"something stinks" writes:

According to the Law of Nations, he is also a Kenyan,

And later:

The Law of Nations is quite clear on the matter, citizenship is conveyed upon the child by the father and his nationality is the nationality of the child. Ever here of Elian Gonzales?

If, by "the Law of Nations", he is referring to international law, it is certainly not "quite clear on the matter", as it has nothing to say on how a person gains the citizenship of a country X. Citizenship of a country is purely an internal matter of that country, and in the case of Barack Obama, there is every evidence that he has satisfied the citizenship requirements of the United States, and no evidence that he hasn't.

Instead of evidence, what we have here is is a bunch of hysterical conspiracy peddlers, doing what conspiracy peddlers do the best: lying, exaggerating, and insinuating in favour of their contentions, picking up the strangest bits of chaff they think might support such -- such as a (claimed) one-pixel offset on a scanned picture -- and ignoring or summarily disregarding any and all evidence that goes against the contentions.

Even if the piece of paper so fetishised by these "birthers" had been destroyed in a fire or something -- and keep in mind the fact that it has, in fact, been viewed by reputable people as being in care of the state of Hawaii -- that would have little bearing on the matter. That piece of paper is not the only evidence that Obama is, in fact, a natural-born US citizen. For the birthers to disprove Obama's citizenship, they would have to explain away all such evidence: his passports; the words of his family, friends, schoolmates, and teachers in Hawaii; the evidence of the personnel of the hospital where he was born; the birth announcements in Honolulu papers; etc. Whenever that last bit is mentioned, the birthers have nothing to say, at least here on Salon's letters.

The most interesting part of these persistent claims is not that Obama might not actually be a US citizen -- because the evidence is overwhelmingly against that claim -- but the psychological mechanism of monomania and paranoia manifested therein.

Along with schizophrenia, paranoia is an especially insidious mental illness because its sufferers deny their condition. In fact, anyone pointing out their affliction soon becomes associated with "them", the mysterious enemy out to get them, or the (absurdly wide) circle of plotters. Short of committing them to a psychiatric institution, which of course won't happen unless they're dangerous to themselves or to others, there's little help for them. I know they attract scorn very easily, but one should have some pity, too.

I once had an acquaintance who suffered from paranoia. I tried to be forbearing, but any normal association eventually became impossible. I did get a bit of insight into how the paranoid mind works, though. For example, one of the things this person was convinced of was that big American automobile companies had conspired to kill the hydrogen car. (Now, that's not a self-evidently preposterous claim; though I would think it's quite unlikely, it is within the realm of possibilities.) Knowing that he had an interest in the subject, I once tried to give him a copy of a magazine article that detailed the latest developments in hydrogen car technology. He rejected it: he wasn't actually interested in hydrogen cars or their technology, only in yet another "conspiracy" to latch on to. Poor fellow.

Johnny Depp is one of my very favourite actors. He has great range, and it's nice to have him play a tough-guy role for a chance. I think the such he did was in Blow, where he was very, very cool.

A good summary.

"Each blog," James Wolcott wrote in 2002, "is like a blinking neuron in the circuitry of an emerging, chatterbox superbrain." This striking image cuts two ways. It's alluring to think you might be participating in a grand barn-raising for species-wide consciousness via the Web. It's creepy, too: What if doing so costs you some part of your separate identity -- what Nicholas Carr calls a "loss of selfness," a feeling of "slowly being emptied," a sense that "we are beginning to blur at the edges"?

That's just silly. You'll no more be blurred at the edges by blogs than by any other sort of human interaction, whether mediated by technology or not.

By the way, I loved Dreaming In Code. I'm a software engineer myself, and think you captured the spirit of the profession quite well.

Let's show some respect.

He pursued an ill-advised policy, but that does not make him evil. There will be time to analyze his legacy, but for crying out loud, his body isn't even cold yet!

I've never understood this point of view. What does his body's temperature have to do with anything? When a prominent person dies, it's customary to reflect on his life and to pass judgment on it. We are not in his memorial service.

They just say, Mommy's sick, we'll go tomorrow, and then you get up early the next day ready to go and they're passed out on the living room floor again and you call the paramedics, who know you by name and ruffle your hair as they shine the flashlight into Mommy's eyes.

...how do you go into somebody else's home "ambiguously"?

dwg: You're reposting, in their entirety, articles that have nothing to do with the subject under discussion. If you absolutely have to refer to these articles, you might have simply posted one letter with five links.