Some of us imagined that Barack Obama couldn’t possibly have a lousier, more corrupt, circle of friends and advisors in Washington than he had back in Chicago. But is it possible that we simply underestimated the man’s uncanny ability to attract vermin?

For instance, there is Eric Holder. He’s the knucklehead who kicked things off by accusing white people of being cowards because they wouldn’t honestly address racial matters. But when he demurred from prosecuting the Black Panthers for intimidating voters, and told his Department of Justice staff that under his watch only white people would be prosecuted for such crimes, some of us were dying to have an honest discussion with him. In fact, for his convenience, it could have been in the alley behind his office. But he was nowhere to be found.

Then, in the wake of “Fast and Furious,” he told a congressional committee under oath that he knew nothing about hundreds of guns being sold to Mexican gangsters. When it turned out that he had been receiving memos about the operation for months before his testimony, his response was along the lines of “I’m the Attorney General. I write memos, I don’t read them.” On balance, that probably beats, “I was going to read them, but our dog buried them in the backyard before I had a chance.”

If there’s any justice in the world, Holder will wind up in the hoosegow where he can have all those honest conversations he was just dying to have; this time, with his cellmate, Bubba.

Another of Obama’s appointees is Jeffrey Immelt, the head of General Electric. Because Immelt is Obama’s good friend and America’s Jobs Czar, some of us were confused when Obama started whining about millionaires and billionaires flying on corporate jets and not paying their fair share of taxes. G.E., as we all know, paid no corporate taxes last year. And, really, just between us, does Obama think that when Mr. Immelt commutes to Washington, D.C., he does it on a Greyhound Bus?

To compound matters, Immelt, apparently unclear on his job description, seemed to think that by transferring a large part of G.E.‘s industrial capacity to China, he was fulfilling his obligation to increase employment. In fact, one can easily imagine this exchange between Immelt and Obama: “You’re telling me I was supposed to create jobs in America?” “Well, yeah, I guess so. Is that a problem?” “Well, duh! Do you have any idea how much money I’m saving by using slave labor?” “Did you say slave?” “Don’t get your undies in a knot, Barack. We’re talking Chinese.” “Oh, that’s right. Never mind.”

And so it goes.

In San Francisco, otherwise known as Bedlam by the Bay, there is a legislative proposal to make convicted felons members of a protected class, so that landlords and employers would be prohibited from asking applicants about their criminal past. I swear, folks, you can’t make up this kind of stuff.

That brings me to Rand Paul. I had assumed that Sen. Paul was at least 50% saner than his old man, Rep. Ron Paul, the fellow who doesn’t worry about a nuclear Iran, but is having a cow, perhaps a herd of cows, over our execution of the Yemen-based, American-born, jihadist, Anwar Al-Awlaki. I was listening to Hugh Hewitt’s radio talk show when he asked Sen. Paul if he really believed, as he had stated, that the reason we are hated in the Middle East is simply because America supports Israel.

As I said, I had assumed that he possessed the lion’s share of common sense in the Paul family. That was until he replied, “Well, that’s what they say. That’s what they write.”

They say a lot of things, Senator Paul. They write a lot of things. That doesn’t make it so. Inasmuch as the jihadists have slaughtered innocent people in England, Russia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, the Sudan, Holland, India, Lebanon, China, Nigeria, Armenia, Spain, Japan and the Philippines, I would think that even a U.S. senator could grasp the simple fact that most of these countries are not allies of Israel. In fact, a number of them despise Israel.

Perhaps, I dare say, every bit as much as he and his father do.