So an Army vet re-enlisted for the express purpose of refusing to go to Afghanistan because President Obama is not a citizen. Now his insane lawyer says she has 170 other soldiers who feel the same way!

John Avlon was a Giuliani speechwriter and a New York Sun associate editor, but now he's finally found a gig that won't evaporate anytime soon: being the "Centrist" Republican who exposes the complete lunatic nutjobs who seized control of the party. He columnizes on them for The Daily Beast and debates them on CNN. He helped blow up the story of the crazy racist Young Republican lady from Facebook, who won her little election. And now he's writing about the Birthers, the folks who are pretty sure Obama can't be president because he was born in either Kenya or Indonesia or really anywhere besides Hawaii, the place where he was born, according to his birth certificate, which they don't believe is real.

So this Army nut's lawyer is Dr. Orly "O Rly" Taitz, and she and Alan Keyes "debated" the birth certificate thing on CNN recently. As always, debating Alan Keyes sounds really annoying.

Before going on air, Keyes had his eyes closed as if in prayer while Taitz was jumpy and pie-eyed, like a patient off her meds. Anchor Kitty Pilgrim then went through a thorough 3-1/2 minute dismantling of the Birther arguments, including the long-ago issuance of Obama's August 1961 certificate of live birth, its validation by Hawaii's Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, and two birth announcements published in Honolulu papers. (Both FactCheck.org and Snopes have published detailed investigations and refutations of the non-scandal.)

Asked what more he needed to be convinced, Keyes' response was an instant classic in the clueless overconfidence of conspiracy theorists: "Some evidence."

So, hah, Dr. Taitz says she has 170 other solider refusing to fight for their country, because of their patriotism, but she probably just made that up, because she is a lunatic. What she didn't make up, though, is the nine GOP congressmen co-sponsoring the Birther bill in Congress. None of them actually believe Obama isn't a citizen, of course (well, most of them don't), but all of them feel no shame in humoring crazy people in order to prop up support and fundraising.