Don’t encourage the ‘birthers’

Don’t encourage the ‘birthers’

Dallas Morning News: A year after then-candidate Barack Obama released a birth record showing he was born in Hawaii, the president-isn’t-a-natural-born-citizen mythology is gaining a troubling second wind.

Delaware Rep. Mike Castle, a conservative Republican, recently was booed loudly for defending Obama’s citizenship and his right to be president during a town hall meeting. Several conservative politicians are now coyly perpetuating the fake-citizenship myth. And Florida Rep. Bill Posey has gone so far as to sponsor a bill with several Republican co-signers that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.

Joys of the Internet Age

Maybe this is the way political disputes play out in the Internet Age, but we think it is disgusting and dangerous. Someone flings a charge, then lets word of mouth, e-mail blasts and talk-show chatter turn an easily debunked allegation into a full-fledged circus of conspiratorial cover-up theories. Americans deserve better and need to demand some responsibility — especially from elected officials who seem most interested in playing to the worst instincts the political fringe has to offer.

“Birthers,” as these conspiracy mongers are known, theorize that Obama’s mother gave birth to the future president in Kenya in 1961. Under one odd interpretation, Obama’s 18-year-old mother, an American citizen, didn’t meet an obscure law requiring her to have lived in the United States for at least five years after the age of 14 in order for her son to be eligible for the presidency.

Never mind that Hawaii has confirmed Obama’s “certificate of live birth” as a valid birth certificate. Never mind that a birth announcement was printed in a Hawaii paper in 1961. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court last year dismissed a legal challenge to his citizenship.

It’s bad enough for those on the extreme edges of politics to tilt at windmills; it’s worse for those who should know better to fuel this paranoia.