U.S. president turns out to be American
It’s official: Barack Obama is a native-born American. He has a vote of Congress to prove it.
Language in a resolution celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii becoming the 50th state declares that the 44th president of the United States was born there. It passed the House unanimously with 158 Republicans voting for the measure — even Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who briefly sought to block or delay it.
So, will that quiet a silly accusation, lacking any factual basis, that has only grown in intensity since it first surfaced in the presidential campaign? That Obama was not born in the United States and thus is not really a citizen and thus is president illegally? No, but it may push it out to the lunatic fringe, where it can join other wacko conspiracy theories from the grassy knoll to 9/11 being an inside job...
The editorial was produced by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, down in Texas. It goes on to explain the whole "birther" thing to its readers. (No mention of the "deather" thing that our readers have come up with to explain Bachmann opposition to health care reform. I think that's brilliant, by the way: Bachmann as an advocate of "cradle-to-grave conspiracy.")
The point is that the editors of this newspaper expect Michele Bachmann's name to register as an "indicia of the nuttiness of an idea" even in distant, conservative Texas. That's good for the Dump Bachmann side, not bad. Every time we read her name in a non-partisan forum outside the state--allusions to kookiness are sure to be close by.
That means that our side is winning the national fight. (We weren't just a couple of years ago.) No matter how popular she is with conservatives, the rest of the world knows that she's a nut, liar, and bigot--they've seen it on video.
Our problem is and has always been the local fight, not the national one. Our problem is the election.
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