Anderson Cooper dedicated his “Ridiculist” segment last night to a phenomenon that, sadly, apparently still exists: President Obama’s birther brigade, centered at right-wing blog World Net Daily. World Net Daily, Cooper narrates, has taken to flying planes around areas with high concentrations of people– high concentrations of people under roofs, where they cannot see the planes.

This afternoon on Your World, fill-in host Eric Bolling spoke with Craig R. Smith, CEO of Swiss America, a gold coin firm and columnist for the “birther” website World Net Daily, who raved about Fox News’ coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests. “The Fox reporting on this has been incredible,” Smith enthused. “When you interviewed people down there, they cannot tell you why they are there, they can’t tell you what they want but they know they want to rage against the system and ‘the man’!”

“That’s just one of those things,” Les Kinsolving told Mediaite’s own Tommy Christopher, when asked about the Troy Davis execution and the GOP debate audience’s cheers for the death penalty. “I’m sorry I have to speak out where I believe it is right, and I thing that capital punishment is wrong.”

Before today’s White House daily briefing, I found myself surrounded by something of a Holy Trinity of Conservative Media, so it seemed like a good time to ask them what they thought of the chatter surrounding NJ Gov. Chris Christie‘s possible (if unlikely) entry into the 2012 Republican presidential field. John Gizzi from Human Events, Fred Lucas from CNS News, and Les Kinsolving from World Net Daily all responded to the question “Will he, and should he?” with a resounding negatory.

President Barack Obama turns 50 today– half a century since he was born in Kenya, his parents forged a fake newspaper announcement in Hawaii, and the Democratic state committed fraud to reproduce and archive a fake birth certificate. This was the well-wishing the President got from Rachel Maddow tonight, who took the opportunity to put together a look back at birther madness and the headline makers who kept it in the news.

It is far too soon after the tragedy to define Norweigian psychotic mass murderer Anders Breivik as bearing any mainstream political stripe, and yet his rambling, incoherent manifesto has landed him a number of adjectives– from “Christian fundamentalist” to”xenophobic anti-Islamist.” At least this much is clear: Breivik thought immigration was a threat to national identity, and he’s apparently found one ally on that front in America: Pat Buchanan.

Although it has been a few weeks since President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, it has taken some time to catch up with World Net Daily White House Correspondent Les Kinsolving to get his reaction. Les has been a consistent questioner of the President’s birthplace, but faced with the evidence, Les says the release of the long-form puts the issue to rest for him…for the most part.

Washington, DC is often referred to as “Hollywood for ugly people,” but in recent years, the town has enjoyed one night of the year when it blossoms into a Hollywood swan: The White House Correspondents Dinner, aka “Nerdprom.” As the dinner’s profile has risen, so has the demand for tickets to see, and be seen, at an event that is ostensibly a celebration of DC’s least glamorous denizens. Even as this year’s Seth Meyers-headlined fete has had to compete with the Royal Wedding, the clamor to get in has reached an all-time zenith.

The recent emergence of Donald Trump as a possible presidential candidate and ringmaster of the Magical Birth Certificate Mystery Tour® has thrust the Birther movement into the national spotlight once again. Beyond Trump, though, there’s a teeming Birther subculture with its own cast of characters, including Lucas Daniel Smith, whose nude painting of Orly Taitz just sold for $350 on eBay.

Credit where credit is due– Rachel Maddow may constantly be picking her jaw up off the floor whenever her job requires her to watch Fox News, but last night, she almost praised Glenn Beck‘s “showmanship.” The subject? The impending arrival of the Antichrist, and its relation to both the protests in Egypt and Wisconsin, had Maddow’s head spinning, but once again she attempted to get the story straight.

The woman who interrupted the reading of the US Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives Thursday to shout “birther” protestations has now been identified, by Capitol Police, as Theresa Cao, a colorful DC resident who often haunts the sidewalks of Pennsylvania ave outside the White House.

As it turns out, I knew her when. Almost exactly a year ago, I ran into TC, and videotaped a brief interview that I never ended up using. Here, for the first time, is that interview, and the story of our encounter.

After repeatedly omitting the statement from the Declaration of Independence, President Obama read an excerpt from the text and began from the words “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” The last two times he omitted them, the president caused a firestorm among many on the right that considered it an affront to the values of the Founders.

World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah made a public point to take Ann Coulter off the list of speakers at an upcoming event for her participation in Homocon this year.

Coulter fired back, calling Farah “swine” and a “publicity whore.” Last night on Fox News’ Red Eye, she took it a step further, referring to WND as “fake Christians.”

