Mr. Posey should know that birth certificates don’t put out fires. Candidate Obama produced one. But Mr. Posey said he couldn’t swear on a stack of Bibles whether that meant Mr. Obama really was a natural-born U.S. citizen.

Mr. Posey should withdraw the bill, unless his real intent is to fire up opposition to Mr. Obama.

Posey has played an inside-outside game on this; as I pointed out on MSNBC last week, he has bellyached about mean local coverage of his quest to prove that Obama’s a citizen, but he’s appeared on fringe radio shows to compare Obama’s reluctance to produce more documents to a drug user’s reluctance to take a drug test.

Am I the only one to notice that mainstream media attention to the “Birthers” has picked up in recent weeks — and that this increased attention is coincident to the turn in Obama’s approval ratings?

A search of The Washington Post web site, for instance, on the term “Birther” yields as its oldest hit this one, from July 6; a search of The New York Times, though, shows first mention of the term on July 22.

Far be it from me to assume one is the cause of the other — as faithful readers know, I do my best to avoid falling into the post hoc, ergo propter hoc trap — but, still, it is an interesting coincidence.

I can’t speak to discussions inside those newspapers’ newsrooms, but I have been following this, err, story for a year, and before the blow-up this month, there were several bursts of “birther” attention whenever these people got into a courtroom to make their case. And searching for the term “birther” isn’t the way to check this.

For example, in December 2008 a New Jersey lawyer got the Supreme Court to read a lawsuit about Obama’s “natural born” status and consider it for the 2009 docket. That generated a lot of attention, including cable news and a column by Dana Milbank. But the high court passed on the case and America moved on. At that point, President-elect Barack Obama was riding on a wave of goodwill, so it’s hard to suggest the media was covering up for him. I’d track the current “birther boom” to the mid-July lawsuit filed by Orly Taitz on behalf of Maj. Stefan F. Cook. That got, among other coverage, a national heads-up from Sean Hannity on his Fox News show.

Last Monday I noticed a July 10 YouTube video of a woman in red howling at Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) about the birth certificate. I posted it at 8:57 a.m. The Drudge Report posted it at some point between 9:23 a.m. and 9:33 a.m. (You can see in Drudge’s archives that it was not up yet 26 minutes after my original post.) So I guess I started this current wave of birthermania. Sorry, Bill Pascoe!

More seriously, it’s impossible to imagine these people getting attention from mainstream media reporters if they didn’t get members of Congress to endorse their agenda with things like Rep. Bill Posey’s (R-Fla.) “birther bill,” or get Republicans at the state level to join onto to lawsuits against Obama, as several Tennessee Republican legislators have. The media isn’t forcing them to do this.

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Minority Leader John Boehner’s PAC, the Freedom Project, donated $5,000 to Posey’s campaign in June. Minority Whip Eric Cantor’s ERICPAC gave $7,500.

Kris Kobach campaigns in Wichita, Kans. (YouTube: WichitaLiberty)

Kris Kobach is a law professor with degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford, and a veteran of George W. Bush’s administration who, after Sept. 11, helped craft the policy on domestic registration of foreign visitors to the United States. In May, he announced a run for Kansas secretary of state, campaigning for photo ID requirements at the voting booth. He’s considered a clear front-runner for the job. But over the weekend, Kobach spoke at a Republican Party barbecue and committed a minor gaffe. According to the Lawrence Journal-World, Kobach “asked what President Obama and God had in common, with the punchline being neither has a birth certificate.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Kansas Democrats pounced. “While Kris Kobach has in the past associated himself with extremists who frequently show poor taste,” said state Democratic Party Executive Director Kenny Johnston, “his latest attempt at humor has gone too far.” Kobach told the Democrats to “lighten up” before walking back the comment, explaining that “until a court says otherwise, I believe Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen.”

