David Weigel has a must-read piece in the Washington Independent about the increasingly, and disturbingly, close relationship between the Obama Birthers and some conservative Republicans:
The Republicans who appear to be willing to listen to “birthers,” even to debunk them, have to walk a tightrope. In April, freshman Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) held a town hall meeting at her old high school in Cheyenne, Wyo., and got a question about the president’s citizenship. Lummis challenged the skeptic to “please send” evidence that the president was not a natural-born citizen. “I’m not questioning your concern,” Lummis said. “I am questioning whether there is credible evidence.” In early July, a small group of “birthers” walked the halls of Congress handing “grand jury presentments” over to the confused front desk assistants of members of Congress; the activists rushed online to report the latest member who had been “handed” the information. After “birthers” provided some of their papers to Michael Schwartz, the chief of staff to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), they rushed online to report that Schwartz had been won over to the cause and was about to get in touch with Orly Taitz, a California lawyer who has filed several unsuccessful challenges to the president’s citizenship.
“It is possible to mistake politeness for agreement,” Schwartz told TWI, “and I make every effort to be polite.” He did have a “brief conversation with Dr. Taitz,” but challenged the way online “birthers” had hyped their contact with Coburn’s office. “An observer would not report it quite like this,” said Schwartz.
Taitz’s lawsuits and the pressure of conservative talkers like Limbaugh have made it increasingly difficult for Republicans to avoid the “birthers.” On June 16, after Limbaugh joked about the president’s citizenship, WorldNetDaily editor-in-chief Joseph Farah appeared on the Web-based Recharge Radio to thank the host for spreading the “birther” message. “What that did is beyond Rush’s impact,” said Farah. “It also gives other talk show hosts license to talk about this issue … Rush is kind of the standard of talk show hosts. A lot of people emulate what he does. He crossed the Rubicon on that show, and I’m very proud of him for doing it.”
Farah’s instincts have been borne out by conservative media. This week, Taitz represented Maj. Stefan F. Cook, a reservist who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan, then demanded to be released from the commitment unless the president proved that he was a U.S. citizen. “I did not volunteer with the intent of becoming a conscientious objector,” Cook told TWI in an email. On Wednesday Cook’s deployment was cancelled, and a spokesman for Centcom took issue with Taitz’s claim, made in a WorldNetDaily story, that this decision verified conspiracy theories about the president’s birth. Later that night, Sean Hannity cited the story on his Fox News show and used Taitz’s version of the facts, not Centcom’s.
“Major Cook and his lawyer expressed joy at this outcome,” said Hannity. “And they took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not in fact a legitimate citizen by birth.”
Not all conservatives are silently letting the birthers become a mainstream voice of opposition to the Preisdent, though. Michelle Malkin has denounced the birthers repeatedly and, correctly, compared them to the 9/11 truthers and the Move-On.org crowd, as have the guys over at Hot Air, and A.J. Strata spent considerable time during the election debunking the claims of the birthers.
Weigel has a point, though, in that we have seen some rather disturbing indications that mainstream conservative outlets like Fox News and Sean Hannity intend to treat the allegations of the birthers as fact without giving them even the small degree of scrutiny needed to reveal their lack of merit on either a factual or a legal basis. In the process, they’re undermining those of us who oppose Obama for what he does, not because of some crazy conspiracy theory thought up by a lawyer who earned her law degree at a correspondence school.
And for those of you who still think this an issue, I can’t come up with a better response than this guy:
If you’ve read about this issue at all, you would know that Hawaii went paperless a while ago. There is no “master” copy.
The certificate the Obama HQ provided is what you get if you request a birth document from the state of Hawaii. If that’s not good enough for you, that’s your problem. The man has fulfilled all the legal requirements. End of story.
Now go find a real issue. Surely that’s not too difficult, with this administration?
You can start here.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
But, the birther’s central assertion is that “natural born citizen” requires that both parents be US citizens. Producing the long form will not end the controversy – they will point Barack Senior’s citizenship on the form.
From Stefan Cook’s lawsuit:
orlytaitzesq.com/blog1/
“Barack Hussein Obama, in order to prove his constitutional eligibility to serve as President, basically needs only produce …. the “long-form” birth certificate which will confirm whether Barack Hussein Obama was in fact born to parents who were both citizens of the United States in Honolulu, Hawaii, in or about 1961.”
July 17th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Dan,
There is no provision in the Constitution that says that a “natural born citizen” for Article II purposes means someone born in the United States to two US citizen parents and there is no evidence from the records of the Convention of 1787 that the Founders intended this definition be the one that determines Presidential eligibility.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Agreed. But it’s the birther’s stand, they have reams of webpages “proving” it’s so, so providing the long form doesn’t settle the issue. They’ll just move the goal posts.
July 17th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Oh on that point we agree.
I said back when these lawsuits started that no amount of proof will satisfy these people
July 18th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
It’s not just about moving the goal posts. The “natural born” issue is the primary factor, and is ONLY imposed on those who would be president. And as you have suggested, there are reams of documents all the way back to the 1787 “Law of Nations”, British Common Law and the writing of the Constitution that suggest the only reason to include the “natural Born” clause was for purposes of allegiance to one’s country. THAT is the distinction, and that is why Obama is afraid to let this issue be fully vetted in a Court of Law. Having a British subject as a father does indeed disqualify him as one who has divided loyalties, not to mention his Indonesian citizenship. The COLB is a proven forgery as well as a smokescreen. (Digital imaging specialists know this – just study the enhanced pixels) However, because the powerful protect the powerful, we will never get our corrupt legal system to fully vet the issue. Obama will probably survive one term, but the so called “birthers” will never stop and will have him disqualified as a candidate in numerous state houses preventing him from succeeding to a second term.