Conservative website World Net Daily has scored another meta-exclusive, announcing that World Net Daily has “dumped” lightning rod Ann Coulter over a “Homoconflict.” CEO Joseph Farah told his own website that it would be dropping Coulter as keynote speaker at its “Taking Back America” conference because she has agreed to headline GOProud‘s Homocon 2010.

Frequent Mediaite readers already know that World Net Daily correspondent Les Kinsolving‘s daughter, Kathleen Kinsolving, has written a fascinating biography about her father’s long, strange career. Now, C-Span junkies and WhiteHouse.gov superfans are in on the secret, thanks to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. He found a copy of “Gadfly” on his podium yesterday, and remarked about it.

True to form, though, World Net Daily sees a conspiracy even here, claiming the White House scrubbed Les’ book from the briefing transcript. Get the whole truth here.

World Net Daily’s Les Kinsolving, now the 2nd most senior member of the White House Press Corps, is the subject of a new book by his daughter, Kathleen. I’ve written before about Les’ fascinating career, his outrageous questions at White House briefings, and interviewed him on some of his defining contradictions, but “Gadfly: The Life and Times of Les Kinsolving” reveals the rest of the chaotic iceberg that is Les Kinsolving’s life. In our exclusive interview, Les talks about some of those contradictions, defends his involvement with the South African Apartheid government, and pleads for a little social justice from Robert Gibbs.

During my latest interview with World Net Daily’s Les Kinsolving (publishing later today), he boasted that he is the only reporter to have asked Robert Gibbs about President Obama‘s birth certificate…twice. At yesterday’s White House briefing, Les went for the hat trick, asking a question about Obama’s Social Security number, but sprinkling in a reference to the certificate. This coincides with the latest “scoop” to crawl out from under WND, a Hawaii elections official who’s making his own bid for Birther fame.

Orly Taitz became a household name by using whatever spare time she had from her careers as a dentist, lawyer, and real estate agent to file frivolous lawsuits against Barack Obama, on account of his being from the Kenyan province of Indonesia. She decided to make a run for California Secretary of State as a GOP primary candidate, and lost yesterday by nearly 50%. If you were watching MSNBC last night, those numbers might shock you, because for a minute there, it seemed like everyone on MSNBC prime time saw Taitz as a viable threat.

Some people will sit down and just watch “injustices” happen. Others will hop onto iMovie and try to profit out of arty-crafty slideshows of Barack Obama and Constitutional ClipArt. Others still will, for some reason, pay to watch these slideshows. If you belong to the latter group, then boy does WorldNetDaily have a deal for you!

Just when you thought the Birther conspiracy theories had died out under the weight actual news along comes a ‘report’ that the first three digits of President Obama’s social security number apparently suggests it was applied for in Connecticut. Before we go any further probably best to note that this news comes from World Net Daily, the website that derives much of its funding from selling birther paraphernalia. But did Google inadvertently give it legs?

Now, there’s something you don’t see every day. At yesterday’s briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs turned the tables on World Net Daily correspondent Les Kinsolving, grilling Les for nearly five minutes over what constitutes a press conference.  Even stranger, about halfway through their exchange, Kinsolving actually drew applause from the press corps. I haven’t seen a reaction like that since Gibbs suggested holding a briefing in the Rose Garden.

Remember December 1999, when everyone started fearfully planning for the impending Y2K Armageddon? To Glenn Beck listeners– and, as of yesterday, viewers– that’s about to start happening all over again. Viewers got a first taste of the Survival Seed Bank’s “Crisis Garden” seeds last night during Beck’s program, where the ad argued that “non-hybrid seeds could become more valuable than even silver or gold” in the impending economic collapse.

Part one of my interview with WorldNetDaily correspondent and radio host Les Kinsolving was really just the tip of the iceberg. In parts 2 and three of our interview, Les opens up about some of the touchstones of his extraordinary career, including his experiences as the first Jim Jones whistleblower, his place in the history of the AIDS epidemic, and his quest to see the President’s birth certificate. Amid a host of seeming contradictions, he also talks about being pro-choice and anti-death penalty.

It might just be the book to knock that pesky Fox News liberal’s Arguing with Idiots off the best-seller list once and for all. The Tea Party enthusiasts over at World Net Daily are announcing the release of the literary milestone Don’t Tread on Us! Signs of a 21st Century Political Awakening, a photo book chronicling the adventures of the Tea Party movement as it spread across the nation fighting socialism and creating some of the most unintentionally hilarious political posters in American history. The best part? The book comes with a foreword from Chuck Norris, the George Washington of American martial arts films.

Ok. Well this should clear things up somewhat for those folks out there who are confused as to what side of the climate change debate Glenn Beck falls on. He apparently thinks it’s merely another conspiracy theory. Move over Birthers and Truthers!