Before Donald Trump came along, the nation’s foremost birther zealot was probably Orly Taitz, the lawyer/dentist who has tried, in vain, to get the courts to rule on whether President Obama is eligible to be president. With the release this morning of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate the one the birthers have been clamoring for we wanted to know how she was handling things. The answer: pretty well! She’s perfectly willing to let the certificate issue go, but only because there are other conspiracies yet to be resolved. Here is a snippet of our conversation:
Are you convinced by the birth certificate? Are you convinced now that he was born in Hawaii?
I think it’s much better evidence than what we’ve had before. I think it’s a step in the right direction —
This issue, meaning the birth certificate — but not the eligibility issue. Taitz still questions whether Obama is actually a “natural-born citizen,” as required by the Constitution — despite being born in Hawaii, to an American mother — because his father was a British subject at the time of Obama’s birth. “Nobody knows, because the courts never took it upon themselves to provide a determination on this issue,” she says. Proof that, for those who simply refuse to see Obama as legitimate, today isn’t such a dark day after all.
