obama birth certificate conspiracy

Conspiracy-theorist Website WorldNetDaily posts the inevitable “connection” between Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and President Obama, and it possesses the same level of rigor and responsibility we’ve come to expect from the leading source of disinformation that the president wasn’t born an American. Under the headline “Shooter Advised Obama Transition,” Jerome Corsi — [...]

Back in February, 1st Lt. Scott Easterling wrote a widely distributed open letter questioning President Obama’s citizenship and announcing his intent to join one of Orly Taitz’s lawsuits.
“I implore all Service-members and citizens to contact their Senators and Representatives,” wrote Easterling, “and demand that they require Mr. Obama prove his eligibility. Our Constitution and our [...]

Bo Dietl, an MSNBC analyst and Chairman of the New York State Security Guard Advisory Council (appointed by former Gov. George Pataki), unleashed a disturbing, ill-informed rant about President Obama’s citizenship during an interview today with Don Imus.
It’s important to stop and note that Dietl, while over-the-top, is not a political nobody.

One reason that a ludicrous figure like Orly Taitz can still get booked for TV interviews — poll after poll shows a substantial number of Americans buying into birther conspiracies. Today it’s an MTSU poll in Tennessee, one of President Obama’s worst states in both the 2008 primary and general election. The survey found thirty-four [...]

Going back over that Liza Mundy profile of Orly Taitz, I think she actually missed an important detail about Taitz’s arguments, as well as missing the only reason to report on her, beyond freakwatching. First, the argument Mundy missed.
She has developed a scenario whereby Obama’s American mother gave birth in Kenya, his father’s native country, [...]

It’s a day of mixed news for the Pied Piper of the “birther” movement. The bad news: Taitz’s case, Keyes v. Obama, got a hearing in Santa Ana, an event that had been built up on WorldNetDaily and other far-right sites as a possible turning point in the battle against the president. According to liveblogs [...]

Public Policy Polling’s ongoing survey of American attitudes about presidential conspiracy theories continues with a fascinating look at the “birther” and “truther” sympathies of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. One takeaway: While some conservatives have brushed aside criticism of the “birthers” in their based by criticizing 9/11 conspiracy theorists on the left, there are far more [...]

Here’s a strange story. On Sept. 8, Orly Taitz gave a press conference outside a California courthouse, during which she invited a small cast of characters to give statements. Taitz introduced a man named Marc Harris as “a reporter for Glenn Beck show (sic), number one radio show, and Fox News,” and Harris told reporters [...]

Camille Paglia, the lone Salon.com columnist who can count on her ramblings getting regular links from The Drudge Report, appeared on NPR’s “On Point” yesterday and made a spirited defense of the “birther” movement. The exchange came about 36 minutes in, after one caller to the show recounted his experiences at the 9/12 march on [...]

One of the strangest figures in the universe of Barack Obama conspiracy theories is Lawrence Sinclair, a 47-year old man with a long criminal record who, as Ben Smith notes, has made “outlandish allegations … that began with sex and drugs and moved on to murder.” It’s not worth repeating the allegations that Sinclair made [...]