Globe Editorial: ... and avoid crackpot theories, too (on Gohmert)

[maddezmom]

It sounds like quite a plot. Radical Muslims, some people contend, are exploiting the 14th Amendment by sending pregnant women to the United States to have babies. The babies, born as US citizens, are then shipped back to the countries of their mothers’ origin to train as terrorists — only to return here, decades later, to kill Americans.

One would think Al Qaeda could come up with something simpler.

Despite the outlandishness of this rumor, it has been repeated by elected officials. Representative Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, railed about it on the floor of the House in June, sourcing it to an “ex-FBI agent’’ he knew. A week later on the Fox Business Network, he had a more vivid example: he said that the previous August that he’d been traveling with a group to the Middle East, and a member of his group actually spoke with a woman who intended to have grandchildren in the US who could be trained as Hamas fighters. And last week Republican Texas state Representative Debbie Riddle told Anderson Cooper that “former FBI officials’’ had told her office the same thing.

To Cooper’s credit, he followed up. The next night, he had on his show a real-life former FBI official who told him that “there was never a credible report — or any report, for that matter’’ of a terrorist organization using the 14th Amendment to plant a slowly sprouting terror-seed. He later added that “the FBI has knocked this story down completely, officially or unofficially.’’

more:http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2010/08/14/and_avoid_crackpot_theories_too/

[Turbineguy]

1. Al Qeada has a far more potent weapon.

Crazy repubs.

[Demeter]

2. The US Government is doing a fine job all by itself

creating generations of terrorists, both foreign and domestic, to plague every nation on the planet. All it has to do is keep NeoCon military and NeoLiberal economic policies in effect...and the Apocalypse will be here before you know it!

[BlueMTexpat]

3. "Despite the outlandishness of this rumor, ... "

from the same people who believe in the Birthers' theories.

"Former FBI officials" - yeah, sure!

Why do people like Anderson Cooper give such nutjobs any airspace at all - without providing rebuttals on the SAME program?