I think I'm like a lot of the paid political pundits who opine about events happening around us. Every day I hear things from Fox News, conservative commentators and Republican candidates and wonder if I or they are shifting into a parallel universe. Statements are made by the conservative right that are so convoluted, so threadbare and so obviously wrong, but they say them as fact so much that a good portion of the population think of them as fact. At some point you wonder if you are the one losing your mind.

What is the best illustration of this? Let's go back a few years, over a decade. It's a hot day in Southern California. A man is sitting on his porch. He sees a car race by with a few police cars in pursuit. They stop in front of his house and something happens. He grabs his new fangled video camera and captures the beating of Rodney King by LA police officers. It is sent to the news and it become a viral sensation before the web even understands what viral is. With the video tape information, many believe their eyes and understandably come to the conclusion Rodney King, no matter his crime, was severely beaten by the police. The police, on the other hand, say that information before and after the tape prove King deserved the beating. A jury finds the police officers not guilty and LA explodes in a riot.

This was the first time I can recall in modern history when clear visual evidence of wrongdoing was distorted to the point where people actually doubted what was clearly evident. Sure, doubt about evidence, recollection and other information had been there in the past, but in this case I saw where something so clear was muddled not by science, not by observation, but by casting doubt where no doubt occurred. The question we could ask ourselves in the Rodney King case would be this; if the same beating had been videotaped, with the same conditions except Rodney King were white, would the same verdict had been reached.

Let that swirl in your head for a moment because I will be coming back to that Rodney King theory in a moment.

The reason why the Republicans, and yes I'm painting this with broad strokes because looking at the party at the moment, the right wing conservatives pretty much control the Republican party, are making such bizarre statements are two fold. A large majority of the party has looked at the United States and feels the country is going in the wrong direction, in their point of view. They continually talk about taking the country back, how they want to have the good, old fashioned values of yesteryear. The believe, like John Gill in the old Star Trek episode Patterns of Force, that we can use the good things from the past and not repeat the bad things from it. Unfortunately, we see evidence that this isn't the case. We see a Republican universe, while preaching for smaller government, actually expands the reach of government into our personal lives. People applying for government assistance would be screened and those deemed as risks would be excluded from aide. Women would lose control of their bodies. Employers, if they decided to have health care coverage, could decided to exclude people for personal reasons.

What I'm talking about isn't science fiction or political theory; these are things happening at the moment. These are issues not being debated on the stage but are being enacted in states all over the country. Virginia just got their abortion prevention bill passed, and while the vaginal probe part of the bill was removed, women who want to have an abortion still have to get an ultrasound, still have it described by a doctor, still have to wait 24 hours after this invasive procedure is given before they can have the abortion, and the thing least mentioned about the bill is the woman would have to pay for this. Yes, the woman would have to pay to have a procedure done that has nothing to do with the abortion, because men in the legislature have a problem with 'liberal' women wanting control over their bodies with a medically legal procedure.

The other reason Republicans are plowing down hard in this election year is they dislike President Obama. Actually, dislike is too light a word. Despite what some on the Republican side would have you believe, President Obama has been the most controversial and polarizing President in modern history. While his policies would be considered the reasons for this polarization, don't kid yourself. The President is despised by the right wing because he is a Democrat and because he is black. There have been Democrats Republicans have hated in the past, Bill Clinton is an easy choice, but the hatred against Obama is staggering. As a Republican a simple question, such as is President Obama a Christian, and you won't get a definitive answer. Ask if he was born in the United States and you will get hesitation. The real question would be is the hesitation and vague answers to simple questions made because they aren't sure of the facts or is it that they don't want to upset a large bloc of Republican voters who believe he isn't an American or just hate the fact a black man is President?

The pile of supposed evidence of the otherness of Obama keeps getting churned out. The newest information claims Obama is part of some radical movement or thinking, which really isn't a new accusation. During the campaign of 2008 he was accused of being pals with a number of radicals. In this particular case, the glaring evidence is a video tape, supposedly unearthed for the first time, just like something from the old In Search Of days. In the video, a young Barrack Obama introduces Derrick Bell, a professor on campus who is fighting to get another professor tenure. At the time, there were very few tenured professors of color or women on campus. Bell was one of the few and he was fighting to get more. Obama gives a speech introducing Bell, Bell comes up and Obama gives him a hug.

The way the logic of the Republicans is this; Bell is a radical teacher, who supposedly in later years believed the law is skewed towards white people (again, this is what the Republicans who hate Obama are saying) and since Obama took classes from Bell and embraced Bell, he is a follower of Bell's teachings. Where this argument gets into the weird (yes it gets weirder) is we are supposed to believe Obama's 'people' have hid this bombshell of a video for years and, let's really go on the crazy ledge, Breitbart, the man who found this hidden video, was killed by Obama's people to keep the secret.

So let's work backwards to shut this nonsense down. Yes, it can seem strange that Breitbart could die by walking down a street, there is no evidence he died, or in their eyes he was killed by anyone. To suggest someone killed him because of the video is going well into Vince Foster land. The clear reason why no one would kill Breitbart over the video is the video was never hidden. The video was part of a Frontline story in 2008 of a biography of Obama. After the video aired it was on the PBS, YouTube and other video sites. In other words, the supposedly secret tape wasn't secret or hidden at all. It was out there for anyone to see.

The big issue Republicans have latched onto with Bell, thus painting Obama with the same brush, has to do with something called Critical Race Theory or CRT. To put it in a basic nutshell, think of Jeremiah Wright but with the law instead of religion. CRT tries to identify how a white power structure tries to maintain power through the law. It's controversial, obviously, because of its premise that the law is skewed towards whites and tries to find ways of lessening that viewpoint. It's a branch of the law where you might want to say it's silly, but when you look at something like the Rodney King case, you kind of see why this might be an area of exploration. If the racial component were removed would you get the same result in the case?

Now, other than Obama taking a class with Bell and embracing Bell in the video, there isn't a big case for the Republican histrionics on this. I would like to offer another theory about this 'discovered' video which seems more likely than the convoluted theory given by the right. The video was definitely known in 2008, but Bell was alive and definitely was articulate enough to go on talk shows and argue his side. When they tried to smear Obama with the radical Ayes, he easily was able to say he met Obama once at a fundraising dinner around the time he was running for city council. So Bell died in October of 2011 and at the recent CPAC meeting, Breitbart announced he had a damaging video that would destroy Obama. What a surprise to release it now when Bell is dead.

With shocking revelations like this, especially given the Breitbart name, the video will change very few opinions. People will forget the manipulated video of ACORN and Shirley Sherrod. Those who hate Obama will use this as fuel for their hatred.