Kobach could have offered another defense. The joke was not his. One month earlier, Rush Limbaugh made the same remark on his radio show. “Barack Obama has one thing in common with God,” Limbaugh said. “Know what it is? God does not have a birth certificate either.” And Limbaugh may not have been writing his own material, either. At Patriot Depot, a conservative web site that sells books by Glenn Beck and signs designed for anti-tax Tea Parties, buyers can pay $10 to get two bumper stickers that read: “Obama & God Have ONLY ONE THING in Common: NO BIRTH CERTIFICATE! The Difference Is God Doesn’t Think He’s Obama!”According to a salesman for Patriot Depot, the company has sold “hundreds” of this and another birth certificate sticker since advertising them with the conservative opinion sites GOPUSA.com and Townhall.com.

Six months into Obama’s presidency, after scores of embarrassing legal defeats, and even after tussles between the attoneys who’ve turned frivolous lawsuits about the president’s citizenship into full-time jobs, the cottage industry of conspiracy theories about the president’s birth shows no signs of disappearing. The theories have found a home in talk radio and on conservative web sites such as Free Republic and WorldNetDaily. Conspiracy theorists are increasingly sending letters to their local papers, embarrassing members of Congress at town hall meetings, and hounding Hill staffers about challenges to the president’s citizenship.

“I wouldn’t consider what Kris Kobach said a ‘gaffe,’ although it wasn’t a prudent comment,” said William B. Lacy, director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. “It’s not at the root of the complaint that conservative [Republicans] have with this administration. In essence, what any Republican is doing by raising that issue is creating his or her own red herring. Kobach is probably okay here, but there’s a certain danger, I think, if it becomes something you repeat on a continuous basis.”

There’s no indication that the White House is worried about all of this. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has occasionally called on Lester Kinsolving, a radio host and correspondent for WorldNetDaily, to air the latest theories about the president’s citizenship as a way of defusing tense press briefings. While “birthers” claim that the president’s lawyers have spent “hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars” fighting their lawsuits, they’ve never provided evidence for that claim. Indeed, most of the suits have been tossed out of court on technicalities.

Ironically, the ‘birther’ movement began in response to Obama’s own efforts to debunk rumors. One year ago this week, the presidential campaign of then-Sen. Barack Obama launched FightTheSmears.com, a web site designed to push back against false rumors about the first African-American presidential nominee. To push back against rumors that he was not born in Hawaii, the campaign reproduced a Certificate of Live Birth from the state’s Health Department. Instead of terminating the conspiracy theories, that inspired new theories — that the certificate had been forged or that even if it hadn’t been forged it was the sort of certificate that could be given to someone born outside of the United States. But the certificate is specific about Obama’s birth in Honolulu, down to the 7:24 p.m. time.

“It’s crazy,” said Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health. “I don’t think anything is ever going to satisfy them.”

Okubo, who said that she gets weekly questions from Obama ‘Birthers’ that are “more like threats,” explained that the certificate of live birth reproduced by Obama’s campaign should have debunked the conspiracy theories. “If you were born in Bali, for example,” Okubo explained, “you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate. But it’s become very clear that it doesn’t matter what I say. The people who are questioning this bring up all these implausible scenarios. What if the physician lied? What if the state lied? It’s just become an urban legend at this point.”

The urban legend has become too pervasive for Republicans to avoid. In February, Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) introduced a much-mocked bill that would require presidential campaigns to provide “a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate.” While Posey initially said that he disbelieved conspiracy theories about the president’s birth, he told the host of an Internet radio show that he’d discussed the possibility of Obama being removed from office over “the eligibility issue” with “high-ranking members of our Judiciary Committee.” As of July 15, nine fellow Republican members of Congress were backing the bill. While Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) has said that he supports the bill because he didn’t know whether Obama was a citizen, other sponsors say that they weighed in to pour cold water on the conspiracy theories.

“It’s a good idea,” said John Donnelly, a spokesman for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who became one of the bill’s co-sponsors this month. “If candidates provided that information to the Federal Election Commission you wouldn’t have all this hullaballoo. You don’t want to needlessly expose presidents to crazy conspiracy theories.”

