You may remember Jim McDermott from the time he was caught sending a surreptitiously recorded conversation between Republicans Newt Gingrich and John Boehner to the New York Times. Or perhaps the Washington congressman crossed your radar screen when he took his shameful trip to Baghdad prior to the war in Iraq. Maybe it was his conclusion that Bush staged the capture of Saddam Hussein for domestic political purposes that grabbed your attention. If you've seen Fahrenheit 9/11, you know McDermott as one of the celluloid conspiracy theory's talking heads.

If you aren't aware of Jim McDermott, his remarks in India this past week should give you a good idea of what he is all about.

A few days ago McDermott told an audience of business leaders in New Dehli, "There are already rumours circulating that Osama bin Laden is being held somewhere already and it's only that they are trying to decide what day they should bring him out."

Sure, and there was a rumor that all the Jews who worked in the World Trade Center stayed home on September 11. I also heard a rumor that Tupac Shakur is really still alive. Another rumor passed along to me posited that the CIA invented crack cocaine and AIDS. Because I knew that these rumors stemmed from some crackpot's imagination and not reality, I dismissed them. Unless he believes (or wants others to believe) this fairy tale about the Bush Administration secretly holding Osama bin Laden, why would Jim McDermott uncritically repeat this baseless charge to a foreign audience?

Shouldn’t there be some kind of test that these elected officials have to pass to show that they hold America’s interests first and foremost as part of their job descriptions?

What is it with some of our Congressmen that they think they are representing the Peoples Republic of (fill in the blank) ???

Even scarier still to think that these budding young America haters have a constituency.

Way too an important job to give to anybody who does not have our cumulative national interests at heart.