Rick Perry is starting to make George W. Bush look like Stephen Hawking by comparison

Just when you thought Rick Perry couldn't seem any dumber, he comes up with this gem in PARADE, the throwaway rag chock full of ads for cheap slippers and "Amish-made" electric heater enclosers that comes with your Sunday newspaper:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.
I don’t know. Have I?

You don’t believe what’s been released?
I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?That came up.

And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.

And you said?I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

Now I know that PARADE is hardly the reading of people with significant amounts of gray matter in their crania, and I know that it's taken seriously by exactly the kind of people who buy reverse mortgages from Fred Thompson on late-night TV, but for Lynn Sherr, who used to be an actual journalist, to bring up the birther issue is even more beyond the pale than for Rick Perry to leave the door open. I mean seriously, is he afraid he might lose the Orly Taitz vote?

Oh wait....never mind.