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“Despite numerous claims from Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson that he had received a ‘full scholarship’ to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — including a mention in his best-selling memoir ‘Gifted Hands’ — Carson never even applied for admission to the academy, Carson’s campaign confirmed to CBS News.”

Confronted with undeniable evidence, Carson ‘fessed up after West Point told Politico it has no record of Carson ever applying, much less being accepted, there. (Read the story here.) Yesterday, CNN raised questions about whether Carson fabricated his stories about a violent adolescence that turned around when he found religion. (Read about that story, and find source links, here.) Both doubts involve claims Carson made in his 1990 autobiography, “Gifted Hands.”

Much of Carson’s appeal to his fans springs from his moving biography of a troubled kid who rose from hardscrabble beginnings to become a world-renowned neurosurgeon, as recounted by him in his 1990 book. But now it increasingly appears that he made up significant details of that story.

Carson also has made a series of outlandish statements on the campaign trail, such as asserting the Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain, and proposing to repurpose the U.S. Department of Education to investigating college professors for “liberal bias”. He has established himself as an anti-science candidate by disputing global warming, evolution, and the Big Bang theory.

This, combined with his repetitive lying, should disqualify Carson from high public office. The question is, will it? On a larger scale, is democracy even possible with an electorate that supports a candidate like this?

Update: Ben White, Politico’s senior economics correspondent, writing for CNBC (click here for story), predicts Carson’s campaign “is over.” We’ll see.