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In still more inspired silliness, but with more serious implications, we have the announcement by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who did yeoman duty for Mitt Romney during the primaries as a token of his campaign’s determination not to be out-demagogued on the immigration issue, that the state needs more evidence of Barack Obama’s birth status before ruling on an objection to his presence on the November 6 ballot. Per TPM, the State Objections Board that deals with ballot qualifications in Kansas (and on which Kobach sits) has to do some deep studying of this difficult issue:
The board will send records requests to Hawaii, Arizona and Mississippi for more documentation of Obama’s birth. They plan to meet again on Monday to discuss the matter. Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett questioned Obama’s birth certificate earlier this year and also briefly considered removing him from the ballot.
Now I doubt very seriously Kobach and company will actually try to disqualify Obama. But the incident shows that even as Romney had to pay respect to nativists by snuggling up to Kobach, Kansas elected officials have to pay respect to birthers by pretending there’s some doubt about Obama’s citizenship. Kansas, after all, was the recent site of a reasonably bloody purge of “moderate” legislators in GOP primaries. It is not a place where Republican officeholders can afford to get to the left of anybody. So birthers will get a chance to look respectable, and the GOP’s habit of letting itself be intimidated by “true conservative” zealots will get another self-reinforcing fix.
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Rob M on September 14, 2012 12:55 PM:
"The board will send records requests to Hawaii, Arizona and Mississippi for more documentation of Obama’s birth."
Okay, they contact Arizona because it its secretary of state went through this process a few months ago. But why Mississippi?
Peter C on September 14, 2012 12:56 PM:
Legal immigrants (who have a right to vote) would be well to think twice before voting for people who, despite clear documentary evidence, still doubt the citizenship of a sitting President. If they are willing to doubt Obama's documents, how many of your rights will they deny while doubting your documents?
c u n d gulag on September 14, 2012 12:58 PM:
The answer to the question, "What's The Matter With Kansas?":
KANSAN'S ARE THE PROBLEM WITH KANSAS!!!
We have entire states now, dominated by right-wing morons who should thank EVOLUTION that breathing's an involuntary reflex, or else all you'd need to abort a brain damaged child like these idiots, is induce labor, and don't help him/her learn how to breath.
OY!!!
Th on September 14, 2012 1:00 PM:
Hey, why not a records request to Donald Trump? Surely someone in Hawaii will tell us what these idiots requested. Anyone seen the list?
kindness on September 14, 2012 1:10 PM:
When Arizona tried to do this Hawaii published the requirements they would need fulfilled in order to release the birth records. Arizona saw the list and never pursued it after that. Kansas won't get anything from them.
Snarki, child of Loki on September 14, 2012 1:11 PM:
To hell with Obama's birth certificate.
Where's Willard's DNA test?
And no, a sample of 10W40 is not acceptable.
boatboy_srq on September 14, 2012 1:20 PM:
Now I doubt very seriously Kobach and company will actually try to disqualify Obama.
If they do, though, that'll matter a whole lot more than all those fiddling attempts at voter suppression in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Shrinking the rolls by 100,000 or so is nothing compared to disenfranchising every BHO supporter in your state, and by pulling him from the ballot, a lot simpler to do.
SYSPROG on September 14, 2012 1:22 PM:
Snarki? I love you and I'm stealing this! Kansas decided to go all birther and not just disrespect the President ONE MORE TIME but diss the State of Hawaii. They are ONE of 50 states. They want to go it alone? Try it. And why MISSISSIPPI? Let alone Arizona...
OKDem on September 14, 2012 1:28 PM:
As happened with the AZ SOS, Hawaii will demand documentation from the Kansas mouth-breathers to prove they have any business looking at birth records. After all they could be Russian porn spammers or credit card thieves.
Or they birth certificates to sell fake ID's to illegal emigrants. Wait a minute...
As to Mississippi, maybe they are looking into Bill Ayers linage. One myth had Ayers as Obama's father. At this point don't rule out any lunacy.
Lifelong Dem on September 14, 2012 1:28 PM:
I keep asking this question and never get an answer: If your mother is an American citizen, aren't you a natural-born American regardless of WHERE you were born? John Sidney McCain III was born in the Panama Canal Zone but is an American because both parents were American.
Does one American parent count or not?
bdop4 on September 14, 2012 1:35 PM:
@ Snarki - ROFLMAO.
Kansas is yet another state I can scratch off my list of places to visit (and spend my money).
The crazy has taken hold there and I would imagine it's quite infectious. The CDC should be notified and a quarantine needs to be established.
punaise on September 14, 2012 1:39 PM:
as the inimitable Watertiger put it at her snark-haven dependablerenegade.com:
"It's simply amazing just how insane this country went once a black man was elected President."
windshouter on September 14, 2012 1:40 PM:
I wonder if the President would not be better off being removed from the ballot in Kansas. He won't win there anyway. The SOS of Kansas is of course bluffing and believes the President is not an undocumented alien, but if the President were removed from the ballot, there would be revulsion in the sane parts of the US. It would be a bad precedent, but it would be interesting call the bluff and tell him to remove the President from the ballot if you don't think he's a citizen, but we aren't giving you additional information for you to make your decision.
Gandalf on September 14, 2012 1:45 PM:
The relly scary thing is the thought that these whatever they ares actually beleive what they're doing is right. Someone please tell me this is just a political stunt.
AbijahL on September 14, 2012 1:47 PM:
It doesn't actually matter where O was born:
"If one parent is a U.S. citizen and the other parent is not, the child is a citizen if
the U.S. citizen parent has been "physically present"[7] in the U.S. before the child's birth for a total period of at least five years, and
at least two of those five years were after the U.S. citizen parent's fourteenth birthday.[8]"
Stanley Ann Dunham was born in ... Kansas.
mb on September 14, 2012 1:49 PM:
I,too, would love to know why the hell Kobach is requesting records from Mississippi. Is he suggesting Obama has slave ancestry?
