PROTOCOLS OF THE JUNIOR SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS

The surprising thing about the 2008 presidential campaign is that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic candidate most frequently portrayed as a force of Pure Evil. That dubious honor just might go to Barack Obama.

Here's an e-mail that's spreading rapidly. This version is from a discussion board I've never heard of -- but it's all over the place:

Subject: Fw: Be Careful, voters

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist ).

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.

Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama's mother, Ann Dunham-a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas-at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was two.

Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct influence over his son's education.

Dunham married another Muslim, Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools.

Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the industrialized world.

--comments by my friend who forwarded to me.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

Yikes.

(Snopes has a detailed refutation.)

I found versions of this in this Yahoo Answers thread, the comments of this BET forum, a discussion at the Bay Area craigslist, Free Republic, Liberty Post (under the header "Barack Obama's Father Was A Terrorist") ... It gets at least 114 Google hits so far, and the presidential election is almost two years away.

If Obama can get himself on the ticket, certain people are going to try their damnedest to raise doubts in the minds of as many Americans as possible about Obama's true religion and true loyalties. The people I'm talking about are powerful Republicans -- too powerful, you'd imagine, to have written something as crude as this.

Right?

I don't know where this really came from. I don't know who wrote it. I don't know who's posting it. It would be nice if it turned out to be the sleaziest thing that's written about Obama. But I know it won't be.