One of the more entertaining/annoying (It depends on the day) things about getting to a certain level in blogging is that you get emails from kooks who like to blast their nonsense out to you, every paper and radio host on the planet, and half of Congress.

The good in these emails is that on rare occasions, the fruit loops actually give you something so off-the-wall that you can actually use it.

For example, this column came into my inbox via one of my regular email-wack-a-doos,

It Has Happened: I'm a 9/11 Truther; A New Investigation, Broad Amnesty, and Forgiveness by Ralph Lopez

... The biggest problem with the 9/11 Truth Movement is where it leads: a place dark and evil beyond imagination. Even if deep down you believed it was an inside job, you would need to deny it.

So when hundreds of American military officers, pilots, engineers, and CIA veterans stepped forward to say they believed the official story to be a monstrous lie, I was shaken to the core. There had to be an explanation for everything. The combination of forces and heat that took down the towers was unique; no engineer could give a definitive answer. The hijackers got lucky, including a good dose of incompetence and shortsightedness on the part of the government, which is nearly criminal, but not complicit. It's always easier for governments to lie than admit how stupid they are. The conspiracies led to the deep dark hole that we are ruled by criminal psychopaths, who, in one theory, had knowledge of impending attacks by bin Laden, and made sure they would succeed.

... Here finally was the testimony I both sought and dreaded, confirming, in many cases, my first instincts on hearing the news on that terrible day. Amateur pilots flew these planes HOW FAR and threaded needles in a haystack? That pilot did a steep HOW MANY degree dive to hit the Pentagon? Everyone who has seen a demolition on TV is to believe that these were NOT demolitions, buildings falling at free-fall speed into their own footprint? But I'm no expert on much of anything. I leave it to the people who make this stuff their study 8 hours a day, year after year, and have the degrees to show for it.

Let's see...

There are "military officers, pilots, engineers, and CIA veterans" who think there may have been some sort of 9/11 conspiracy. True. It's also true that there are probably AT LEAST 100 "military officers, pilots, engineers, and CIA veterans" who buy into the standard storyline for every Truther. So, who are you going to believe?

The "amateur pilots" point seems pretty weak given that, well, "amateur" or not, they were "pilots," and that just about every person in the United States has seen footage of planes being flown into the Twin Towers. I mean, if the terrorists involved had never been in a plane before, and there were no witnesses to planes hitting the buildings -- oh, and no wreckage from planes found in the debris -- ah, and we can't forget all the investigations that concluded that planes flew into the building, then maybe, just maybe, there might be some cause to go down this road.

The whole, it must be a "demolition" point is equally weak. Given how the Twin Towers ended up collapsing, not immediately after the planes hit, but after the fires weakened the steel support structure, why would anyone expect it to look radically different than a demolition? What, do the Truthers expect the buildings to actually get higher, do two loop-the-loops, and then fall down? A building falling straight down because the steel beams had gotten too weak to support the building looks about the same as a building that falls straight down because the beams are blown: big shocker.

Long story short, this is just an embarrassing column for someone to write. At this late date, with all the info that's out there, how can anyone be dumb enough to start buying into the Truther arguments? It's like hearing about Orson Welles' War of the Worlds broadcast and believing that we were invaded by aliens in 1938.

PS: This guy is also the author of a book called "Truth in the Age of Bushism." I know, you're probably stunned that an ultra-genius with critical thinking skills of this sort wrote something like that, but I guess the truth is stranger than fiction sometimes, huh?

Also see,

Proving The 9/11 Conspiracists Wrong