Frank Gaffney, Raving Lunatic, Influential Conservative Pundit

Annapolis, Maryland (pictured above) sure looks like a nice place. And whatever else you're going to say about George W. Bush, he certainly doesn't seem like the sort of person inclined to sell Israel down the river. But not according to Frank Gaffney, who's delivered what almost reads like a parody:

It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today's so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.

The punchline, however, is that this paragraph is calm and level-headed compared to the ones that follow, in which we learn that this regional conference is essentially the same as the Munich conference etc., etc., etc. Now you'd think that a person who likes to go around publishing crazy things would be a totally marginal figure. Not the kind of guy who would be a frequent guest on CNN and so forth. Especially since his group is essentially just a front for defense contractors and their lobbyists rather than even a proper think tank full of crazy people.

Photo by Flickr user Billtex48 used under a Creative Commons license