Az will require Obama's birth certificate to run in 2010

Isn't it well established that Arizonans are insane?

My son went to college in Florida and he called FL the state of 85 . . . average ambient temperature, average age, average IQ.

Wow! It looks like FL beat AZ in average IQ. Must be around 65 in "The Grand Canyon State." Perhaps the Canyon represents what is in the heads of Arizonians: an enormous trench.

While it does seem kind of silly, I can also see the good side.

Since you dont need to have been born in the US to be a Governor, Senator, or Representative, and since thats where most presidential candidates come from, I can see the validity in the Az requirement.

Please also take note that AZ had just also declare war on all it citizens who are of latino descent.

Passing a law that demand that any police officer must question the legal status of anyone they could have a question concerning who they happen to come into contact with.

In other word no matter how many generations of Americans your family had in it tree, if by blood you look Mexican, you better carry your passport with you when you go to the 7/11.

Suggest the best course of action for the rest of us is to give this sad state to Mexico assuming they would take it.

In related news, Arizona will exempt John McCain from the requirement to produce his birth certificate, as no one in the state can read Babylonian cuneiform.

I can, being cunilingual.

Hell John McCain was in fact not born in the US but instead on territory we had control of at the time.

For some strange reason none of this nonsense was aim at McCain and is that not amazing?

Kind of like questioning if a man who had been in combat with our enemies and wounded deserve his medals, and at the same time turning a blind eye the fact that the other man got himself a nice safe job defending the skies over Texas.

Truly shocking what the right wings nuts are allow to get away with.

Can we get a refund and return on the Gadsden Purchase?

Joe(It'll be a start)Nation

POLITICS
Born Again
Why the "birther" myth refuses to die.
By Christopher Beam
Posted Wednesday, April 21, 2010, at 7:08 PM ET
The "birther" myth is the political equivalent of a horror-movie villain: Not only does it refuse to die, but every time someone tries to kill it, it only comes back stronger.

The latest incarnation: a bill approved 31-22 by the Arizona House of Representatives on Monday that would require 2012 presidential candidates to offer proof of citizenship in order to qualify for the ballot. The proposal has little chance of becoming law. For that to happen, the state Senate would have to pass it and the governor would have to sign it. But it's still the closest birtherism has come to being codified.

Democrats have dutifully condemned the bill. One Phoenix legislator said it's turning Arizona into "the laughing stock of the nation." White House spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the measure and others like it on CNN as "fringe right-wing radio conspiracy theories." Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly wrote, "The fact that fringe lunacy is being taken seriously at this level suggests a strain of contemporary Republican thought that's gone stark raving mad." Even some Republicans are rushing to distance themselves from the bill, particularly senatorial candidate J. D. Hayworth, whom John McCain has tried to tie to the fringiest elements of the Tea Party movement.

But shouldn't the real reaction be, This again? Why, more than a year into Obama's presidency, are we still talking about whether he is constitutionally allowed to serve?

The birther movement lingers because it means different things to different people. For liberals, questioning Obama's citizenship is tantamount to racism. Anyone who does it hates black people and is simply trying to disguise his prejudice"conscious or not"by implying that Obama is a foreigner.

For conservatives, though, demanding to see Obama's birth certificate has become less of a real-world concern"after all, Obama released his Hawaii birth certificate during the 2008 campaign"than a symbolic way for Republican politicians to show that they, too, are worried about America. They don't have to actually believe Obama was born in Kenya to associate with the birthers.

The trick has been defining birtherism down. Look at how politicians on the right talk about it"or, more accurately, around it. It's rare that an elected official will call for Obama to produce his birth certificate, a la Orly Taitz. More often, he will simply raise questions"innocent questions!"about Obama's origins. "What I don't know is why the president can't produce a birth certificate," said Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri when ambushed by a video blogger last July. "I don't know anybody else that can't produce one. And I think that's a legitimate question." (When the interviewer pointed out that Obama had indeed produced a birth certificate, Blunt dismissed him.) Other times, they won't endorse the birther argument so much as decline to reject it. As Sarah Palin told a radio host in December: "I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers." (Italics added.) It's not about Palin, see. It's about the people. They want answers.

Even Republicans who want to require candidates to produce birth certificates don't sound especially up in arms about Obama. Tommy Stringer, a member of the South Carolina General Assembly who introduced a bill similar to the Arizona measure, told the Washington Independent that the birth certificate the Obama campaign provided "satisfies" him, barring evidence that Obama was born elsewhere. So why did he introduce the bill? It's about transparency, he said. It's this kind of do-si-do that allows politicians on the right to associate themselves with the birthers but not necessarily be of them.

