I thought I was done writing about birthers, those individuals who keep insisting that President Barack Obama was born in a country other than the United States of America.
Silly me.
A new poll is out. It says that more than 70 percent of Republicans believe the president was not born in the United States, that he was born in a foreign country, that he’s somehow not a legitimate president.
This might be the last time I’ll ever write about it. Then again, it might not be.
Allow me to make a couple of points.
First, the president produced a long-firm birth certificate that declares he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in August 1961, two years after Hawaii became one of the 50 states. He showed it to all of us .
That doesn’t seem to satisfy Republicans who continue to insist that he’s a foreigner.
Second, we also had this discussion with former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who actually was born in another country. He was born in Canada — to an American mother and a Cuban father. Cruz, though, said he was a U.S. citizen by virtue of his mother’s citizenship.
Which brings me back to the point about Obama’s citizenship. His mother was a U.S. citizen, too; his father — who he barely knew — was Kenyan.
And that brings us to the final point.
If Barack H. Obama had been born on, oh, Mars to an American mother and a foreign-born father, he still would be eligible to run — and serve — as president of the United States.
But that partisan divide keeps this non-story alive and kicking.
The Constitution doesn’t stipulate precisely that a presidential candidate must be born within the nation’s borders. It says only that a “natural-born” citizen is eligible to run and serve.
In both instances, Sen. Cruz and President Obama are eligible to run for and serve as president.
However, in the matter involving the current president, he’s produced a U.S. birth certificate. It’s too bad, though, that most Republicans still seem to refuse to believe their lying eyes.