Reasonable people, when presented with documents and other testimony of facts, are able to separate truth from fiction. The conclusion, then, about those who cling tightly to the confounding notion that Barack Obama isn't a natural-born U.S. citizen is that they are not guided by good sense. Or that they have motive to perpetuate a falsehood.

The ludicrous rumor, pushed relentlessly throughout the presidential campaign, has not disappeared with Obama's election.

An online posting of his official certificate of birth hasn't quelled the ridiculous accusation that he is ineligible for the presidency. Hawaii officials' verification of the certificate's authenticity has been challenged repeatedly as dubious.

Independent reviews and confirmation of the certificate also have been dismissed as a vast conspiracy involving Obama's parents, state officials, the news media, the Secret Service, think tanks and a host of yet-to-be-uncovered others who have connived since Obama's birth to build a false record so that he could eventually seek the presidency 47 years later.

Even Obama's visit to his dying grandmother just before the election was seen as suspicious, with conspiracy disciples theorizing he was here to doctor his birth certificate - in cahoots with people like Gov. Linda Lingle, who avidly supported Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain.

Lawsuits on the matter have become a land-office business even as courts in several states, including Hawaii, have rejected them.

The Supreme Court this week correctly declined to hear a claim by a New Jersey man who tried to keep not only Obama's name off his state's ballot but those of McCain and Socialist Workers Party candidate Roger Calero as well. They, too, he says, aren't natural-born citizens.

There is no shortage of the like-minded. A Pennsylvania lawyer who also filed a lawsuit sees an Obama presidency as a planetary criminal plot that will “;propel our nation into a time of great peril.”; His contradictory claims have Obama born in Kenya, adopting Indonesian citizenship when he was a grade-schooler, and being a British citizen or maybe even a Russian - take your pick.

Psychologists say there's no convincing the dazed and confused. Inconvenient facts are irrelevant, statements from authorities are parsed for the smallest cracks or dismissed as cover-ups.

Many of the instigators of this craziness aren't as mindless as they are unprincipled. Some hustle their allegations to make money, peddle books and CDs, raise funds for their “;institutes”; and “;foundations”; and boost their egos. They sell a pretense of earnest concern by filing lawsuits and appeal their losing cases to the Supreme Court when almost anyone can file an appeal by paying a filing fee. They are as pathetic as their actions are deplorable.