Quotes of the day are intended to represent what is being said by people on both sides of the birther question. They do not necessarily represent the views of this web site.
“…he who was subsequently born a citizen of a state became at the moment of his birth a citizen of the United States. Therefore every person born within the United States its territories or districts whether the parents are citizens or aliens is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity.”
–William Rawle – A View of the Constitution (1829)
[hr]
Fans of Hawaii’s native son can visit more than two dozen Obama sites around Oahu including: Kapiolani Hospital for Women and Children where America’s next president was born on Aug. 4, 1961, to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham.
–Honolulu Star Bulletin
[hr]
A major sign of hope is embodied in Obama’s personal background as a product of at least three civilisations (American, African and Islam), with a wider multiculturalism in Indonesia, when he was a child, and in Hawaii, where he was born and spent much of his childhood.
–Ali A Mazuri
[hr]
Nevada Democrats have seized on the widely debunked conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the U.S. to attack Tea Party darling Sharron Angle, the Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
–Fox News
[hr]
Not every Tea Partier is a birther, of course, but the birthers do make the ultimate constitutional argument – the false charge that Obama himself is unconstitutional because he wasn’t born in the United States.
–NPR
[hr]
A person whose sole motive is to discredit someone else is a person who will lie, cheat, and steal to accomplish it.
–The Post & Email blog
[hr]
Ample, unassailable and long-available records make Obama’s birth clear. Birtherism is a paranoid fantasy that persists because some people are apparently incapable of accepting that American-ness has no link to skin color, ethnicity or religion. It’s bigotry, plain and simple.
–Andisheh Nouraee
[hr]
President Obama took the unprecedented step of publishing his birth certificate online (later corroborated by official statements from the State of Hawaii). Rather than this unprecedented step resulting in an unprecedented level of confidence in his place of birth beyond that of all other presidents, the birthers doubt him all the more. These doubts say far more about the birthers than about Barack Obama.
–Dr. Conspiracy
[hr]
The tea party people couldn’t accept his victory. So they then tried to claim that he is not eligible to be the president because he wasn’t born here. Thus, they created the birther movement. Quite ridiculous, but it still has people believing that they don’t have to respect him or the office.
–Delaware Online
[hr]
[Chris] Matthews added: “It`s really quite sleazy the way they`re doing it. They don’t have the nerve to go out and say he’s not American and he`s a secret member of another religion. They do it what Senator Mitch McConnell did Sunday, encourage that notion, underwrite the crazies – meanwhile, undermining any positive action by the government they’ve sworn to serve”
[hr]
Yes, we, the people, just can’t get enough raw sewage to hurl at the men we elect. Why, Calvin Coolidge was barely in office when 72 percent of Americans swore he was a full-blooded Cherokee. Tons of evidence surfaced, including an Oklahoma birth certificate, photos of Coolidge in a Cherokee sweat lodge, and a startling sketch of 37 scalps hanging in the Oval Office. No matter how often the White House denied the story, millions believed it because they would believe any barefaced lie a friend told them, even if that friend was wanted for perjury in five states
–Amherst Bulletin
[hr]
The birth issue should be settled. Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate has been on display, but people determined to harass him simply call the document bogus, as if a presidential candidate could get 20 yards down the campaign trail without meeting such a basic qualification.
–The Columbia Tribune
[hr]
People who hold ridiculous, easily falsifiable beliefs based on conspiracy thinking do not belong in government, and Kauther does not deserve to be taken seriously. The same standard applies to birthers, Holocaust deniers and “9/11 truthers,” who believe the U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
–Wausau Daily Herald – 10/23/2010
[hr]
The party that was supposed to stand up to President Obama can’t even stand up to its own fringe.
–William Saletan
[hr]
[The black man’s] attachment to the place of his birth is stronger than iron.
–Frederick Douglass (1854)
[hr]
I believe Obama was born in the United States
–Leo C. Donofrio
[hr]
Given that everything Obama releases is pawed over by crank experts, cut into little pieces, twisted around and pasted back together in the ugliest possible collage, it hardly makes sense for him to release anything.
–Dr. Conspiracy (2008)
[hr]
If there was any shred of truth to [birther conspiracies], Hillary Clinton and her wonderful investigative opposition research machine would have found it and would have used it. For Republicans to even be bringing it up, I think it’s a waste of energy and time.
