THE PLANK JULY 24, 2009
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Trevor Potter, a McCain campaign lawyer, on the investigation he did into the rumors that Obama wasn't actually born in the U.S.:
To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of
these allegations. We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama
had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing
that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no
documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side,
there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate
issued by the state's Department of Health, and the responsible
official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original
certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance. [Emphasis added.]
--Jason Zengerle
6 comments
No, no, no. You don't understand. The Honolulu ad was forged and planted *recently*. I mean, duh.
- jhildner
July 24, 2009 at 3:33pm
We all know the reason Michelle Obama wanted to plant that veggie garden in the front lawn would be so noone would think twice about the mysterious "toolshed" that secretly houses the Obama family Time Machine.
- yasminmagari
July 24, 2009 at 3:40pm
The birthers are the current analogue of the truthers and just as nutty. Plus, we have the cynical operators like Rush Limbaugh picking up on this because it plays well with the nutty base., just as Glenn Beck suggests that Barack Obama might be readying concentration camps for his opponents.
- liberal reformer
July 24, 2009 at 4:13pm
Watched Keith Olberman show last night. Although Liz Cheney was not a guest, they did play clips of her equivocall statements about Obama's birth and her stoking the conspiracy theory without actually saying she belived it. "Well, I can understand why people feel that way because . . ."
What's rich is the daughter of Dick Cheney even contributing to questions about the validity of a presidential election. Obama won the popular vote by 7.5 million, he didn't lose it by 500,000.
Do they have no sense of irony?
- dubyadoubte
July 24, 2009 at 4:16pm
The socialist Muslims have been trying to take over the West for millions of years. A few decades is nothing to them.
- Simon Greenwood
July 24, 2009 at 6:54pm
That's not an understatement: being a Republican, the only question for Potter would naturally be how, not whether, such a trick could be pulled off. No deception is truly impossible; some deceptions are simply much more difficult. Dropping anonymous literature slandering your primary opponent as a child molester? For a Republican, that's a piece of cake. Forging a birth announcement 47 years in advance of an election, that would be "very difficult." But not impossible, and if a Republican needed to do such a thing, he'd find a way.
(And absent a time machine, here's how you'd do it: You'd forge a convincing but false birth announcement that says your foreign-born candidate was born overseas. Then you'd leak it at deniable third-hand to media who could be relied upon to run it. Then, after the story breaks, you discredit the story by proving the forgery. So yes, "very difficult," but ultimately not at all impossible, given sufficient motivation and lack of conscience.)
- rhubarbs
July 25, 2009 at 10:35am