Truthers and Birthers

Okay, here's a post for our liberal readers on the intersection of 9-11 Truthers and Obama birthers:

Their twin demonstrations worked as intended. Troothers walked away from the Democrats and went to the presidential campaign most friendly to them—that of Texas Republican Ron Paul. (An October 20 article posted on InfoWars even denounced Maher as “an apologist and advocate for the criminal cabal.”) With two short strokes the Democrats not only removed an albatross from their neck but hung it on the other party.

It didn’t take long for the word to get to the troother rank-and-file. As if ordered by Clinton and Maher, Pennsylvania Democrat Phil Berg, a former deputy attorney general, dismantled his website www.911forthetruth.com in October 2007. (It is now available only on the Wayback machine.) Berg is now a leading Obama ‘birther’ who has filed several bogus lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility even as he quietly pursues conspiracy-related 9/11 litigation.

I do think the article is a little unfair in the beginning; for the most part the liberals did not treat the 9-11 Truthers as friends; Daily Kos has had a standing ban against 9-11 Truther diaries since 2005. The Maher and Clinton incidents he points to were hardly a turning point; the Truthers were behind Ron Paul well before this, and were not some devious plot by Clinton and Maher to disassociate the Truthers from the Left. And he fails to note that in the general election, the 9-11 "Truth" candidate was Cynthia McKinney, hardly indicative of a swing to the right for the Troofers.

That said, the article does some terrific debunking on the Obama "birther" nonsense:

It is up to the Secretary of State or equivalent election officials of each state to ascertain whether a candidate for president of the Untied States is eligible to appear on that State’s election ballot. This is a process which was carried out in late 2007 as election officials prepared for the presidential primary season. All of the states—whether controlled by Democrat or Republican administrations—determined that Obama was indeed eligible to appear on their ballot.

He further notes that one candidate did not qualify:

Roger Calero, Presidential candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, openly states he was born in Nicaragua. He admittedly does not meet the Constitutional requirement that a U.S. president be a “natural born citizen.” As a result, the SWP was required to substitute the name of James Harris—a constitutionally eligible candidate—who appeared as the SWP candidate for President on the ballot in seven states (CA, CO, FL, GA, IA, LA, WA). The legally unqualified Calero was allowed on the ballot in his own name in six other states (CT, DE, MN, NJ, NY, VT). In 37 other states plus DC the SWP either did not seek ballot status or was denied a ballot position for other reasons.

Hat tip: Bwa-ha-ha-ha in the comments.