–Mike Huckabee
[hr]
arguing with angry people is a great waste of time
–Amy McMullen
[hr]
Montana was close, so tantalizingly close, to what the rest of the country seems to view as sanity. Then – bang! The gavel sounded for the 2011 Legislature. Cue the whimper.
–Gwen Florio
—The Missoulian
[hr]
In any event, Dred Scott can hardly be cited as credible authority today.
–Prof. Charles Gordon
–Georgetown University Law Center
[hr]
If John Boehner, the conservative Republican speaker of the U.S. House, can recognize that the president is a natural-born citizen, why can’t Georgia?
— GA State Representative Craig Gordon
[hr]
Some people are basically racists. It’s a question of race. They don’t like having someone who’s not white, or they don’t like someone who’s from such a different heritage as President Obama because his family has ties to Africa. His family also has ties to middle America, so to me it’s also a non-issue….
They say: “Oh look, he lied about being born inside the United States. There must be something terrible there.” But they’re extrapolating something that’s not true.
— Tim Adams
— former Hawaii Elections Clerk
[hr]
It may be that some of the founders intended to include only birth on U.S. soil as their understanding of “natural born citizen”, but it certainly would not have included that their parents also had to be U.S. citizens.
— Polly Price
— Emory University
[hr]
Lol, he’s hiding it to make birthers look silly. It’s the most effective thing he’s done to date.
— Taylor B
— The Augusta Chronicle
[hr]
I’ve run every simulation as to how a Palin presidency would unfold. It always ends with a giant condor eating America.
–Regan OS 911 Computer
— Jon Stewart Show
[hr]
Obama might be unpopular, and there are certainly credible arguments to be made that he hasn’t done a lot of good. However, the bombastic statements that he is un-American, evil, or not even qualified to be president seem to come from a place much darker than those who make these statements would like to admit.
–Charlie Rand
–Yuma, AZ
[hr]
The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson’s time.
— Richard Nixon
[hr]
I think that most people understand and accept the reality. The reality is that, yes, [Barack Obama] was born in the United States.
— US Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
[hr]
In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed
–Abraham Lincoln (1858)
[hr]
when searching through database aggregators such as IRB, it is common to find a subject referenced with two or three Social Security Numbers (SSN) [due to error].
— Susan Daniels
[hr]
According to the U.S. Census, there is only one Barack Obama, but 27 Social Security numbers and more than 80 aliases.
— Lawrence Sober
— Craig, Colorado
[hr]
Too bad for Burges, the embarrassment is to the state of Arizona which has booted an estimated 300,000 people off of health care, stood casually by while transplant patients die, and made refugees out of 200,000 undocumented workers and their citizen families, while twiddling their thumbs in secret circles planning on theories to slam the middle and the left and wasting time on go-nowhere legislation that costs the state a bundle to defend. It is already a federal requirement that a presidential candidate be born in the US, but it gives legislators something to do as the state deficit has skyrocketed to the 2 billion mark.
— Tim Paynter
— Technorati.com
[hr]
“The term ‘natural-born’ has nothing to do” with location of birth, said Jeff Lichter of the Greater Phoenix Tea Party.
—The Associated Press
[hr]
An honorable man does not choose sides. He just searches for the truth.
–kahunah
[hr]
Every time a birther is shown a web link to, or hard copy of Obama’s official birth certificate (you know, the one that is recognized by the federal government when applying for a passport), they pull the equivalent of a 9-year old covering his ears and shouting “nyah, nyah, nyah, I can’t hear you!”
–labman57
[hr]
The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands accepts both Certificates of Live Birth (original birth certificate) and Certifications of Live Birth because they are official government records documenting an individual’s birth. The Certificate of Live Birth generally has more information which is useful for genealogical purposes as compared to the Certification of Live Birth which is a computer-generated printout that provides specific details of a person’s birth. Although original birth certificates (Certificates of Live Birth) are preferred for their greater detail, the State Department of Health (DOH) no longer issues Certificates of Live Birth. When a request is made for a copy of a birth certificate, the DOH issues a Certification of Live Birth.
–Department of Hawaiian Home Lands
[hr]
A lot of the so called birthers, these are great people, these are really great American people,” he added. “These are hard working, unbelievable, salt of the earth people.
