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I have to head out of town and posting will be lighter and possibly non-existent for the next few days.

Jon Stewart on the Birther Movement

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After a post on the Birther movement, this seems like a good time to insert a recent clip of Jon Stewart mocking them (video above).

McCain Campaign Looked Into “Birther” Claims

David Weigel takes another look at the “Birther” movement which believes that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is therefor not eligible to be president. He found that the McCain campaign did check into the rumors but found that there was no substantive evidence that Obama was born outside of the United States:

A survey of the lawsuits filed against Obama reveals a reliance on widely debunked rumors, bogus stories sourced back to web sites, affidavits from “experts” who refuse to provide credentials or even their real names, and frequent and blatant misunderstandings of basic constitutional law. The dismissal of “birther” lawsuits has allowed conspiracy theorists to believe that the information in those suits is accurate–a belief that manifests itself in the emails, phone calls, and town hall meeting rants that have pushed the theories into the mainstream media and the halls of Congress.

While they ruled out any chance of the ‘birther’ lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama’s birth and the assertions made by Berg and others. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”