THE MANSION ON THE HILL. Kathryn J. Lopez gets one of those poetic patriot emails about how America has been plumb took over by folks what hain't got no right:

Imagine the Republic as a “mansion on the hill”.

The mansion was built with the blood of the current owners’ forefathers.

The heirs to the mansion, with no personal investment in the property, became complacent and lazy leaving the mansion for days and weeks at a time only to find increasing disrepair of the building and grounds when they returned from time to time.

The heirs spent more and more time away on hedonistic journeys.

Finally the heirs came home to find mansion occupied by squatters of all types from leftist politicians to pot smoking aging hippies & revolutionary cadres.

A small group of the former residents evicted (some of) the leftists politicians and retreated to discuss what to do next.

Some began to form groups to plan restoration of the property, others to evict remaining squatters, others to plan fumigation — most continued their hedonistic pursuits...

K-Lo sees this as a sign that people are "impatient" with her Republican buddies for not moving faster, and takes in stride the idea that "leftists politicians" come to power by squatting rather than by election, and must be removed (poetically, you understand) by "former residents" who own the house by right.

This is the thinking behind all the claims of Obama's illegitimacy, from plain birtherism to the more high-flown claims that Obama is an "alien" (again in the poetic sense). They worked it with Obama's Inauguration (where's the Bible?) and his appointment of Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State (no emoluments!), and every so often gin up another crisis of legitimacy in which an unremarkable Executive action is portrayed as the Thin End of the Wedge.

The punch line? When issues do come down the pike in which the President's Constitutional authority or lack of same bears discussion -- e.g. Libya -- what we get from conservatives is mostly self-serving bullshit. You really have to throw up your hands when the Cato Institute comes up with howlers like this:

It is probably naive to think that Congress would have blocked this war, but by exercising its atrophied war powers Congress at least might have caused the war to be waged with more wisdom and forethought.

Words to stir the soul! Well, I guess you can't get the yokels to the barricades with an anti-war pitch. So keep telling 'em about the mansion on the hill.

UPDATE. Lots of fun comments ("Ironically, this is also the story of the Playboy Mansion" -- Jay B). Some of you, though, have the impression that K-Lo wrote the email herself, which I hope you didn't get from me. Then again, maybe she was just being modest, and wanted The People to get all the credit.