Mark your calendars. On July 6, we published the first letter of this campaign season implying that President Obama might be the Antichrist. There will be more. Such letters arrived in a steady drizzle during the run-up to the November 2008 election. When some writers try to demonize the president, they really mean it.

That irks a few readers.

An online commenter wrote about the July 6 letter: "Do we have no journalistic filter through which this story might have been selected for elimination?"

First, it wasn't a story. It was a letter to the editor — one writer's expression of opinion.

Second, we don't "select for elimination" letters with which we disagree. We let letter writers say all sorts of things on this Opinion page, as long as they don't libel private individuals.

And besides, the notion that Obama is an illegal alien or a closet communist or a Muslim terrorist is standard fare in certain circles. The suspicion that maybe, just maybe, he might be a supernatural fiend itching for a fight with Jesus is similarly embedded in some folks' imaginations.

It's all flapdoodle and foolishness. That's OUR opinion. It's just as silly as the lefty charge that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney helped plan the 9/11 attacks. But people believe what they want to believe, and occasionally they want to air those beliefs in a newspaper's letters column.

Check out this passage from a letter we published May 1, 2011, which lumps all of the anti-Obama paranoia together: "The elephants and the donkeys have procreated the bastard son of Satan, and this creation has morphed into a collective headed by a communist Muslim called Barack Hussein Obama. ... The Antichrist has arrived and he is prepared to destroy the United States!"

That was written by Geoff Ross of Navarre, who organized the U.S. Constitution and Freedom Rally II, which was held in March on Okaloosa Island. Gov. Rick Scott spoke at the rally.

As we said, this stuff is routine, even among mainstream activists and organizers. Get ready to see more of it.

REPRINTED FROM THE NORTHWEST FLORIDA DAILY NEWS