Equal Opportunity Cynic on September 14, 2012 2:25 PM:
boatboy_sq: No, actually it won't matter as much. Knocking Obama off the ballot in KS might make him 0.0000000001% less likely to be reelected; stealing a few thousand votes in PA might make him 0.00001% less likely.
I'd actually rather they succeed in getting him eliminated from the ballot just to hold themselves up as laughingstocks for the nation and remind the country what happens when you vote for this brand of conservatives.
AK Liberal on September 14, 2012 2:25 PM:
I'm pretty sure there are no electoral votes for Obama in Kansas, anyway.
Equal Opportunity Cynic on September 14, 2012 2:30 PM:
AbijahL: As far as I know, even the birthers aren't contesting the President's citizenship of the US, just his status as a "natural born citizen" as specified in Article 2, Section 1.
Cranky Observer on September 14, 2012 2:38 PM:
bdop4 @ 1:35,
That's the sad thing about the Walton/Koch/Rove disinformation campaign. Kansas is a beautiful state and the people there are nice to talk to 1-on-1. The University of Kansas is a great school with a national and international perspective. But clustered into Rove-designed wedges with Fox News blaring things get ugly.
Cranky
jjm on September 14, 2012 2:48 PM:
Someone said that Lincoln was denied ballot status in 1860 in all of the states of the deep South. Didn't kill his chances, did it? (The only real worry is that when such shenanigans fail miserably, then their thoughts turn to real killing...)
Ashbee on September 14, 2012 3:40 PM:
Every time someone questions Obama's birth is a smack in the face of Hawaiians who in turn just hate haoles that much more. Linda Lingle has went out of her way since 2010 to distance herself from the birthers but I wonder how it will affect her Senate run?
moose966 on September 14, 2012 4:01 PM:
Kobach is a disgrace to all Kansans. He is doing this to help his friend Mitt (aka Mitch and/or Mittens)but it only will result in Kansas being thought of as the idiots of the nation again. Remember when Kansas deleted evolution from being taught in schools and substituted it with creationism a few years back. Thankfully that was eventually rejected and evolution is back in schools again.
Kobach is an idiot. When he ran against Dennis Moore for the Congressional 3rd District of KS in 2008, Dennis destroyed him. Dennis always had a hard time hanging on this seat in red KS but it was easy when Kobach was his opponent.
mittens
H-Bob on September 14, 2012 4:06 PM:
The Hawaiian birth certificate says that it is prima facie evidence of the facts stated thereon and Kansas is constitutionally required to give full faith and credit to the Hawaiian records – so how can Kansas require additional evidence ?
MuddyLee on September 14, 2012 4:12 PM:
Mitt's father George wasn't born in the United States - did he have any "birther" trouble when HE ran for president?
Wikipedia: (George) Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico....
boatboy_srq on September 14, 2012 4:16 PM:
@jjm: Romney keeps trying to draw parallels with 1980: for me, the clearer links really are to 1860. Teh South dun riz agin.
If they DO decide to leave the Union, d'you think we could let them this time? After freezing all the assets they have stashed on Wall Street, of course. It'd be so much more rewarding to watch them stew for a few years before the folks there realised what a mistake they'd made.
Doug on September 14, 2012 5:04 PM:
I really don't think Kobach & Co have as much support as they believe they do.
The last poll about this that I read had those in the Republican Party who still don't believe the President was born in Hawaii in a minority of their own party. Most of the Republicans I know don't qualify as nutjobs. They don't like the President, even make snide remarks about him and his policies, but don't deny that he's a citizen.
Among those Republicans are some who are really embarassed by these types of antics, which leads me to believe that the more Kobach is shown as representing the R/R campaign and its' policies, the better the chances of those people NOT voting in November.
A sort of voter self-suppression right in line with the Republicans' "self-deportation"...
yellowdog on September 14, 2012 11:45 PM:
There is seriously something called the 'State Objections Board' and the GOP is using it without irony? Has a big-government death-panel kind of vibe... Wouldn't want to do anything to cross the State Objections Board, now would we?
Crissa on September 15, 2012 5:07 AM:
Even if Obama were born overseas, he'd still be a 'natural born citizen' because his mother was American. McCain was born in Panama, for instance.
Natural born citizen is il-defined, but generally means gained at birth: Born on US soil to foreign parents, born to US parents anywhere and returned to the US as a child. Obama has a US parent, specifically his mother, so he'd be a natural born citizen no matter what.
Th on September 15, 2012 8:35 AM:
Maybe we can ask Jack Kingston about the whole "natural born" thing. Is he disqualified from being President because he was born in Africa while his parents were missionaries there?
Motwor on September 15, 2012 9:43 AM:
Lifelong Dem and AbijahL - to really get down into the weeds: citizenship law changes over time. From a legal perspective, relevant issues include, when he was born (1961), his mother's age at the time (18), his parents marital status, and of course where he was born.
If there were any plausible reason to believe he was born outside of the United States, there would be legal reason to question his citizenship. Ironically, there's a strand of birthers out there who claim that the only reason he is a citizen is that his parents weren't legally married.
http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_5199.html
"A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship."
...
"A person born abroad out-of-wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother may acquire U.S. citizenship under Section 309(c) of the INA if the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person’s birth and if the mother was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the person’s birth. The mother must be genetically related to the person in order to transmit U.S. citizenship."
Leopold Von Ranke on September 15, 2012 10:21 AM:
As a practical matter, who cares? If Obama's on the Kansas ballot, he goes down 80-20. Kansas is a one-party state, similar to North Korea.