Chris Cannon gets curiouser and curiouser

Loyal GOAT readers have already read the tale of Chris Cannon, the ultra-conservative, oil-shale-promoting U.S. House member from Utah who got beat in this year's Republican primary after he made the mistake of being open to compromise on immigration. Well, it turns out that Utah hath nothing weirder -- or sadder -- than an uber-conservative scorned. The Times of London is reporting that Cannon -- acting in concert with his brother-in-law  -- recently contacted an Oxford professor who has created a computer program that can detect when two works are written by the same author and offered him $10,000 to determine whether Obama's memoir Dreams From My Father might actually have been written by ... William Ayers! As in William Ayers, the washed-up radical who may have sneezed on Obama while they served on the same nonprofit board in Chicago, thereby infecting him with terrorist cooties. The professor said he was happy to do an analysis of Obama's book, but warned that he would make the results public whether or not he found a connection. At that point, Cannon and his brother-in-law apparently lost interest.

Allegations of an Obama-Ayers book connection have been making the rounds on talk radio and the conservative blogosphere for the past few weeks, but the fact that a sitting congressman was willing to pay for a private investigation of the matter certainly ups the bizarre factor by a few notches. But perhaps Cannon is just laying the groundwork for his next career. After losing the services of Chris Cannon the congressman, can the people of Utah look forward to the appearance of Chris Cannon the talk-show host?