Regardless of how successful he has been at pulling the wool over people’s eyes, Scott Brown appears to be a certifiable rightwing nut. In addition to supporting torture, here he is in the long-ago days of 2008 opining on whether Obama was a child born out of wedlock:

As was first reported by Blue Mass Group, a Massachusetts-based political blog, Brown did an interview in 2008, around the time of Republican National Convention, to defend Sarah Palin as a candidate for national office. The interviewer raised the issue of the Alaska governor’s family, so the conservative state senator decided to go after Barack Obama’s parents.

“Barack’s mom had him when she was, what, 18 years old?” Brown asked, drawing a parallel between Obama’s mother and Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter. When the interviewer noted that Obama’s parents were married, Brown replied, “Well, I don’t know about that.”

The context is important here — around the time of the interview, unhinged right-wing activists were pushing the line that Obama’s parents weren’t married, a claim that became central to the bizarre Birther conspiracy theory. Brown wasn’t just attacking the future president and his parents during the interview; he was also lending credence to fringe right-wing stupidity.

Nice pick there, Gherald.