Writing in the New York Daily News, James Kirchick highlights the curious trajectory of the recent spate of news stories and blog posts about “birthers” — a fringe group of conspiracy theorists who deny President Obama’s birth in Hawaii and concoct elaborate but specious arguments in favor of his removal from office on the basis that he is not a “natural-born citizen”.

To educate the birthers: Because the United States uses a jus solis rule for determining citizenship by birth within the territory of the United States and because the birth certificate already displayed by the Obama campaign last year meets all the legal requirements used to establish that claim in all areas of U.S. law (for example, to obtain a Social Security number or to join the military and gain a security clearance), there is simply no merit whatsoever to the “birther” claims, even if their spittle-flecked claims about Obama’s Kenyan father or Indonesian schooling are accepted as true. The nationality of parents is irrelevant to determinations of U.S. citizenship, because the United States does not use a jus sanguinis rule and because whatever the British Nationality Act of 1948 says about how the United Kingdom defines citizenship is not relevant to the interpretation of the United States Constitution. Whether or not a child attends schools in a foreign country is irrelevant to determinations of U.S. citizenship. Whether a child is identified by a parent as Muslim or even whether a child is a Muslim (or Jewish or Rastafarian or even Pastafarian) is irrelevant to determinations of U.S. citizenship. And since there is no credible evidence that Barack Obama was born anywhere other than Hawaii (a Photoshop forgery of a Kenyan birth certificate listing a date of birth that is 3 years off doesn’t count), there is no legitimate question of law to even bring a court into the question in the first place. Barack Obama is presumed eligible by the legal fact of his birth on U.S. soil just like every other President before him. But birthers continue nonetheless, undeterred and even accelerated because of the complete vacuity of their position.

This is hardly new nor unique to the far right. A 2007 survey showed Democrats claiming even higher rates of belief in the equally bizarre 9/11 “truther” conspiracy theory as surveys show now among Republicans. As I wrote previously, neither left nor right exercises a monopoly on fringe madness and politically convenient conspiracy-mongering. But where the “truthers” were treated by both mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans as marginal, the influence and power of the “birthers” is being systematically exaggerated by left-leaning reporters and bloggers. It is not hard to see why — exaggerating the reach of the “birthers” provides an easy excuse to brush aside legitimate debate with conservatives over Obama administration policy initiatives. After all, once they “prove” that all conservatives are crazy (also a long-standing theme among some liberals), there is no longer any need to actually debate them. And with the case for government-controlled health care collapsing beneath the combined weight of conservative criticism of its overreaching and the refusal of many liberals to compromise on those excesses, liberals are desperate for something to distract and delegitimize conservatives generally and “win” a major policy debate without having to actually debate the policy at all. Whipping up stories about “birthers” is perfect for such purposes.

As in all things, when reading stories about “birthers”, consider the source and its likely reasons for wanting to try to represent a fringe group as if it were mainstream. If the source is a left-leaning blogger who is claiming that “birthers” are representative of all of conservatism, it will always be reasonable to wonder why they are ignoring the vast majority of conservatives who condemn the “birthers”. If they can’t be honest about who their adversaries even are, what else are they mis-reporting?

Note to commenters: PoliGazette does not publish either “birther” or “truther” conspiracy theories. Comments which attempt to present “evidence” or demands on behalf of either of these conspiracy theories are automatically deleted. So don’t bother. Publish them on your own sites, please, where they can serve the function of “zoos”, where the public can come to observe your collections of wackiness for entertainment while they are contained in cages so that they don’t corrupt more serious arguments about things that actually matter.

UPDATE: FireDogLake, one of the biggest perpetrators of the leftist blogosphere all-Republicans-are-birthers smear campaign, has a defense up wherein it claims that the ambiguous non-endorsement/non-denial statements of a few Republicans justifies their repeated implications that all conservatives are either birthers themselves or beholden to birthers as well as their persistent refusal to acknowledge the many, many specific statements from conservatives to the contrary. That’s the kind of honesty and integrity that they value at FireDogLake! Keep that in mind when they complain about the “lies” that come from their ideological opponents.

UPDATE 2: Apparently, birthers either can’t or won’t read the full post before commenting with their familiar talking points. Therefore, in order to assist birthers with their reading comprehension and knowledge level on the issue, I have highlighted the paragraph above that disposes of all of the most common birther claims. Additionally, to dispose of claims from some liberals that exaggerate the preponderance of birthers among conservatives, I offer the following links to a substantial number of prominent conservatives in the media and blogosphere who specifically and unequivocally condemn birthers. Perhaps a few liberals (though certainly not the bunch at FireDogLake) will start to take this into account in their assessments:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/12/04/the-sadly-obligatory-scotus-birth-certificate-post/ (Ed Morrissey, dean of the conservative blogosphere)