You read it here first, folks. Remember my suggestionthat Hawaii raise revenue by selling tickets to see President Barack Obama's original birth certificate?  Might as well earn a little revenue, I reasoned, instead of going in debt answering birthers' endlessly badgering questions.

Truth be told, I was writing with tongue halfway-in-cheek. But Obama supporters in Hawaii's legislator have introduced legislation that goes halfway toward my idea. Unfortunately, I predict, that half-stepping may be its undoing.

I really got a kick out of this column by my famously conservative friend Jonah Goldberg. It reveals the hazards of believing his movement’s most preposterous propaganda.
As you may have noticed, conservatives have fought tooth and nail over the past, oh, four or five decades to block gays and lesbians from joining the military or getting legally married.
But now that polls show mainstream America coming around on these issues, Jonah manages to spin the trend into a triumph for –Guess what?—conservative values!

Just when the goofy and, I suspect, xenophobic birther movement appeared to be fading into the margins of rational society, Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii gives it some new juice.

Abercrombie, a Democrat who knew Obama's parents as classmates at the University of Hawaii and says he personally saw the younger Barack Obama as a baby, is fed up with the movement that's been trying to assert Obama was born someplace else, the New York TImes reports.

Although Obama has more important things to care about, Abercrombie quite properly views the contrived controversy as an insult to the president's parents. To put the issue to rest, the governor announced he is taking steps to release additional evidence that baby Obama was born in Honolulu in 1961, as the copy that has long been released to the public says.

Fine. At least he can't make this farce any more ridiculous.

It's so hard to please some people's prejudices. President Obama knows. I’m not talking politics. I’m talking religion.
Or, more precisely, religious politics. In Indonesia, where the President is headed on his Asia tour after he leaves India, an estimated 20,000 protestors poured into the streets over the weekend to denounce him as an “oppressor” of Muslims.

Too bad we can't get them together with the 52 percent of U. S. Republicans who recently told a Newsweek poll that they thought Obama “probably” or “definitely” sympathizes with “the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world." Somehow I don't think they'd get along anyway.

((NEWS UPDATE : STEWART'S "SANITY" CROWD BEATS GLENN BECK'S. An estimated 215,000 people attended the Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert rally on the Washington Mall Saturday, based on aerial photos and calculations by AirPhotosLive, a company commissioned by CBS News. Yes, that's way bigger than the 87,000 that the same company estimated for Glenn Beck's rally in August. Beck fans' shorts were twisted in such a knot that CBS detailed AirPhotosLive methodology here. Based on my email experience with some of Beck's viewers, I wish CBS and APL good luck trying to use science on that crowd. Click the links, look at the aerial pix and judge for yourself.-- CP))

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While President Obama was back in Chicago to rally Democratic (He hopes!) voters, I stayed behind in Washington to watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert try to "restore sanity" to the place.

Ha! Fat chance of that.

In keeping with the spirit of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear I wore my "Fear No Art" cap from Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. I shall fear no comedy while it is with me.

Besides the excellent photo and news coverage in today's Tribune of Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's rally, I am pleased to offer some of my own photos of the event.

It's Saturday morning and, in case you're wondering, I'll blog in a little later with my full report on the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear. (Can't wait to take my pick on the choice.)

Metro trains are already filled with people carrying sings with messages like "Don't Back Up" and "This Sign is Heavy" and "I Thought There Would Be Cookies."

She's trying to run away from her earlier views now that she's won Delaware's Republican primary for the US Senate. But video lives forever on the web.

Here, thanks to Joshua Green at The Atlantic online, we see the outspoken, camera-loving "Christian activist" Christine O'Donnell on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher in 1998.

(I knew I saw her somewhere before!)

Maybe he wants to be "Reverend Beck?"

“Something beyond imagination is happening,” the radio and Fox News host preached to a crowd of, well, a whole lot of people at the Lincoln Memorial. “America today begins to turn back to God.”

Well, that's a relief.

Glenn Beck bills his "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial as an opportunity to support our troops.

I'm glad to see reporters already raising questions about that.

The conservative radio and Fox News commentator has asked the public to send donations. He says all proceeds -- after the mammoth expenses of the Washington Mall rally are covered -- will go to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a small Tampa-based nonprofit that provides scholarships to the children of special operations servicemembers killed in action.

Beck promises the costs and proceeds of the event will be transparent to the public in accordance with IRS rules governing nonprofits.

I'm sure he will. The foundation's sponsorship of the rally helps Beck to call it "nonprofit" and "nonpolitical." He's also excluded elected officials from the program, but included Alaska's dropout-governor, Sarah Palin.

As George Orwell might say, up is down, day is night, bad is good and Glenn Beck is calling himself a civil rights leader.

Beck says his Saturday rally at the LIncoln Memorial-- a rally that just so happens to fall on the 47th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King's speech on the very same spot (Mere coincidence, Beck insists -- is his effort to "reclaim the civil rights movement" and "pick up Martin Luther King's dream." Right.

Glenn Beck claiming to promote Dr. King's dream is like Lindsay Lohan claiming to be spokesmodel for Alcoholics Anonymous.