Kenneth Vogel/Politico smears Jerome Corsi ("Obama Nation" book)

Jerome Corsi has recently released a book highly critical of BHO called "Obama Nation". Needless to say, the usual suspects are up in arms. But, representing perhaps more the corrupt establishment in general than BHO fans in particular, Kenneth Vogel of The Politico offers the smear piece "Wild theories of 'Obama Nation' author" (politico.com/news/stories/0808/12526.html). Needless to say, many since-proved theories were derided as wild. And, some of the Corsi claims Vogel discusses aren't that wild. Investigating all the statements Vogel attributes to Corsi - some aren't so good but might be less bad in context - is left as an exercise, but here's a couple from his (per Vogel) "trail of wild theories" and "fringe theories":

[Those] include allegations that President Bush worked to eliminate the borders with Mexico and Canada

Pretty much everything Bush has done has worked towards that goal. That includes allowing 14% of Mexico's working age population to move to the U.S., pushing through Mexican trucks on U.S. roads, allowing the FDIC to give home loans to illegal aliens and collaborate with the Mexican government to do so, giving benefits to Mexican citizens, and making a pledge to the Mexican government to push to allow even more Mexicans to come to the U.S. Only hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens flooding Congress with their opposition to immigration "reform" prevented Bush from further weakening the border with Mexico.

The idea that there is a secretive plan for a North American Union is a favorite bogeyman for small-government conservatives but has been derided as baseless by mainstream thinkers and officials.

Many of those "mainstream thinkers and officials" are on record as supporting such a plan; see this category for some of them. For one example:

A powerful think tank chaired by former Sen. Sam Nunn and guided by trustees including Richard Armitage, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Harold Brown, William Cohen and Henry Kissinger, is in the final stages of preparing a report to the White House and U.S. Congress on the benefits of integrating the U.S., Mexico and Canada into one political, economic and security bloc.

The article ends with this:

In blasting Corsi and the theory, a columnist at the influential conservative blog Human Events wrote [humanevents.com/article.php?id=18859], "I don't think Corsi is any more worthy of being taken seriously than those who think Jews rule the world or the 'Truthers' who think President Bush is responsible for 9/11."

The "columnist" in question is actually John Hawkins, someone who's better known as a blogger (rightwingnews.com). Since its publication, Hawkins has taken a lot of heat for it from his commenters who've pointed out how he's wrong.

Do the same with Kenneth Vogel: politico.com/aboutus/feedback.html

Politics · Wed, 08/13/2008 - 17:40 · Importance: 4