The following is an adapted excerpt from The Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press, by Eric Boehlert.

As compiled by blogger Jon Swift, these were just some of the Obama conspiracies that prominent conservative bloggers and weblogs pursued and hyped, at times relentlessly, during the 2008 presidential campaign:

1. While attending Columbia University in the early 1980s and interested in the South African divestiture movement, Obama was involved in violent protests, including domestic terrorist bombings, that erupted when a South African rugby team toured America. (Just One Minute, Ace of Spades)

2. Obama had an affair with a young female staffer who was promptly exiled to a Caribbean island by an angry Michelle Obama, who discovered the blossoming relationship. (Ace of Spades, Say Anything, Right Voices, Protein Wisdom, Hill Buzz, Black Five)

3. Obama’s deeply personal memoir, Dreams from My Father, was actually ghostwritten by Bill Ayers, the former ’60s radical turned college professor who befriended Obama in Chicago in the 1990s. (American Thinker, Ann Althouse, Powerline, Flopping Aces) Read More

Robert Lipsyte has been an award-winning sportswriter for the New York Times and was the Emmy-winning host of the public affairs show The Eleventh Hour. He is the author of a number of acclaimed novels, including The Contender, The Brave, The Chief, Warrior Angel, and One Fat Summer.

Which books have most influenced you?

Reading John Steinbeck as a kid made me want to be a writer, especially Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, The Moon is Down and The Grapes of Wrath. I have not gone back to them. Maybe I’m afraid they won’t hold up. In any case, they were there when I needed them.

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The following is excerpted from Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America by Cass Sunstein.

Suppose the Supreme Court of the United States suddenly adopted [judicial] fundamentalism, and understood the Constitution in accordance with specific views of those who ratified its provisions. What would happen? The consequences would be extremely radical. For example:

1) Discrimination by states on the basis of sex would be entirely acceptable. If a state chose to forbid women to be lawyers or doctors or engineers, the Constitution would not stand in the way.

2) The national government would be permitted to discriminate on the basis of race. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is the Constitution’s prohibition on racial discrimination—and by its clear language, it applies only to state governments, not to the federal one. Honest fundamentalist have to admit that according to their method, the national government can segregate the armed forces, the public schools, or anything it chooses. In fact, the national government could discriminate against African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans whenever it wanted.

3) The national government could certainly discriminate against women. If it wanted to ban women from the U.S. Civil Service, or to restrict them to clerical positions, the Constitution would not be offended. Read More