Baiting the birthers (Smell their fear)

Just when it seemed the air had finally leaked out of the birthers' balloon, along comes Donald Trump with a fresh blast of wind.

Emboldened by The Donald's insistence that President Obama can't or won't prove he's a legal U.S. citizen, Arizona lawmakers passed the nation's first "birther bill" earlier this month. Gov. Jan Brewer — yes, that Jan Brewer — promptly vetoed it. There won't be an override attempt.

The notion that a presidential candidate might qualify for the state ballot by presenting a certificate of circumcision was too much, even for Arizona. But not for Trump, who may or may not be serious about trying to ride this nonsense all the way to the White House.

The Arizona bill would have required presidential candidates to submit proof of citizenship to get on the state's ballot. If Arizona's secretary of state wasn't satisfied with, say, the official certification of live birth issued by the state in which the candidate claimed to be born, then other documents — including "early baptismal or circumcision certificates" — could be submitted to support a claim of citizenship.

Brewer, a Republican who proudly signed Arizona's overreaching immigration bill last year, called the citizenship measure "a bridge too far." But lawmakers in at least a dozen other states have filed similar bills, and Trump is their new cheerleader.

His cheap grandstanding plays well with the doubters, but it isn't going to get Trump or any other Republican elected president.....

There is nothing that you have said that overcomes the simple fact that an Hawaiian COLB does not prove that anyone was born in Hawaii. The territorial law allowed the issuance of such documents based on a phone call that did not even have to be from a relative. It was the routine practice, later codified in a provision that is still in effect to issue such documents for a child born outside of Hawaii and the U.S. during the precdeding year. Further Hawaii statutory law still provides for issuance of the actual birth certificate to persons with sufficient interest as testified to by the fact that a Freeper obtained hers within the past year and posted it with redactions here. Apparently, you consider yourself a greater authority on the meaning of the phrase in question than John Marshall, Story, St. George Tucker, Daniel Ramsay, Chief Justice Waite and many others, John Jay, for example. The simple fact is that in the present situation all courts addressed have engaged in avoidance behavior and refused to address the issue except for one state court in Ohio, the ruling of which is neither binding nor persuasive as it too ignores the considerable evidence of the time of which I speak including the binding precedent of Story's decision in Shanks v. Dupont.

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