Evidence Aside, State Lawmakers Debate ‘Birther’ Bills

By KIRK JOHNSON
NYT

OKLAHOMA CITY — Investigations have concluded that President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii in 1961, as he has always said.

Just this week, on the news program “Good Morning America” on ABC, George Stephanopoulos produced a copy of the president’s Certification of Live Birth, causing a potential presidential aspirant, Michele Bachmann, the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota, to say that the issue appeared settled. In 2008, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging that proof.

But the so-called birther controversy stubbornly refuses to go away.

The issue, which has simmered at the fringes of the nation’s political discourse for years, even got a recent burst of attention when it was adopted as a talking point by Donald Trump, a potential Republican presidential candidate.

(More here. TM Comment: Anybody born of an American parent -- even one American parent -- is an American citizen. That's why John McCain, who was born in Panama, is an American citizen.

Does anyone seriously believe that Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, was not an American citizen born in Kansas?

Even the conspiracy buffs who claim he was born somewhere other than Hawaii must acknowledge that he is an American citizen, born of an American parent, and qualified to run for president.)