At the state level, “birther” conspiracy theorists have made headway in getting Republican lawmakers interested in legislation like Posey’s. At least four Republican members of Missouri’s state legislature have looked into introducing a similar bill. State Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-Okla.) who is running for governor of Oklahoma in 2010, said that he’d co-sponsor birth certificate legislation if it made it out of the state senate and would “definitely” sign the bill if he won the governorship.

“You bet I’d sign it,” said Brodgon. “I know I’d have no problem showing my birth certificate.”

The Republicans who appear to be willing to listen to “birthers,” even to debunk them, have to walk a tightrope. In April, freshman Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) held a town hall meeting at her old high school in Cheyenne, Wyo., and got a question about the president’s citizenship. Lummis challenged the skeptic to “please send” evidence that the president was not a natural-born citizen. “I’m not questioning your concern,” Lummis said. “I am questioning whether there is credible evidence.” In early July, a small group of “birthers” walked the halls of Congress handing “grand jury presentments” over to the confused front desk assistants of members of Congress; the activists rushed online to report the latest member who had been “handed” the information. After “birthers” provided some of their papers to Michael Schwartz, the chief of staff to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), they rushed online to report that Schwartz had been won over to the cause and was about to get in touch with Orly Taitz, a California lawyer who has filed several unsuccessful challenges to the president’s citizenship.

“It is possible to mistake politeness for agreement,” Schwartz told TWI, “and I make every effort to be polite.” He did have a “brief conversation with Dr. Taitz,” but challenged the way online “birthers” had hyped their contact with Coburn’s office. “An observer would not report it quite like this,” said Schwartz.

Taitz’s lawsuits and the pressure of conservative talkers like Limbaugh have made it increasingly difficult for Republicans to avoid the “birthers.” On June 16, after Limbaugh joked about the president’s citizenship, WorldNetDaily editor-in-chief Joseph Farah appeared on the Web-based Recharge Radio to thank the host for spreading the “birther” message. “What that did is beyond Rush’s impact,” said Farah. “It also gives other talk show hosts license to talk about this issue … Rush is kind of the standard of talk show hosts. A lot of people emulate what he does. He crossed the Rubicon on that show, and I’m very proud of him for doing it.”

Farah’s instincts have been borne out by conservative media. This week, Taitz represented Maj. Stefan F. Cook, a reservist who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan, then demanded to be released from the commitment unless the president proved that he was a U.S. citizen. “I did not volunteer with the intent of becoming a conscientious objector,” Cook told TWI in an email. On Wednesday Cook’s deployment was cancelled, and a spokesman for Centcom took issue with Taitz’s claim, made in a WorldNetDaily story, that this decision verified conspiracy theories about the president’s birth. Later that night, Sean Hannity cited the story on his Fox News show and used Taitz’s version of the facts, not Centcom’s.

“Major Cook and his lawyer expressed joy at this outcome,” said Hannity. “And they took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not in fact a legitimate citizen by birth.”

Burton is an ironic recruit to the cause. In the 1990s, he earned the nickname “Watermelon Dan” for his innumerable conspiracy theories about President Bill Clinton; he once ushered reporters into his backyard to watch him shoot a watermelon as a way of proving that Vince Foster’s death could not have been a suicide. And with the addition of the new Texas co-sponsors, a full quarter of the state’s 20-member Republican delegation to Congress is now backing the Posey bill.

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Via WorldNetDaily’s Andrea Shea King, who transcribes a stunning interview Posey gave her on her Internet radio show. Posey, who referred to the story as the “eligibility dilemma” and said King brought it to his attention, outright accused the president of hiding something: “The only people that I know who are afraid to take drug tests are the people who use drugs.” He also admitted speaking with “high-ranking members of our judiciary committee” about the chances of Obama “being removed from office,” but said there was “zero chance” of success there.

