Obama's "birthers"

Have you heard of these Obama "birthers?" A sizable movement on the internet is demanding that the president be removed from office unless he can provide his birth certificate, proving he is indeed an American citizen.

These are the same people who claimed during the election that Obama was a Muslim and/or an Arab American working to destroy the country from the inside.

Pushing aside for a moment the blatant bigotry inherent in believing a Muslim or an Arabic president would be a bad thing, the fact remains that Obama is neither of these; he is a Christian and an American citizen, born in Hawaii in 1961.

Copies of his birth certificate have been provided to officials who have vouched for its authenticity. Certification indicating that a birth certificate exists is readily available for anyone seeking to find it in Hawaii. And newspaper clippings from days after Obama's birth show that his mother and father placed a birth announcement in the paper celebrating their new addition.

Despite all of this, conservative commentators have continued to give these so-called "birthers" -- those who still cling onto the claim that Obama isn't a citizen -- a place in the limelight, a forum where they can express their extreme views. Lou Dobbs went so far as to say that many questions remained unanswered -- a claim that was refuted two nights earlier on his own show, when guest host Kitty Pilgrim filled in his spot and debunked the whole mess (as pointed out on the Daily Show).

That these people continue to drag this issue on despite the overwhelming evidence that contradicts their claims, coupled with the conservative commentators who give these "birthers" a national forum, shows how desperate the right has become. Rather than debate Obama on the issues, the right has resolved to defeat his character through the manipulation of issues that aren't even fact.