Free Republic

Via the Daily Caller. I believe him, but if Cruz jumps into the presidential race and starts gobbling up Paul’s support among tea partiers in Iowa, I wonder how many Paul fans — and Hillary fans — will be willing to take a “closer look” at the issue.This wasn’t the only mention of Cruz’s eligibility on CNN yesterday either. They devoted an entire segment to it during Wolf Blitzer’s show, as you’ll see below. Maybe Birtherism is another issue, like aggressive counterterrorism and unilateral executive action, on which the press will take a more respectful, nuanced line now that doing...

Paul Ryan has figured out a way of letting the birthers down gently. Like many of his fellow congressmen, Ryan has been bombarded for years with letters from conspiracy theorists who believe President Obama was somehow secretly born in Kenya and so is ineligible to be president. The missives began even before Ryan became one of the president’s biggest foes on budget issues and more recently as he joined the GOP ticket alongside MItt Romney. But unlike some in his party who have been embarrassed by their own clunky and awkward responses to the birthers, Ryan has come up with...

Birtherism -- the belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not in the United States -- pretty much died last year when the White House released a copy of the president's long-form birth certificate showing he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. After that, the number of Americans who doubted Obama's place of birth dropped dramatically. But not to zero. In recent days, there has been a mini-resurgence of birther talk, from Arizona, where the secretary of state questioned Obama's eligibility to be on the ballot, to Iowa, where some Republicans want to require presidential candidates to...

In advance of the fundraiser with Mitt Romney and Donald Trump on Tuesday, the candidate's senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom tried to set the line on CNN a short time ago. "I can't speak for Donald Trump," Fehrnstrom said. "But I can tell you that Mitt Romney accepts that President Obama was born in the United States. He doesn't view the place of his birth as an issue in this campaign."

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is the target of a threat deemed credible enough to merit police protection in Washington, D.C., and at his home in West Miami, his office said late Tuesday. The freshman senator rocketed to national political stardom in recent weeks as he jumped to the top of the shortlist of potential running mates for presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. From CNN to The Daily Show, Rubio has become a staple of cable-news chatter about whether Romney will offer him the spot — and whether he would take it. But the fame has made him not...

America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff finds himself entangled these days in his own thorny legal troubles: a federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power, Justice Department accusations of racial profiling and revelations that his department didn't adequately investigate hundreds of Arizona sex-crime cases. Rather than seek cover, though, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is seeking to grab the spotlight in the same unorthodox fashion that has helped boost his career as a nationally known lawman. Arpaio on Thursday unveiled preliminary results of an investigation, conducted by members of his volunteer cold-case posse, into the authenticity of President Barack Obama's...

A recent poll discovered that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is a top pick for the GOP vice presidential candidate – regardless of who ends up winning the presidential nomination. But could his Mormon roots disturb his momentum and keep him off the ballot? Two of Rubio's cousins told BuzzFeed.com that the senator was baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints when he was 11-years-old. This is something Rubio has never made mention of himself. Alex Conant, a spokesman for Rubio, confirmed the cousins' report and told BuzzFeed.com that Rubio converted to Catholocism a few years after becoming Mormon...