Man with history of paranoid fantasies is behind whisper campaign on Obama's religion

No real surprise here. It turns out that the individual responsible for first spreading the rumors that Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim is creepy guy with a long history of lawsuits, political eccentricity anti-Semitic remarks.

Andy Martin is generally credited starting the 'secret Muslim' allegation in a posting on freerepublic.com four years ago (the right-wing paranoia hub blasting Swift Boat garbage in the last election). Martin fits in with the Free Republic's general tenor, a kind of Fox-like "We Report (Wrongly), You Decide."

Indeed, Fox News itself has been reporting some of Martin's false information without questioning it: "[A] documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government"[NYT]

From a New York Time's profile on Martin:

"He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of 'moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.'

Though he is not a lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he made unsuccessful attempts to win public office for both parties in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000."

For the record, here is Obama's actual background: "Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years, Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as loosely following a liberal Islam."

While in Indonesia, Obama attended a Catholic school and a public school. Today he is a practicing Christian.

Personally, I believe one's religion matters a lot less than the way you practice it. If Christianity ensured highly skilled candidates, a born-again George W. Bush would be one of the best presidents in history. Instead, he has embarked on costly crusade-like wars, sanctioned torture and illegal surveillance, run up the deficit to the hilt, and generally ignored the health care needs of average Americans.

Obama happens to be a Christian, but he certainly doesn't need to be in order to be qualified for the presidency. He is the best candidate because he is the one best prepared, both intellectually and ideologically, to lead America through its current malaise and back on the upward arc of great nationhood. That is the reason I plan on voting for him.