–Donald Trump
[hr]
President Barack Obama announced his re-election campaign Monday. He doesn’t have to win because the Republicans are going to lose. Pending an economic collapse, or a picture of George Soros holding baby Obama in a Kenyan church, this race is over.
–Mike Thomas
–Orlando Sentinel
[hr]
“If I were them, I’d be really careful riding that birther horse too much. Everyone knows it’s ludicrous.
But I think one of the elementary rules of combat is you don’t want to get in your opponent’s way if he’s shooting himself in the foot.
—Bill Clinton
[hr]
I mean, you could have video of Obama popping out of the womb at the Statue of Liberty waving an American flag, and birthers would see it as inconclusive.
–Jim Shea
–The Hartford Courant
[hr]
Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
–Sir Walter Scott
[hr]
I suppose we should be thankful that Orly Taitz admits to being born in Moldova; otherwise she’d be a top candidate too. Although I’m told she knows people who know how to fake a birth certificate, so who knows?
–Jay Bookman
–The Atlanta Journal Constitution
[hr]
I’m here to tell you that those who think the President was born somewhere other than Hawaii are crazy.
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
[hr]
Wait a minute. Everybody — you know, yes, his family knows know what hospital he was born at. You know, nobody knows him in college? One of my White House deputies was a classmate of Barack Obama’s at Harvard and helped get him elected the Law Review editor.
–Karl Rove
[hr]
Also, while we’re at it, Obama’s grandmother did not “admit” that Obama was born in Kenya; Frank Marshall Davis Jr. is not Obama’s father (but if he was, wouldn’t that automatically make him a citizen?); Bill Ayers did not ghostwrite Obama’s autobiography, nor did he admit to doing so; Obama’s birth announcements were not planted; there’s no Kenyan birth certificate for Obama; Obama’s not using a phony Social Security number; Obama is not a Muslim; and the sky, is, in fact, blue.
–Julie Millican
–Media Matters for America
[hr]
Gov. Brewer isn’t setting the state’s political agenda. The dark hand is the mean-spirited, grumpy, vindictive state Senate president, Sen. Russell Pearce, who has engineered and rammed through spiteful anti-immigrant legislation, expanded gun rights and punishes Republicans who don’t toe the line. His cover that the American culture is being rescued is losing its appeal as Arizonans awaken to the figures turning the state into a laughing stock at best, self-destructive at worst.
–Pat Murphy
–Idaho Mountain Express
[hr]
Birthers aren’t a “side of a story.” Why? Because the president’s citizenship only has one side: the empirical reality that he was born in Hawaii. Fact. End of story. There’s no “other side.” Orly Taitz might as well be speaking in tongues with an occasional racial epithet thrown in there. She’s just that full of shit.
–Bob Cesca
[hr]
We often ask why do people believe weird or silly things? It can provide them with comfort and consolation in a world that appears increasingly complex, globalized and difficult to understand.
–James T. LaPlant
–Valdosta State University
[hr]
We do not have time for this kind of silliness.
–Barack Obama
[hr]
Sorry, President Obama. You gave the birthers exactly what they were asking for. And, now, they’re running with it.
–Rex W. Huppke
–The Chicago Tribune
[hr]
Donald Trump taking credit for the release of President Obama’s long form birth certificate is like an arsonist taking credit for the fire department putting out a fire he threw gasoline on.
— Dr. Conspiracy
[hr]
Once people go down the rabbit hole, it’s very, very difficult to get them back up, and you can’t really do it with facts. They have invested so much psychological energy in this, they can’t just throw up their hands and say, “Oh, I was wrong.”
— Jonathan Kay
— Salon.com
[hr]
Not only did the document release expose Trump’s bid for the GOP nomination as a bizarre, self-serving clown act, it proved to all but the most off-centered cave-dwelling throwback that our president was absolutely, positively born in a Honolulu, Hawaii, hospital on Aug. 4, 1961, to an American mother.
–David Kolb
–Muskegon Chronicle
[hr]
The Taitz test: Calling President Barack Obama’s recently released birth certificate “inventive computer art,” so-called “birther” and so-called lawyer Orly Taitz argued her case before a federal appeals court that Obama can’t prove he’s a citizen.
When Taitz was asked to prove that he wasn’t, she thought for a moment, then vanished in a puff of logic.
— John Bauer
–- HeraldNet.com (Everett, Washington)
