As president Obama enters his second term, the GOP has decided to revive the “birther” debate. Thank goodness for Senator Tom Casperson (R-Mich.) because it has been way too long since we revisited this issue. In an interview on Michael Patrick Shiels’ Lansing, Michigan-based radio program Tuesday, Sen. Casperson stated that he still does not know whether or not the President was born in the United States. Of course, Shiels was more than helpful in raising the issue when he prompted, “Do you find it weird that we have a, uh, commander in chief for his second term now that may not even be, you know, technically, legally qualified to be president?”
Casperson said the reason he is unsure about whether President Obama is a legal US citizen is because “That issue was dropped immediately as far as major media went. My gut tells me if it had been a different president, like, say, George W. Bush, they’d have been digging into that like there was no tomorrow…”
Mr. Casperson is wrong that the issue was dropped immediately as far as major media is concerned. The topic is, regrettably, the issue that seems to never go away, despite the fact that President Obama released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate in June 2008, and then released a long-form copy of his birth certificate in 2011 in order to further satisfy some of his most outspoken critics like the “birther queen,” Orly Taitz, and Donald Trump.
Alisha Mims is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire.
