Congressman Mike Coffman, a Colorado Republican, said some nice things about President Obama yesterday:

I believe President Obama loves this country and wakes up every morning trying to do what is best for our nation, even if I disagree with his approach.

Ah, what a great American is this Mr. Coffman. How diplomatic he was to express such cordiality toward the President of the United States, a man who is often accused of not loving America and, heck, of not even being an American.

With civilized Republicans like Mr. Coffman in Congress, there is hope of getting things done—What? What is it you say? Congressman Coffman said what? Oh, my:

I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America, I don’t know that. But I do know this: that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.

Damn, I thought we had a decent Republican in our midst for a second. But nope, what we have is a man who received so much criticism for his Obama-is-not-an-American routine, that he was forced to write a column apologizing for his shtick, even calling his comment “boneheaded.”

You see, Congressman Coffman’s previously safe district (he has demolished his Democratic opponents) has been, uh, made unsafe through redistricting. As CBS Denver put it:

Coffman’s turf now is divided roughly evenly among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

So, that explains the newly-found cordiality, the admission of boneheadedness. And the constituents of Colorado’s 6th Congressional District should reward Coffman’s boneheadedness by giving him a permanent vacation from Washington.

If you want to see Coffman’s boneheadedness on full display, watch this report from 9News in Denver, which includes a weird interview he did with a reporter:

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All of which reminds me of a local Obama-hater named Mark D. Edmonson, who has been a “guest columnist” for the Joplin Globe. He has written things like this:

No one poses a greater threat to America and to our way of life than the man who currently occupies the Oval Office… All one needs to do is look at the people with whom Obama has surrounded himself. They are among the most radical people on Earth who have no great love for this country.

And, prophesying what Congressman Coffman would say about a year later, he wrote:

Barack Obama may have been born in Hawaii, but he is no American.

That sort of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? But you have to have the right kind of ears to really enjoy it.

In any case, we know that whatever it is that makes right-wingers say such boneheaded things, it’s a disease that infects across state lines.