Weigel

Mid-Morning Birther Break

I keep trying to get out; they keep pulling me back in. I pledged not to write about Orly Taitz after her 2010 campaign for secretary of state in California proved how politically feeble she was. What I should have remembered: The other winners of 2010 included citizen legislators with birtherish sympathies. This was one reason why the White House eventually put out the long form birth certificate that proved what had already been proven. Sure, Donald Trump’s two-month journey of self-humiliation disguised as a presidential campaign had a lot to do with it, but at the very least the White House had to shut down state legislators who were going to demand more birth proof for entry onto 2012 ballots.

This brings us back to Taitz. In New Hampshire, as Alex McGillis puts it “when you have a legislative body with 400 people representing barely more than 3,000 people each, you’re going to end up with some real winners.” Some of the winners brought Taitz – who has never, ever, won any legal judgment in a birther case, since the beginning of time – as their expert to a ballot commission hearing. The topic: Was Obama ineligible for the ballot? The result: Hilarity.

Taitz has two modes: Blissful ignorance and outraged incompetence. Both were on display at the hearing. When the commission balked at her three-year-old, moronic argument that no one with any foreign parents can be president, she insulted Secretary of State Bill Gardner. That drew this response from the state’s House majority leader, D.J. Betancourt, who called Taitz’s cause “gobbledygook.”

Your outburst was unbecoming of any legitimate political dialogue, never mind one as ridiculous as the continued obsession over President Obama’s birth place. I have spoken to the Representatives who were present and expressed to them my strong desire that they immediately disassociate themselves from you and this folly. This country has an opportunity in less than a year to replace this President and it is my fervent hope that we will do so. However, I wholeheartedly reject your request to remove Secretary Gardner or any attempt to bring a criminal complaint of elections fraud or treason.

And now we’re caught up.