It's also good politics. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that only 58 percent of Americans believe Obama was born in the United States. Entertaining this notion without endorsing it thus works as a conservative dog whistle. It shows that politicians understand the concerns of the far right, even if they don't plan on joining it.

The irony of all the birth-certificate proposals"similar bills have been introduced in six states"is that they contain the seeds of the birther movement's destruction. The moment Obama calls their bluff and hands his birth certificate to the Arizona secretary of state, it's over.

In theory. That's the beauty of the birther myth, or any conspiracy theory: No amount of evidence can ever completely dispel the questions. When Obama produced his Hawaii birth certificate and the state of Hawaii verified it, it was a fake. When reporters uncovered announcements of Obama's birth in 1961 copies of the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, they had been planted. If the Arizona secretary of state verified Obama's birth certificate, that would be due to the government mind-control chip implanted in his molar.

To put all this another way: Birtherism is here to stay. And not because more people are going crazy, but because crazy has been redefined. Birtherism isn't the only example. Consider how conservatives accuse Obama of peddling "socialism." Sure, some of them genuinely think that Obama is going to usher in a new Soviet state in which the government owns all means of production. But most right-wingers use it as shorthand for government overreach. So now that's what "socialism" means.

There is a fairly major difference between birtherism and the socialism charge: Birtherism has been disproved by facts. But they're similar in the way they get tossed around without much connection to their original meaning. Republican politicians like to carry copies of the Constitution in their breast pockets. In 2012, maybe they'll tote around their birth certificates, too.

Like Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Christopher Beam is a Slate political reporter. Follow him on Twitter.

Notice what this writer has to say about conspiracy theorists and how he implies that these righties know nothing of socialism.

It is amazing how people can be control by emotions, mainly fear, by the ruling class.

Vote against their own best interests time after time and for the interests of the top 1/2 of one percent.

Banking bills to reduce some of the ripped offs and limit the ability to take 100s of billions out of the economic for themselves no matter how must harm is done hell no!

Bills to attacks "welfare queens" you bet your ass even if all the welfare queens to be born in the next thousands years can not do the harm that the bankers had done in a few years.

After the foreign work force had been invited in by the employers and kept illegal so they can be better used, we will turn around and cause fear amount the middle class toward them in the same manner as Jews was used in Europe as escapes goats.

Wonder what symbol the people of Mexico descent will need to wear in the state of Arizona and are we going to have camps set up with the words ‘work will set you free” on the front gates?

Strange is it not that the anti-emigration lot can not see that all you would need to do is fine the hell out of any person or any firm that is found hiring them and they would cheerfully deport themselves.

But then who would you have to drum up hate toward and where would you get your unprotected sub-minimum wage workforce to add billions to your bottom line?

Hey, get your beads back, and let them have Manhatten, if you're feeling so generous.

Fear rather than facts and logic? More common than I would have hoped as a young person in the early 60s. I thought education would eradicate the sort of problems represented by this thread.

Arizona has obviously gone off the deep end.

When I was in Berlin in 1976, we had to wait to board the plane because of the long process of unloading the "guest workers" from Turkey. The Turkish workers, who came with their families were dressed in clothes that looked like they were from the 1950s. They formed a long line of parents with small children and I bet they hoped for a better life, taking the jobs the Germans turned up their noses at. I wonder how their lives went and whether they flourished in Germany.

Mexicans take jobs Americans don't want just to provide for their families. Funny, isn't it that the Republicans who make much of family values seem to hate these immigrants who want something better for their kids. They demand the immigrants speak fluent English immediately and yet some of those making the demands can not write English sentences.

And please do not forget that the very people who control the GOP are the same damn class that cheerfully used them as cheap cheap labor!!!!!

Then they would like to have a mult-generations lower class by no concerning children born to these people on US soil to be citizens.

I REALLY wish Obama would just show them whatever it is they want to see, or ask Hawaii to do it.

At least we could all stop talking about it.

He has. That's the great thing about conspiracy theories, they can't be disproved.

He released a copy of his "certificate of birth" and people then said, "but it's not a birth certificate". Reporters found old birth announcements, and people claimed they were planted.

Idiocy.

No, I understand that. Hawaii said that they have his actual BC on file.

I just wish they'd show that damn thing so we can all shut up about it. I don't know how Obama, democrats, the USA, or my youngest dog benefit from not showing it and shutting these people up.

What do you what the poor man to do have copies printed out for every man and woman in the damn country?

The image of the damn thing had been released and nothing will shut up the wing nuts short of a 45 bullet.