Birtherism

I.

Senator David Vitter, who is now facing unexpected primary opposition from former LA Supreme Court Judge Chet Traylor, was all over the national news yesterday, after he said this at a town hall meeting:

Mr. Vitter, cutting through the mainstream media filter, here is a copy of Barack Obama’s birth certificate:

II.

And “just in case,” Congressional candidate Ravi Sangisetty, an Indian-American who is running for Louisiana’s Third Congressional District as a conservative Democrat, released his birth certificate today:

Of course, you don’t have to be a natural-born citizen to run for Congress. Louisiana Congressman Joseph Cao, for example, was born in Saigon.

Mr. Sangisetty’s campaign shouldn’t have had to do this; they shouldn’t have felt compelled to preemptively assert his authenticity as a natural-born American citizen. But given the ridiculous conspiracies around President Obama’s birth certificate, I suppose they thought they need to put this out, “just in case.”

Not that it would matter.

III.

Obama’s campaign also released a copy of his birth certificate. They even dug up his birth notices in local, Hawaiian newspapers. All of which has been independently verified.

Still, Senator David Vitter implicitly denies the integrity of the President’s birth certificate, and though he claims he doesn’t have cause to bring a lawsuit forward, Vitter supports challenges in the court.

It’s intellectually dishonest and undignified, particularly from a United States Senator. Vitter may disagree with Obama on policy, but when he, in his capacity as a United States Senator, proclaims his support for people who believe, despite the facts and the documentation, that our President was not born in the State of Hawaii, Vitter is providing legitimacy to and cover for easily-disprovable conspiracy theorists.

Incidentally, even though Vitter is the incumbent Republican nominee, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has refused to endorse him, a sign that the Jindal camp is hedging their bets and is aware of Vitter’s political vulnerabilities.

IV.

I call on Senator David Vitter to publish his birth certificate.

V.

Or alternatively, Mr. Vitter could publicly acknowledge the President is a natural-born citizen who deserves our respect and publicly renounce any notion of Obama’s “illegitimacy,” whether it is founded on lies about citizenship, race, religion, or birthplace.

Mr. Vitter, on paper, is a smart man: an Ivy-League educated Rhodes scholar. So it’s even more difficult to take him seriously when he talks about the mainstream media filter. He seems to be feigning ignorance.

He should know better: I mean, he believes in Birthers? Really?

I mean, really?

VI.

Pathetic.