Am a 'Birther'?

President Barack Obama's birthday last week had me reflecting on the whole 'birther' argument thing. Lately, Democrats like to throw around 'birther' almost as frequently as they throw around 'racist'- they use it as an insult and try to make anyone who even wonders about Obama's past into some sort of nut.

For example, Democratic Congressman Gary Peters reacted to Rocky Raczkowski (his Republican opponent) comment "I would love to see his birth certificate" by saying:

"Rocky Raczkowski is backpedaling faster than a clown on a unicycle. Rocky is on tape supporting the birthers, confirmed it with POLITICO and again in The Detroit News and is now flip-flopping because he is slowly realizing that Oakland County residents expect their leaders to focus on solving the jobs crisis and fixing the economy, not pandering to fringe groups like the birthers to win votes,” said Peters campaign manager Dan Farough.

The interesting thing is that there are an awful lot of people out there who really would like to see a valid and full birth certificate for Obama, to assure themselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a natural born American citizen, and thus able to hold the office that he currently holds, and the shocking thing is not that people like Rocky would like to see this, but that a Congressman like Peters doesn't.  You would think that a Congressman would to a comment like Rocky's by saying "anyone can see it, it is public information, and it is fully detailed and valid"- but shockingly he can't and he instead has to respond by trying to use 'birther' as some sort of insult.

Sure, there are a lot of Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories, and most of them are as shallow and invalid as the crazy theories guys like Peters believes about Bush- but it is odd that the President of the United States has not ever provided a valid and full original birth certificate, or for that matter, ever provided documentation on his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

So, Peters and other Democratic Congressman have destroyed our economy, lowered our national security, and done just about everything else wrong- all while pretending like Obama is open and transparent about his past, and calling anyone who questions anything they do insults like 'birthers' and 'racists'. This is their strategy to rule you- insult your intelligence by insulting their opponents.

Personally, I think that Obama was born in Hawaii (although there are a lot of questions as to where and when- the 'birth announcement' that is frequently trotted out as proof has the address of his grandparents on it), but that his mom took him back to Indonesia where he then let his citizenship lapse (he went to school there for many years and probably used Indonesian citizenship to get grants and scholarships), and after that, I'm not really sure what happened to his citizenship. Personally, I would love to see his birth certificate- the real one, the undocumented one, and then figure out exactly where he went during his life and what his citizenship was during those travels. It would be nice to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Barack Obama was and always was a natural born US citizen.