, saying, "Deport Obama immediately."

Sheriff Arpaio knows these people very well.

He knows they will not question the sheriff's partnership in this endeavor with the conspiracy website WorldNetDaily, which once suggested that former President George W. Bush and others plotted to merge the United States, Canada and Mexico and printed a six-part series under the headline "Soy is making kids 'gay.' "

The sheriff knows that birthers are not troubled by the posse's "expert," Jerome Corsi, who wrote about Bush and the three-nation merger and once called Islam a "worthless, dangerous satanic religion," and referred to Hillary Clinton as a "fat hog" and to her daughter as "Chubby Chelsea."

A dispassionate person might question the credibility or at least the neutrality of such sources, but not the birthers.

The sheriff knows this. He knows they will never be swayed, no matter the evidence.

And he knows the single most important aspect about them: They vote.

Reach Montini at 602-444-8978.