Arpaio's Obama probe finds 'national security threat'

After determining earlier this year there is probable cause to suspect the document released by the White House as Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said today he believes his Cold Case Posse’s investigation should be advanced to the federal government, based on further information released today at a press conference under way now in Phoenix that is being live-streamed by WND.


Cold Case Posse lead investigator Mike Zullo said the new information confirms the document presented to the American public in April 2011 is undoubtedly fradulent.

The Obama campaign declined to comment on Arpaio’s allegations.

Why won't anyone listen to this guy???   Tom

What the Birthers' Obsessions Say About Identity in America

Many say that birtherism is just racism, but there's more than simple racial animus behind it.

Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. After the secret-Muslim accusations, the witch doctor posters, the “You lie!” shout-down and the chimpanzee e-mails—it is clear that President Obama is certainly “black enough” to experience both racially motivated public attacks and exceptional support among racial minorities.

But the tenacity of the birther movement has revived the issue of Obama’s blackness for me. Nearly a quarter of Americans, most of them white, believe President Obama was not born in the United States. The resilience of the birther myth—lately given air by Donald Trump—has even forced the White House to post a copy of Obama’s birth certificate online in hopes of settling the matter once and for all. Good luck—this controversy isn’t about documentation; it’s about deeply held beliefs, even faith claims, about who is and is not a legitimate citizen

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Birtherism Is Expensive

David Ariosto at CNN writes about the rift in the Republican party as the four-in-ten Republicans who can be classified as "birthers" are starting to conflict with the party elites who rightfully see birtherism as electoral poison in general elections. At the center of the conflict this week is Jan Brewer, who vetoed a bill passed by wide margins in the Arizona legislature that would require presidential candidates to produce proof beyond just their birth certificate that they were born in the U.S., since Obama has a birth certificate, and the point of the law is to try to force him out of office. Brewer forcefully denounced the birther bill in her veto, thus the theory that she's trying to distance herself from the craziness.

I would argue that while Brewer might have her eye on mainstream credibility (though that didn't stop her from signing overtly racist laws meant to harass people walking around while Hispanic in Arizona), I'd argue there's a lot more going on here than a simple dislike of birther conspiracy theories. Part of it is that Arizona, along with all the other states considering similar legislation, really can't afford to fight this battle in court. These bills are so poorly written they can be challenged on a number of levels, and since the presidency of the United States is such an important office, you can expect pretty much all of these challenges to happen in one form or another. Brewer singled out a provision in the bill that would allow circumcision or baptismal papers to work as further proof that you were born here, and I imagine it was more than personal offense that played a role. After all, such a provision does amount to a religious test for office, if viewed in a certain light. (Though a weird one that ends up excluding people who belong to Protestant religions that eschew baptizing newborns.) Brewer also mentioned that the bill only gave a single person—the Arizona secretary of state—to declare a birth certificate acceptable or not. If that had been the law in the last election, and the secretary of state allowed John McCain, born in Panama, to be considered a native citizen but disallowed Obama, born in Hawaii, the same distinction, that would have resulted in a massive lawsuit that would have cost the state millions of dollars in defending it. Since the law allowed no appeals process to simplify things, it would have gone to lawsuits immediately. Additionally, the law would have threatened federal powers. It really wouldn't have been long until Arizona was dealing with lawsuits from groups representing the voters, the federal government, and the candidates themselves.

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