High drama in Congress, as the House Democratic Caucus meets in a locked-down, closed-door meeting for 5 hours today -- hoping to hammer out the details of health care reform and pass the bill before leaving for the August break. Even though it's clear the Senate won't meet that deadline, it would be a momentum boost if the House did get a bill passed.
Amid all that serious work, though, I guess they need a little fun.
It's not enough that the lunatic fringe believes that Obama is not a "natural born" citizen of the U.S. Now it seems that several Republican Congressmen also think so, and Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., plans to introduce a bill that would require documentation of eligibility from presidential candidates: the so-called "birther bill." That, of course, is a direct response to those who claim that Obama was not born in the U.S. and has never produced an "original" birth certificate.
It's not enough to satisfy these clowns that the State of Hawaii has officially documented that he does have a valid birth certificate -- and that the reason they cannot produce an original, paper certificate is that they have converted to electronic data archives; and when they did so, they destroyed all the old paper files. No one born in Hawaii can produce an original paper birth certificate.
Nor is it enough that two newspapers in Hawaii carried the birth announcement at the time of his birth.
But here comes the fun: a Congressman from Hawaii is introducing a resolution in the House recognizing and celebrating the 50th anniversary of statehood for Hawaii. And as part of the "whereas-es" that you load up such resolutions with, he includes this line:
"Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii;"
That should do it, no? An Act of Congress will have declared that he was born in the U.S. It's being dubbed "the counter-birther bill."
Ralph
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I was about to write a 3rd verse to the "fun" here, when I read that Michele Bachmann had blocked a vote on the Hawaii resolution on the grounds that a quorum was not present.
ReplyDeleteBut it turns out we commentators are trying to make a bit too much of something.
First, the Hawaii 50th anniversary resolution was not cooked up in response to the birthers. It was introduced a month ago as a normal resolution for this kind of thing. And it's only natural when you're extolling the virtues of your state to mention that the current president was born there.
Also I was too hasty criticizing Bachmann. Apparently she was just objecting, by prearrangement, to voting on any more bills at that time, in order to postpone them for the evening session.
And when the Hawaii resolution came up for vote tonight, she voted for it -- along with the entire House in a unanimous voice vote -- as is usual for such resolutions.
Much ado about nothing. Except that the "birthers" are still serious and aren't going to let it go.