Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” “King” Obama is not “killed” by rumors, misinformation, innuendo, or by failed and dismissed lawsuits. Every failed effort strenthens him.
“You know, during the campaign of 2008, I was actually in the mainland campaigning for Senator McCain. This issue kept coming up so much in the campaign, and again I think it’s one of those issues that is simply a distraction from the more critical issues that are facing the country. And so I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact. And yet people continue to call up and e-mail and want to make it an issue. And I think it’s, again, a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this. ... It’s been established. He was born here.”—Governor Linda Lingle (R-HI)
“The state of Hawaii says that the President was born there. That’s good enough for me.”—Representative John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the House of Representatives.
House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor, Virginia Republican, said Sunday he thinks President Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen and that questions on the issue have no place in Capitol Hill policy-making discussions.
“I don’t think it’s an issue that we need to address at all,” he said on NBC‘s “Meet the Press.” “It is not an issue that even needs to be on the policy-making table right now whatsoever.”
Still, Mr. Cantor said there was no need to denounce as crazy the so-called “birthers,” who think Mr. Obama‘s Hawaii birth certificate is fake and that he was born outside the U.S. and thus ineligible to be president.
“I don’t think it’s nice to call anyone crazy, OK?,” Mr. Cantor told the show’s host David Gregory. “Why is it that you want me to go and engage in name-calling?”
If Tea Party groups are to maximize their influence on policy, they must now begin the difficult task of disassociating themselves from cranks and conspiracy nuts. This includes 9/11 deniers, “birthers” who insist Barack Obama was not born in the United States and militia supporters espousing something vaguely close to armed rebellion.”—Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal
“Birthers...the dumbest thing I ever heard.”—Glenn Beck
“Birthers are wrong, and are just a few cranks.”—Ann Coulter
Birthers are “the worst enemy of the conservative movement. It makes us look weird. It makes us look crazy. It makes us look demented. It makes us look sick, troubled, and not suitable for civilized company.”—Michael Medved, Radio Talk Show host
From an interview with Congressman Darrell Issa(R-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:
“Issa has tried to draw a line separating events that he considers appropriate subjects for investigation and those which he deems inappropriate. He has criticized his predecessors for wasting time looking into matters involving the Clintons that predated their arrival at the White House, such as the Whitewater and cattle-futures episodes. “These are items that occurred before the President was elected,” Issa told me. “I would not have viewed them as particularly significant.” He added that issues involving Obama’s past are also off limits, such as ‘the birther question.’ Implicit in this rule is that his past should also be left undisturbed.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/24/110124fa_fact_lizza?printable=true#ixzz1D6ezLr1M