It’s a sucker play.

Clinton never released his medical records. Was he hiding something? Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. If I was running for office, I would buck the “tradition” too. My prescription medication, etc. history is no one’s business but mine.

That, of course, would give rise to questions about what I was hiding, just like it did with Clinton. Some people speculating would come up with outrageous suggestions (like they did with Clinton). And like Clinton, I’d welcome the outrageous speculation as a distraction that taints any legitimate concerns. It would allow me to get away with other things by pointing to the outrageous charges made about that issue.

In fact, I’d play the system just like Obama is doing. If someone challenged the fact that I have a Ph.D., I’d get the University of Chicago to release a letter attesting to it, but not release my transcripts. I’ve got nothing to hide (in fact, I actually received scholarship money to complete my studies), but I’d do it just to make my opponents crazy. In fact, using my IC essays as an example, nothing helps me more than when someone attacks my ideas by attacking my education instead of my ideas. It makes them look petty and small, just like attacking Obama’s birth certificate does. Throw in a fake Nigerian birth certificate like happened a couple of days ago, and instead of pursuing a matter of principle, you’re now trying to separate yourself from the whack jobs on the Right who’ve joined your cause.

This is how the game is played in American politics. Pick your battles wisely, and pick ones that you can not only win, but will have a practical impact on policy. Until then, keep your powder dry.

Once the Courts and SCOTUS refused to hear any challenges, and Obama was sworn in, the matter was settled. This is the only matter that really counts; because it relates to the ability to hold political power. It may have been settled “wrong” in many people’s view, but it was settled — just like it was settled in 1960 with Kennedy when Nixon refused to challenge the election fraud, and in 2000 when Gore lost his court case against Bush.

Had the courts become involved with the Obama birth certificate issue, it would be a different matter. But since they did not, the birthers are tilting at windmills and worse, squandering real political capital to take on Obama’s programs.

The solution to the Obama problem lies in 2010 and 2012. Everything else is a distraction that only helps Obama.

If Obama is a fraud he should be removed no matter the consequences of putting a buffoon VP into the presidential slot (remember Gerald Ford almost as bad as Biden).

If you remove Obama, you get Biden as the new president.

If you remove both Obama and Biden (even more unlikely), you get Pelosi as president.

Politics is about the acquisition and exercise of power. This debate does nothing to limit or diminish the Looney Left’s power, and in fact has the opportunity to protect and preserve it by distracting debate from other issues that could have an actual impact on issues presently affecting the country.

We risk diminishing ourselves the same way that the other side diminished itself in 2000 and 2004 by claiming that Bush was an “illegitimate” president. US History is replete with dubious electoral outcomes (just look at the 1876 presidential election for example, not to mention Kennedy’s election in 1960, or Lyndon Johnson’s “landslide” early in his political career, or the manipulation of votes by any big city political machine, and so on, and so on.).

It’s not “right,” and it’s not “fair”. But politics is not about the pursuit of truth.

This matter, right or wrong, was settled in January 2009 when Obama took the Oath of Office. If you want to stop Obama, fight him on a political terrain like people are doing with the Health care debate, and use that to win back House and Senate seats in 2010. That will have a real impact on American politics. Focusing on his legitimacy as president will do nothing to advance the issues we care about.

As Timothy says, There is no mechanism within the judicial branch that allows SCOTUS to remove a sitting President. This President enjoys such a clear majority in the House that one could easily imagine no impeachment even if he were to commit murder in front of witnesses.

Personally; I believe the liberals are content to keep this story ‘above the fold’ in order that a majority of their detractors will remain focused on this at the expense of more ‘intrusive’ elements of administration policy (health care comes to mind).

What I fail to comprehend is the progressives’ abhorrence at mere paper work. Barack Obama’s Birth certificate, John Kerry’s service record, Al Gore’s college transcripts: What’s the big deal here? The American Public is supposed to make a decision regarding the leader of the free world. Conservative credentials for candidates are incessantly nit-picked; while on the opposing side the only credential required is the ‘proper’ party affiliation. Anything else can be explained away as youthful exuberance, inattentiveness during religious services, mere circumstance, or attributable to the tin foil hat crowd.

This time I think it bit them in the posterior! They had such success during the last two election cycles running first time candidates in conservative districts as “Fiscally Conservative Democrats” that they took eventual control of both legislative houses. Those tactics worked so well they decided to make the same attempt at the executive level. A candidate so new, who had spent so little time in any one office, that he literally had no record to analyze.

Just as these “fiscally conservative” democrats are bucking the Speaker’s attempts to keep them on the reservation; many in the electorate are now suffering from “buyer’s remorse”. Polling suggests that solid majorities are angry over the defecit, no longer believe in the stimulus, or the health care legislation currently wending its way through Congress.

There are also indications that the progressives are beginning to’eat their own’. Witness Nancy Pelosi’s insistance that the CIA, headed by one of their own routinely lies to Congress. Almost without exception, the Whitehouse has to “walk back” statements made by prominent democrats on the Sunday talk Shows. There are even rumors of another resurgence of our old friend Cindy Sheehan, as she has vowed to join the President at Martha’s Vineyard to ‘encourage’ his immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan.

It is possible for conservatives to begin drawing parallels with former President Carter. And we all know how happily that story ended.

I read the “Warren Report” and I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman.

I have never seen a flying saucer, even though I have been a pilot and an air traffic control man.

I don’t believe that “Big Foot” exists.

I think Islamic terrorists took down the World Trade Center.

I don’t believe FEMA is planning to round up citizens and put them in concentration camps, and I don’t think swine flu is an international conspiracy.

The Lock Ness Monster is a fantasy.

I am certain that the Apollo mission actually went to the moon.

There are no more missing aircraft and ships in the so called “Bermuda Triangle” than in any other part of the earth with equivalent traffic.

I have a PhD, and am in private practice as a psychotherapist, so more than likely I am not crazy.

I am a life time member of Mensa, so I am not stupid. Membership # 1061487

My favorite candidate chose not to run (Condi Rice) and Alan Keyes is a follower of my blog so I am not likely to be a racist.

The guiding principles for my professional research for articles and books I write are the usual protocols of epistemology, scientific methodology, and rules of logic and the rules of evidence.

However, I am firmly convinced that AKA Obama is not eligible to be POTUS. Here is why:

http://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2009/04/aka-obama-fans-all-together-now-say-omg.html

If you read the articles at the link, and review the citations at the embedded links, you will be “literate” about the facts of the “eligibility” story and will be able to inform the public objectively.