Lou Dobbs continues to make a fool of himself, of CNN and of Time Warner, which owns this blog and pays my salary. When Jim DeMint, the oh-so-conservative Senator from South Carolina, says that the Obama birth certificate isn’t an issue, and when electronic copies of the birth certificate have been produced–and certified–by the state of Hawaii, one wonders why Dobbs keeps flogging this…and why CNN allows him to do it.

Certainly, Dobbs has a right to say what he likes. Plenty of nutballs go on television–as guests–and say all sorts of stupid, meretricious things. (CNN has its share of odious guests, though–happily, to my eye–fewer than its competitors.) But when you give someone the authority of an hour-long show on the cable network that stands closer to actually being fair-and-balanced than any other, you have the right to expect some journalistic integrity…or you have the responsibility to call the show what it is, The Lou Dobbs Paranoid Crazy Conspiracy Hour.