On Friday, January 28, POLITICO asked its ARENA panel:
Hawaii lawmakers want to encourage so-called birthers to back off their requests for President Obama’s birth certificate by charging a $100 fee to anyone who asks for a copy.
The bill proposed by a group of Hawaii Dems would allow the state’s department of health to charge the fee when providing a copy of a birth certificate “of a person who is a candidate for, or elected to, a public office that requires the person to be a United States citizen.” (http://politi.co/gQAnBi) This move comes as an Arizona lawmaker is reviving the birther debate in that state by introducing a bill requiring any and all candidates to provide an original long-form birth certificate with details such as date/place of birth, name of the hospital, the attending physician and signatures of witnesses. (http://nydn.us/g3bWZX) Similar legislation did not get support last year.
Will the Hawaii legislature’s measures squelch the birthers once and for all, or will action such as that of Arizona continue to keep the debate alive? And why won’t the issue of whether President Obama was born in the U.S. go away?
My response: “The birthers are a fringe element of American society, similar to those who think the CIA killed President Kennedy and that Area 51 contains the remains of UFO aliens. Lawmakers, such as the Arizona legislator, only give their ravings the veneer of legitimacy. The birthers and their supporters won’t go away until they overcome their inherent racism that doesn’t allow them to accept a non-white President of the United States. For them and their ilk, race remains the number one problem of the 21st Century. The rest of America must sweep these people and their unAmerican beliefs onto the trash heap of history.”