When your every word is monitored and recorded, you're bound to slip up and inadvertently say something you don't mean every once in a while. That's what happened to Congressman Mike Coffman, a Republican from Colorado, during a fund-raiser earlier this month:

"I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that," Coffman said. "But I do know this, that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American."

After a short pause, which Elbert County Republican Chairman Scott Wills recalled as "deafening silence," Coffman was met with applause, tentative at first.

"I misspoke and I apologize," Coffman said in a statement yesterday after a local news station confronted him with an audio recording of the remarks. "I have confidence in President Obama's citizenship and legitimacy as President of the United States." Honest mistake!