I really can’t believe these wingnut Birthers have received as much attention as they have. I thought this issue was definitively resolved over a year and a half ago, when Presidential candidate Barack Obama posted a copy of his birth certificate on his campaign website, a birth certificate backed up by the Republican governor of Hawaii and bolstered by birth announcements in both Honolulu newspapers.
Apparently, some Republican elected officials still have questions, including Louisiana’s own Charles Boustany. Check this out:
Seriously Congressman Boustany? Seriously? You STILL have questions?
I wonder what questions he has, and I also wonder why it’s so difficult for some of these elected Republican officials to simply say, “While I may disagree with the President on policy, I think it is absurd and cynical to call into question this man’s legitimacy as a natural born citizen. President Obama was born in the State of Hawaii. Period.”
CenLamar 
Dont forget the moon landing was done on a hollywood movie stage
and there were 15 riflemen involved in the Kennedy shooting which
were hired by Tony Orlando and Dawn. The list is endless. I know I was once hit by a flying saucer thrown by Sasquatch or what ever his name was..NEXT!
It is absolutely shameful that anyone who holds the Office of United States Congress would ever lend credibility to this hogwash. If anything, Congressman Boustany should be distancing himself from these wingnuts, instead of paying them lip service.
Birthers are the logical extension of those who, during the 2008 campaign, spread the false rumors that Obama is a secret Muslim. They are the same people who find malicious pleasure in calling him “Hussein” at the drop of a hat (while conveniently employing cognitive dissonance in NOT calling the governor “Piyush”). It is a thinly-veiled racism that dares not call its own name, but make no mistake: Birthers are most probably racists.
Do we need to recall the racist whispering campaign that the Blanco camp ran against Jindal, including the use of his given name, “Piyush”, plus the other insinuations about his faith and ethnic background?
Politics is a dirty, dirty business – from “Daisy” to “Willie Horton” to “Read My Lips” to “James Byrd” to “Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama”. It shouldn’t be, but it is. The irony is, most big league politicians all laugh about among themselves after it’s all over, and, for the most part, don’t take it that seriously. It’s the political commentators that seem to hang on to it longer.
Part of the problem is that the U.S. government has been so consistent (though not necessarily good) at lying, that the average citizen assumes (with some very solid support) that our government, and most or all members therein, lie all the time. To limit the discussion to the post-war period, starting with Roswell –
1947 – Government trying to cover-up one super secret program tells three outrageously (unless you believe that it really was a crashed alien UFO – then they told the truth first, and have told lies ever since), “easily provable as lies” lie, before finally telling the “truth” over 40 years later. And we wonder why people still question the four different offical versions that have been told over the past 62 years.
1950s/60ss – Civil Defense programs (“Duck and Cover”) and a whole host of other things that were a waste of taxpayer money and would have been ineffectual at best, had there been a nuclear exchange. The fact that the government blatantly lied and exaggerated (on the low side), what several hundred nuclear explosions in the lower 48 would have really meant. (Ike was right – MAD was the only logical course, crazy though that seems now.)
The Warren Commission/The Church Report – While the Church Committee, despite itself, didn’t contradict the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone, the other explorations of activities revealed in the Church Report (an official document of the U.S. government) should bring everything about the JFK assassination into question.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident. Need I say more?
Gulf War syndrome/Saddam’s use of chemical munitions during Desert Shield/Desert Storm.
SO, when an entity has this kind of track record with the truth (and these are all official actions/reports/conclusions of the U.S. Government – not the individual duplicities, fraud, corruption, illegalities committed by individuals in government), needless to say, people have some justification when they question:
1.) The death of Vince Foster (I accept the conclusion that he committed suicide. However, I believe that he committed suicide elsewhere and the body was moved to avoid embarassment to the administration.)
2.) The Clinton administration’s motives for intervening in Kosovo – particularly to get various scandals off the front page.
3.) The official account of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (For the record, I accept the government’s offical report. However, I understand the skepticism held by some.)
4.) The Bush administration’s motives for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and the exaggeration of the WMD threat posed by Saddam Hussein as justification therefor.
5.) Anything the Obama administration wants to push through “right now”, in light of the “never waste a crisis” philosophy held by most top administration officials.
I’m not saying that there aren’t crazy people in the camp of every position on this list. However, merely to question is not to be crazy.
When you have relatives of Obama claiming they were present/witnessed his birth in Kenya, coupled with the allegations that he claimed educational benefits for being a foreign born student – those are legitimate questions to be pursued. I’m reasonably satisfied that if there were conclusive evidence that he was foreign born and ineligible to be president, it would have surfaced by now. As it is, I think there is a rebuttable presumption that he was born in Hawaii as he has indicated.
However, don’t make it seem like these questions about his status as “native born” were just made up out of whole cloth.
“However, don’t make it seem like these questions about his status as “native born” were just made up out of whole cloth.”
But they were. The allegations you refer to were first circulated in an immediately debunked April Fools Day chain e-mail.
Congressman Boustany was on KPEL in Lafayette this morning. He said the question asked to him was if the birth certificate thing was of concern to some people in his district, to which he obviously replied “yes”.
Boustany just stated on the air that he truly believes President Obama is a U.S. citizen, stated that a short form certificate, newpaper archive, and Hawaian authorities have testified in favor of Obama’s citizenship. He even stood up to one or two callers who made the claim that Obama has not proven citizenship, and told them that they need to go do research and produce real evidence.
Therefore, Boustany obviously does not hold the same opinion as the “birthers” you attempt to tie him to.
Eyes on Acadiana,
I never said that I thought Boustany was a Birther, and in this video, he was not asked whether or not people in his district thought Obama’s birth certificate was of concern. Watch the video.
It’s reassuring that he clarified himself, even if it did happen the morning after this video went viral. He should have said the same thing in this video as he apparently did on the radio this morning.
I was driving south on Hwy 165 Sunday, and on one of those electronic billboards in Pineville appeared the question: “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” These guys do not actually believe the drivel they push, they just use it to motivate their base. It’s effective, so they will continue to do it.
One thing that is kind of scary here is that this really means that just about anyone can dispute any government document they want. I could easily argue that because there are more people with the last name Roy in Marksville than an Alex that I think Jacques Roy is more likely a resident of Avoyelles Parish and therefore not truly eligible to be mayor of Alexandria.
Sure he has a house here and a law office here, and his dad and brother lives here, but that can all be faked. How do we really (I mean REALLY) know Jacques Roy is from Alexandria??!?
Even worse, what if he’s a robot?
Little Chris might be a robot. Mr. Chris and Jacques, probably not.
Lamar,
you are going After’Birther!