Jerome Corsi's brush with the Kenyan authorities is a gift to the Republican campaign and those who disseminate its talking points.

It's not that Corsi—the intellectual father of the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry's war record in 2004 and author of Obama Nation, a best-selling account of the cult surrounding the Democratic candidate—is some kind of right-wing martyr. He'll no doubt be released by the Nairobi immigration officials who "snatched" him this morning.

But his arbitrary detention—in the birthplace of Barack Obama's father—feeds into the reptilian-brain paranoia that the mild-mannered Democratic candidate will pack the government with his friends and bring incompetent or tyrannical black rule to the US.

That's why the story is the splash on Matt Drudge's website right now and a deformed version of it will now metastasize through the internet and show up in the minds of those Florida retirees who—the pleas of Sarah Silverman and their New York grandchildren notwithstanding—still believe anything they read in email.

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