On how he got the co-sponsors:

I was talking to Neugebauer about it, and my good friend John Culberson was listening to the conversation and so Randy said, “Yeah, I told my staff I wanted to sign up on that already.” And having heard the conversation, Culberson says, “Yeah, sign me up.” And the judge (Carter) was sitting in the next row listening to the conversation and he said, “By God, sign me up!” So you know, we might start getting a little bit of steam here pretty soon. I didn’t strong arm these people. I haven’t begged anybody to sign on this thing, I haven’t asked anybody, really. The people that come up and slap me on the back and say, “Good luck to you!” I say, “Hey, there’s room for you on here!” And of course, they start doing the moonwalk, you know? “Oh no, no, no, congressman!” But you know, times change and time wounds all heels.

On the media and what seems to be a one-way feud with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow:

You may recall that [Stephen] Colbert used the “F” word to describe on national TV a relationship my grandmother, bless her heart, deceased grandmother, must have had with an alligator to come up with the likes of me. [Keith] Olbermann named me the Worst Person in the World and angry woman Rachel Maddow has just trashed me on every show, and asked me to come on her show. You know, I won’t do it cause she’s got a lousy, low rated show, and I don’t want to give her the ratings, quite frankly. I’d love to go on and debate her and set the record straight.

UPDATE: More from the interview, Posey recounts his conversation with Goodlatte:

He said, “You’re trying to do what is right and I want to be a part of that. I said, “There’s just not too many other people around here who want to be a part of that.” He said, “Well, some day they may regret it.”

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“There’s nothing in the Constitution about what you do to show that you met the requirements and there is nothing in federal law,” Goodlatte said recently.

Goodlatte called the bill a “housekeeping” matter.

“It doesn’t have an impact on the outcome of the election [last year],” he said.

Ironically, the bill only requires “a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate,” which President Obama made public on his “Fight The Smears” Website last year.

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“I expected there would be some civil debate about it, but it wasn’t civil,” Posey said. “Just a bunch of name-calling and personal denigration. … There is no reason to say that I’m the illegitimate grandson of an alligator.”

Perhaps it’s unfair for Stephen Colbert to suggest that Posey’s grandmother “fell in love” with an alligator and “the swamp rang with her screams of ecstasy.” That’s a wild accusation based on hearsay and contradicted by the facts that we know. So by Posey’s own standards about Presidential Obama, he needs to introduce an Alligator-Human Rights Bill or stop whining.

Why’d I do this? Well, for a number of reasons and the more and more I get called names by leftwing activists, partisan hacks and political operatives for doing it, the more and more I think I did the right thing. First, it’s easy to call people names. This week, I’ve been called some pretty nasty things. That’s fine. But none of these tolerant people actually want to discuss the issue at hand … whether or not a presidential candidate should have to file these documents with the government.

That’s a pretty deep hole Posey is digging. In a vacuum, sure, the issue is whether the mere scrutiny of the international media and biographers is enough to prove that presidential candidates are citizens. In reality, this issue has been pushed by conspiracy theorists, against all evidence, to sue the president.

I could easily fill up a page listing all the activities an American needs to show their ID for … everything from playing youth soccer to getting a drivers license, buying cigarettes and alcohol, to opening bank accounts and even playing little league. So I was pretty surprised to find out that to run for president, despite the constitutional requirement and the media scrubbing that goes on, it’s not required for a candidate to file these documents when they submit their statement of candidacy with the FEC.

“Little league” might be a lousy example.

But having been charged with reforming the elections in the State of Florida after the 2000 recounts and lawsuits, I thought I could offer a solution to this question on eligibility. There’s nothing anyone can do about changing past elections … the President won. All the lawsuits in the world are not going to change that. But if what some folks are worried about – that presidential candidates don’t have to submit to the same documentation that average folks have to submit to – well, then we can change that for the next election.

He’s trying to help Obama! What’s wrong with you people?

A recent AOL poll found showed that 75 percent of the people participating agreed with me. And many have expressed surprise it is not already a requirement.

That AOL poll was overrun by fringe websites like WorldNetDaily, which told readers to go and vote on it. Even if it hadn’t been, the “it was popular in a non-scientific web poll” is an unusual defense to come from a congressman.

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Yes, the problem with the 2000 presidential election in Florida was clearly whether the candidates were eligible for office. You can follow TWI on Twitter here.