An item, published in the Charlotte Observer, and picked up by ThinkProgress:

Fort Mill Mayor Danny Funderburk says he was “just curious” when he forwarded a chain e-mail suggesting Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is the biblical antichrist. “I was just curious if there was any validity to it,” Funderburk said in a telephone interview. “I was trying to get documentation if there was any scripture to back it up.”

The story goes on to note that the e-mail in question “claims the biblical book of Revelation says the antichrist will be in his 40s and of Muslim ancestry.”  And in a stunning bit of journalistic honesty, the author of the Observer article, Stuart Watson, actually writes: “There is no such scripture. And Obama is not a Muslim.”  Of course not.  Islam was founded in the seventh century, about six hundred years or so after the Book of Revelation was written.  Far from mentioning Islam, the Book of Revelation doesn’t even mention Christianity.  So props to Watson and the Observer for correctly pointing out the blindingly obvious.

Funderburk, however, is not so easily swayed by the facts.  “When asked if he believed Obama was the antichrist, Funderburk replied, ‘I’ve got absolutely no way of knowing that.'”

Well, Funderburk could have checked with Tim LaHaye, co-author of the wildly popular “Left Behind” series of books — you know, the ones where airplane pilots and bus drivers are raptured up to heaven, leaving all of their presumably agnostic passengers to die in fiery crashes down below.  LaHaye authoritatively told the Wall Street Journal: “The antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania.”  Of course, LaHaye has a sort of professional interest in this antichrist-Romania connection, since the antichrist in the “Left Behind” books is the improbably named Nicolae Carpathia, a citizen of Romania (by way of Satan).

All of this would be laughable if the campaign of John McCain had not first planted this very idea in the tiny, Pez-sized brains of the booboisie with his internet ad “The One,” which had some not-so-subtle dog whistles for the evangelical right implying that Obama was … well, maybe not the antichrist, but quite possibly the antichrist-lite.  Not 666 necessarily, but 665 and climbing.  It is only fair, then, that one Romanian church, possibly annoyed at LaHaye calling Romania an “obscure place,” has responded to all of this by suggesting that maybe John McCain is the antichrist.

Makes ya’ wonder.