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Issue of Obama's citizenship persists

Story debunked, but many still fan flames

AP Photo

This Aug. 13, 1961, clipping shows Obama’s birth announcement.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 24, 2009

NEW YORK - Six months after Barack Obama's inauguration, a persistent and noisy legion of doubters won't let go of an already debunked claim -- that he is actually a foreign-born, illegal president.

The issue has flared again on political blogs, TV news shows and even a town-hall meeting, widely circulated on YouTube, in which a Republican congressman was booed for saying that Obama is a citizen.

Mainstream Republicans who want the issue to go away are having a tough time stamping it out as the so-called birthers resurface, with assists from talk-show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN's Lou Dobbs.

Some who had initially dismissed the claim as a laughable political sideshow now wonder whether it's gotten out of control.

"I've stopped laughing," Errol Louis, a columnist for the New York Daily News, wrote yesterday. "Too many political and media leaders are deliberately fanning the flames of ignorance and fear, and they should be ashamed."

Passions among the birthers run so high that Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware was booed by his own constituents at a recent town-hall meeting for saying Obama "is a citizen of the United States."

Castle was responding to a woman who waved her own birth certificate, contended that Obama was born in Kenya, and shouted out, "I want my country back!"

Theories that Obama was born abroad abounded during the presidential campaign, even after an official Hawaii birth certificate was produced, along with August 1961 birth notices from two Honolulu newspapers.

Numerous lawsuits and emergency appeals were lodged challenging Obama's eligibility to be president, and all were rebuffed.