Vote 2012

Birtherism has risen from the grave– again

Well, let’s face it. It never really died. But in the latest manifestation, The Topeka (Kansas) Capital Journal reports:

Three of the state’s top elected Republicans on Thursday determined they lacked sufficient evidence of President Barack Obama’s birth records to decide whether to remove the Democratic nominee from the November ballot in Kansas.

The State Objections Board comprised of Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer postponed until Monday action on a complaint filed by a Manhattan resident pending review of a copy of Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii.

“I don’t think it’s a frivolous objection,” Kobach said. “I do think the factual record could be supplemented.”

Requests were to be sent to officials in Hawaii, Arizona and Mississippi in an attempt to secure copies of the president’s birth records. Obama released a copy of his birth certificate last year, but detractors persist in advancing “birther” arguments that the Democrat lacked standing.

Arizona and Mississippi?

In the interests of scrupulous fairness, I assumed, the board is also seeking copies of Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s birth records. Strangely, it appears they are not.

Even more strangely, Secretary of State Kobach is an “informal adviser” to the Romney campaign.

And strangest of all: Kansas is among the reddest of Republican “Red States,” in which neither Obama nor Romney is bothering to campaign and which John McCain won over Obama in 2008 by 15 percentage points.