Birthers have clamored for a Congressional investigation of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but birthers are a minority. Most people, the non-conspiracy minded folks, don’t have doubts about who is legitimately President of the United States, whether they like the choice or not. Birther theories don’t stand up to scrutiny. Anyone who cares can find out all the information necessary to make a decision without subpoenas and testimony.
I think that Congress, instead of bowing to the nut cases, should rather investigate the very real birther phenomenon. There are things that no one knows about the birthers. Congress should find out who’s funding it, whether it poses a danger to national security, and what can be done to prevent loss of productivity and family disintegration by similar movements in the future. Is it a confidence racket? Were laws violated? Is legislation needed to tighten up the rules for tax-exempt organizations that run political smear campaigns? Does the IRS need more money for investigators? These are legitimate Congressional concerns.
Some might argue that Congress has a long list of more important issues to deal with: the debt limit, continuing government operational funding, advice on executive branch judicial appointments and immigration reform; however, as a minority1 in Congress has these important issues bottled up, they might as well investigate birthers.
1While Republicans are a majority in the House of Representatives, obstructionists are not. Moderate Republicans plus Democrats in the House make the real majority and they would work on these more important issues if given the chance by the House leadership. In the Senate, the minority Republican party blocks legislation through filibuster.
So they should hold hearings which would allow birthers to abuse same as propaganda platform? I’m not sure I’m with you on this.
I can hear the birther outcry now.
“You can’t do this to us! We’re not brown, nor do we have un-American sounding names! Don’t investigate me, bro! I have a bad ticker! Oh God, where’s Chris!”
Well, Birthers ARE trying to subvert the Constitution. It’s my hope that the FBI and the DHS are keeping tabs on them anyway.
What’s to investigate? All we’re gonna learn is that we need to put more federal money into mental health treatment services.
Don’t like the idea of giving the birthers a forum at a hearing before Congressmen, though.
Put them under oath. That should scare them away from testifying.
It’s interesting that today there are more Birthers than 9/11 Truthers. There was a 9/11 Commission that wrote a voluminous report. The National Institute of Standards and Technology did a major study of the causes of the collapse of the WTC towers.
Nothing like that is afforded the birthers, suggesting how little respect birtherism actually has outside their own community.
False equivalence. The report was not made to placate the truthers.
We needed to know how 3000 people died and if there was something systemically wrong with construction methods.
We do not have anything similar about the birther movement.
I think that was the point of Doc’s comment … making a contrast, not an equivalence.
9/11 was something shocking and new.
Birtherism is disgusting, disappointing, but nothing new. It’s political smears and public madness. Typical of American politics since white men came in boats.
It could be a case study in the role the internet plays in empowering shills and in radicalizing people, and maintaining that radicalization. How political money is gathered and spent in attempts to warp truth. How memes are born and disseminated.
There would be a lot of parallels with other ‘-isms’ in these phenomena. Online radicalization of muslims, for instance. Birfers would love to have that comparison made 😉
Well, what about a black guy getting elected President?
This article was not entirely serious.
That would certainly put them under the grill of cross-examination, especially when the saner Congressmen and their lawyers ask hard questions. It would certainly expose their stupidity…
But they still get to make those opening statements and yell at their questioners. I can just imagine Orly Taitz screaming at Nancy Pelosi…
The right-wing 9/11 Truthers evolved into “Birthers.” And for all of its loudness (Alex Jones, etc.), the 9/11 Truthers were never effective at selling their rubbish.
The left-wing 9/11 Truthers are still at it, though. I’ve seen them on Saturday afternoons, looking like 1960s radicals, at the entrance to the World Trade Center of the PATH Station, right by the WTC site, with their big signs, wearily mouthing their slogans and rhetoric about the Reichstag Fire and the Northwoods memo, over and over again, to puzzled or disinterested passersby. I remember hearing one guy whining, “Look, when somebody stands there, yelling angry objections, shouldn’t people listen to him?” Nobody cared.
The problem the 9/11 Truthers have is that they really have nowhere to go…the 9/11 Commission is done, and they can’t sue Secretaries of State over ballot registration procedures for 9/11. They can’t frog-march George W. Bush out of the White House. They have even less hope of success than Birthers, and that isn’t saying much.
By golly, Molly, a hell of a good idea. I would support that whole heartedly.
But, it will never happen, will it?
Even the anti-birthers don’t want it!
Never expose something to airing that might prove you right, just air things that have no effect at all on anything.
Do you really believe any politician would encourage such a hearing?
Have you ever watched a hearing? It is a political circus, unless no politicians are involved in the questioning.
Some one might ask when Savannah. the city , relocated to the Gulf coast, along with North Carolina