So, was Obama the first "birther"?

It's the sort of checking one box when it gives you an advantage and then not checking that box when it doesn't..."

I believe (a) that Obama was born in Hawaii and (b) he was not above noising it around that he was special, exotic and able to look down on Americans because of his unique multi-cultural perspective when he wanted to.

And, honestly, haven't we seen that attitude throughout Obama's presidency?

And isn't the real problem that he seems to have a fairly laissez faire attitude about being an American, not where he was born?

The real "birther."

Although it has been stipulated that it is way, way beyond the pale to ever have asked for Obama's birth certificate, Andrew Sullivan's truly bizarre campaign to prove that Sarah Palin is not the mother of Trig has gone essentially unnoticed:

And it remains odd to me that a media enterprise openly seeking to "definitively debunk" a question should not simply seek the obvious avenue to do so: ask Palin for evidence she claims she's already produced anyway. That's the real Occam's razor here and it is directed at the media. We are told Palin has already been directly asked and showed no hesitation, even some amusement, in responding. We know that Loy's own editor, apparently aware of the limits of his own reporter's unpublished testimony, asked a month after the election. Why would Salon not follow up on their own? They've already proven they are on Palin's side in this instance, if not in any other, so it would be a perfect way for Palin to kill off these rumors by cooperating with a leftist source to knock them down for good. How much better could it be for both parties? (I have, by the way, asked Justin Elliott, whom I respect, this question and he assures me he will respond in due course on his site.)


But c'mon, Salon. Clinch this for good and all. You can do it. Just ask Palin's camp for medical records. And if she refuses, explain what her reasoning is, given her position on Obama's birth certificate?

Whack-a-doodle.

"He may not be a mass murderer, but don't you ever dare call him Canadian."

James Taranto is in search of the logic that makes "Birthers" comparable in some strange world to "Truthers."

The former after all simply dispute where Obama was born; the latter thought that we were being led by a mass murderer. 

Here are some suggestions from Taranto's readers:

Birther, Truthers and Other Frothers

Are 9/11 "truthers" as bad as Obama "birthers"? In response to a Friday item, reader Brian Gates makes an excellent argument that they're worse:

You noted that Politico's Ben Smith went looking for an analogy to the set of beliefs that Barack Obama had either been born in Kenya, or Vancouver, or could not be a natural-born citizen because his father was not an American citizen, or at least that Obama has not done all he could to disprove those beliefs. He found what he called a "good analogue": the belief among Democrats that George W. Bush was either complicit in or directly responsible for the murder of thousands of human beings.

And we're supposed to be the xenophobes. Sure, like any normal person, I would take umbrage at the suggestion that I was from Canada. But being called Canadian is a pretty mild slur compared to being called mass murderer.

And reader Roger Membreno offers a better analogy:

I'm more interested in the number of Democrats who believe George W. Bush was not the rightful winner of the 2000 election. For a good portion of his presidency, we were subjected to complaints that he was "not my President!" out of some belief that he halted the recount before Al Gore could find the boxes of "missing" votes and claim victory. To me, birtherism is on par with the belief that Bush stole the Florida election--detractors are looking for a quick and easy way to declare the election results null and void (maybe out of fear that if he did legitimately win, then he could win a second term too).

PollingReport.com has the partisan breakdown of the recent New York Times/CBS poll results on the question of where President Obama was born, which we'd been unable to find Friday. The question was worded as follows:

"According to the Constitution, American presidents must be 'natural born citizens.' Some people say Barack Obama was NOT born in the United States, but was born in another country. Do YOU think Barack Obama was born in the United States, or do you think he was born in another country?"

Results: Republicans 33% U.S., 45% another country, 22% unsure; Democrats 81% U.S., 10% another country, 9% unsure; independents 52% U.S., 25% another country, 23% unsure.

We're particularly interested in the independents, because they more than anyone will decide whether Obama gets a second term. A majority of independents do not believe the false claim that Obama was born elsewhere. On the other hand, it's a small majority, and independents are even more likely than Republicans to say they're unsure.

Overall, the proportion of respondents who believe Obama was born outside the U.S. is up, to 25% from 20% a year earlier. Perhaps this is just a proxy for general unhappiness with the president. But it may be that birtherism is catching on in part because it is getting so much media attention.

Another interesting feature of our weird media culture is the insistence that the media has on forcing Republicans to state on the record if they have any doubts about where Obama was born, as if they had personal knowledge where he was born, when they gave "Truthers" like Michael Moore and Rosie O'Donnell, and politicians associated with those loons, a complete pass.

Put simply, no one has a moral obligation to take a position on where someone else was born. 

Likewise, no one has a moral obligation to take a position on whether in a complicated voting process, the votes tallied out exactly the way they were reported, which is why I'll cut slack to any Democrat for saying "we wuz robbed" about the 2000 election (so long as my side gets to say it about other elections.)

But whether we are being led by a mass murderer is something you really have a moral obligation to make a decision about, or else you become complicit with murder and tyranny.