Curt Weldon is a moron

* ken:

"What is the evidence that Curt Weldon is a moron? Well, he launched his own hunt for WMDs in Iraq. He has suggested that he personally convinced Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi to give up his nuclear program. He also claimed that a vast group of conspirators, in places ranging from the Defense Department to the 9/11 Commission, buried evidence that a secret Pentagon unit called Able Danger had identified Mohamed Atta as a terrorist threat long before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And earlier this year, Weldon accused his democratic challenger, Joe Sestak, of being a carpetbagger, citing as proof the fact that Sestak’s five-year-old daughter was receiving cancer treatment in Washington, D.C. rather than in Pennsylvania.

But the real proof of Weldon's mental frailty may be that he has managed to attract the attention of the FBI. That's a rare feat for a member of Congress and generally requires something as flagrant as hitting on teenagers (Mark Foley) or taking cash bribes (Duke Cunningham and, it seems, William Jefferson)."

* a little while ago, i asked whether Benjamin Chertoff of Popular Mechanics 911 Debunking fame really was related to Micky Chertoff, or if it was unsubstantiated. PopMech has a new piece out on the debunking thing:

"Soon after the Popular Mechanics report appeared, conspiracy buffs began parsing the names of the various researchers who contributed to the article, noting the odd coincidence that Benjamin Chertoff, then the head of the magazine’s research Department, has the same last name as the then newly appointed head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. In a rare instance of reportorial initiative (most 9/11 “Internet researchers” rarely venture beyond Google), Christopher Bollyn phoned Ben’s mother, who volunteered that, yes, she thinks Michael Chertoff might be a distant cousin. “Chertoff’s Cousin Penned Popular Mechanics 9/11 Hit Piece,” read the headline on Bollyn’s next American Free Press story. “This is exactly the kind of ‘journalism’ one would expect to find in a dictatorship like that of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” he concluded. Later, a headline was added to his article: “Ben Chertoff: Propagandist & Illuminati Disinformation Tool.”

As often happens in the world of conspiracy theories, a grain of truth—it’s possible that Ben and Michael Chertoff are distantly related—was built into a towering dune. In fact, Ben and Michael Chertoff have never spoken. And no one at Popular Mechanics had any contact with Michael Chertoff’s office while preparing the article. Moreover, Ben was one of many researchers on the story, not the author. (Then, of course, there’s the question of why Ben—and his colleagues—would be eager to get involved with one of the greatest crimes in history.) But in the world of 9/11 conspiracy theories, coincidence is proof of collaboration."

For one reason or other, the PopMech piece is dated June 06, but published yesterday. Conspiracy theorize that!