In the article, Embry notes that oil-and-gas businessman Cranberg has made political donations of about $500,000 in Colorado during the past six years, while giving a single $2,000 donation to a Texas candidate — U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer — during that time.

A further review of campaign finance records shows that Cranberg and his companies have together donated nearly $1.1 million to Colorado committees and candidates at the state level since 1994, according to Colorado Secretary of State records. (Cranberg’s companies include Aspect Energy, Aspect Holdings, Aspect Management, Aspect Resources, Azimuth Energy, Long Canyon and Walnut Software.)

Since 1992, Cranberg has donated nearly $290,000 to federal candidates and committees, in states including Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 2003 and 2006, Cranberg gave a total of $6,000 to Neugebauer’s campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Meanwhile, R. Todd Neugebauer is president of Cranberg’s Aspect Holdings, according to the company’s website. One of Neugebauer’s two sons is named Todd.

In 2005, Cranberg gave $4,200 to the Colorado congressional campaign of Rick O’Donnell, who held several top appointed spots in Colorado state government, including head of the Department of Higher Education.

According to the Texas Public Policy Foundation website, O’Donnell is president of the Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurial Excellence, an organization affiliated with the Acton School of Business’ MBA program. (Read more about Acton from the Texas Independent.) O’Donnell is also on the board of advisors for the Alliance for Choice in Education, the Denver nonprofit founded by Cranberg.

In 2003, Cranberg donated $2,000 to then-Pres. George W. Bush.

As our sister publication the Colorado Independent reported in 2007, Cranberg was a bundler for and a member of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s “Statewide Finance Committee,” holding the title of “Honorary Finance Chair.” (Read more from the Colorado Independent here.)

In 2008, the Colorado Independent documented Cranberg’s ties to the failed U.S. Senate campaign of Bob Schaffer (a former Cranberg employee), via a 501(c)4 nonprofit and a bevy of other entities with various disclosure requirements. In one instance, Cranberg donated $600,000 to 527 group Coloradans for Change in 2006.

Cranberg has also thrown his money around in state-level contests around the nation, giving nearly $140,000 to state candidates in locations such as Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and South Carolina, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Included in that total is $100,000 to Minnesota House and Senate committees, as well as $5,000 to former Railroad Commissioner Victor Carrillo in 2004.

Cranberg’s donation of $5,000 to the successful 2006 campaign of South Carolina state Rep. L. Kit Spires (along with other contributions from out-of-state donors) drew the attention of Columbia, S.C., newspaper The State. At the time, reporter Tim Flach wrote that Spires’ campaign “is fueled by donations from out-of-state sources with an agenda promoting state aid for private school students.”

During the same 2006 election season, The State associate editor Cindi Ross Scoppe opined on Cranberg’s contributions (via himself and four of his companies) of $17,500 to state superintendent of education candidate Karen Floyd. At the time, Scoppe wrote that she had “no problem with Denver businessman and voucher aficionado Alex Cranberg bankrolling [pro-charter school] candidates […] What I have a problem with is the way they shuffle money around to circumvent our law, which is supposed to stop anyone from giving more than $3,500 to a statewide candidate per election.”

(Efforts by the Texas Independent to calculate Cranberg’s donations to South Carolina’s campaigns in 2006 were unsuccessful because the South Carolina State Ethics Commission only keeps political donations online for six years.)

Additionally, National Institute on Money In State Politics‘ data show that Cranberg’s Aspect Energy and subsidiaries gave nearly $110,000 from 2004-2010 to state-level candidates, including $56,5000 to candidates in South Carolina.

Cranberg also appeared in a 2006 article by Amy Lane in weekly newspaper Crain’s Detroit Business. Lane reported that Cranberg gave $3,400 to Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos, in part because “He shares DeVos’ interest in school choice and is on the board of the Phoenix, Ariz.-based Advocates for School Choice, an organization whose board members include DeVos’ wife, Betsy.”

In today’s Statesman story, a Texas Democratic Party spokeswoman questioned Cranberg’s record of involvement in Texas. A spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry told Statesman reporter Embry that Cranberg graduated from Westlake High School and UT; his parents live in Austin; and he has “substantial business activities in Texas.”

Embry reported that Cranberg voted in Colorado in November 2010 and registered to vote in Texas Jan. 18.

Interestingly, Cranberg appeared in an April 2006 story (not available online) by Julian Brouwer in London’s Daily Mail, the chief subject of which was Cranberg’s Belfast-born wife Susan Morrice and their Belize Natural Energy company, backed by 70 Irish investors. The topic of the story, headlined, “How self-help guru beat Texans to an oil strike,” is how BNE — with the assistance of Irish ‘mind technology’ guru Tony Quinn — struck oil in the Caribbean country after the failure of “greedy Texas Tycoons who spent 50 years trying to plunder Belize for oil and only managed to produce 50 dry holes in the ground,” according to the article.

Throughout the story, reporter Brouwer uses colorful descriptions characteristic of the British tabloid to contrast Cranberg and Morrice’s company with Texas oilmen, portrayed as ‘J.R. Ewing’-type figures from the soap opera Dallas. The story concludes:

“Meanwhile, JR and his Texan friends may have left Belize with their tails between their legs but since the Irish struck oil rumours abound that oil barons wearing big Stetsons are desperate to cash in too.”

“When you see Texans coming down here, you know that something is up,” said bartender Robert Williams, at the Smoky Mermaid in Belize City.

However, Cranberg and Perry do have at least one thing in common — a shared interest in the Boy Scouts of America. According to Cranberg’s bio on the website of Sendero Capital Partners, Cranberg served as a trustee for the Denver Area Boy Scouts Council.

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.”

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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“I ask the commission to confirm that the committee may pay legal fees and expenses incurred by Congressman Visclosky in connection with the federal investigation relating to the PMA Group,” said the letter from [Visclosky for Congress Treasurer] Michael C. Malczewski.

The letter does not cite independent knowledge of the investigation, but cites numerous media accounts that “insinuate that certain aspects of the investigation appear to relate to Congressman Visclosky’s duties as a candidate for federal office and and as a federal officeholder.”

The request comes less than a week after Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) asked the FEC to allow his campaign pay his family for using a yacht owned by his family.

Trickle up economics.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) is asking the Federal Election Commission for permission to have his reelection campaign pay him to use his personal yacht for campaign fundraising.

Last year, Neugebauer and family members created a Limited Liability Company (LLC), which technically owns the D.C.-based boat. Neugebauer and his wife own 60 percent of the LLC, with the rest owned jointly by Neugebauer, his wife, his son, his son’s wife and two trusts benefiting two grandchildren, the kids of his son.

In a letter sent to the FEC earlier this month, attorneys representing Neugebauer want the green light to allow the Texas Republican’s campaign committee to access the yacht, free of charge, “within the percentage partnership rights held by Congressman Neugebauer himself.”

That seems reasonable. But wait, there’s more!

When the campaign committee uses the boat, the costs exceeding Neugebauer’s percentage rights would be paid to the LLC (which benefits himself and his family).

But wait — there’s more! “As an alternative to using the boat within the partnership rights of Congressman Neugebauer,” the lawmaker also wants permission that the campaign “may pay the LLC a fair market rate for any and all use of the boat.” This appears to mean that political contributions to Neugebauer’s campaign could land into Neugebauer’s pockets if the cash is filtered through the rental of his own party yacht.

We’re eagerly awaiting the FEC’s reply.