I’ve been pretty much silent on this berth are controversy since its beginning, making only an occasional comment, preferring instead to let DavidL take the lead. In any event I am pretty much in agreement with what he has been saying.
That said, I notice a post this morning that I find hard to resist, in The Weekly Standard from Mary Katharine Ham: [1]
[2]
Mary Katharine Ham
It doesn’t happen terribly often, but I’m with Andrew Sullivan on the need to lay Obama birther-ism to rest— a subject on which he’s been blogging with some energy over the last day.
She then proceeds to take sarcasm to a new level, on a target that richly deserves it, in my opinion. (Sullivan) You really need a dive into the links that she provides to understand the level of the attack she has unleashed on Saint Andrew The Incontinent. Her point of course is with regards to a double standard that Solomon is famous for applying to situations like this. And with him, most of the left. (If not all….) The point is well taken.
But you know, we just put up a post here yesterday as regards another situation that is amazingly parallel in one respect ; and that of the available documentation , and which documentation the defenders choose to employ and which they do not. The case in question is that of the Gates /Crowley affair. Yesterday, I ran this in the Ramble:
RELEASE THE TAPES: Moe Lane thinks [3]they ought to release the police tapes made during the incident between Crowley and Gates. I tend to agree. I’d be interested in the 911 tapes of the original call, too. I note Tom McGuire making the same noises. Says Tom:
…if the Cambridge Police Dept had besmirched my behavior and deportment by telling people I was “tumultuous” and acting strangely, I would demand the release of the dispatcher tapes to blow away their lies. Ending the cop cover-up would be my idea of a teachable moment – yeah, I would give those guys something to move on, all right (after they were out of earshot), but clearly I am a lesser man.
Yeah, well….. That Gates didn’t DO that seems a solid indication that he doesn’t think his argument would withstand such a release. McGuire goes further, suggesting that if the tapes made Gates look good, they’d already have been released. He’s got a point, there, kids.
Here’s the parallel; It seems to me that the same point as made as regards Gates, applies to Obama in the case of his place of birth, and thereby his eligibility for the office he now holds . If the White House had more substantial documentation than what we have seen thusfar, I figure they probably would have brought it out, already. If, for no other reason than to shut up the people that they so willingly mock as “conspiracy theorists” etc. they’ve never been shy about revealing any information that makes democrats look good and republicans look bad, even at the risk of Democrat operatives doing jail time as we saw in Ohio for leaking “Joe the Plumber”s” personal information. That they do not bring out that information, speaks rather loudly to the idea that they don’t have more substantial proof, than the rather thin documentation they’ve offered thusfar. And that they then fall into “divide and insult” mode pretty much confirms that they don’t have anything more substantial and wish the whole thing to go away. If they could, don’t you figure they’d capitalize on exposing the ‘nutcases’ as such? They don’t because they can’t.
As such, this thing hasn’t gone away.
Is Obama and natural born American citizen? The truth is I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. He may be. He may not be. The documentation provided to answer that question in the affirmative is at least thin.
When combined with the rapidly falling approval numbers, this controversy… this question is going to play rather large indeed on the minds of the American voter. At the very least, moderate supporters of Obama in light of his other failures and broken promises, (Along with those of his party) are going to be looking seriously at what for all outward appearances has the look and feel of yet another cover-up. Getting elected, or, reelected , is a game of appearances. IE think we can safely had this particular controversy to the long list of spots on the record of the Democrats which do not appear to be all that squeaky clean. Certainly, this thing doesn’t take on the appearance of being overly transparent . You may recall we were promised a transparent administration.
And November 2010 looms.