There is enough doubt to suggest clarification is necessary. Unfortunately the unwashed public believes what they are fed by the media. Fact: at the time of the Obama birth certificates of live birth were issued whether or not the individual was born in Hawaii. Fact: at Obama’s birth his mother was under 18 therefore unable to confer citizenship on a child born outside the US. Fact: Obama’s father was not a US citizen. Fact: Obama went to school in Indonesia where citizenship was required for attendance.

A court case examining the facts could defuse the entire birth situation or cause a constitutional crisis. The only thing that bothers me about getting rid of the pretender is that the VP seems to have an IQ hovering around zero.

There is some reason to think that the act itself would be held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court because it violates the separation of powers. The violation consists in Congress trying to reign in the president who is, constitutionally, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the US.

Under the new theory of the “unitary executive,” developed by Stanford constitutional lawyer John Yoo, and defended by such right-wing intellectuals as Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield, Jr., the president has virtually unlimited power to act to defend the nation, a view Bush 43 clearly loved. De facto, Obama has continued to operate on this basis.

So, like it or not, the US has had, for over half a century, the practice firmly in place of waging undeclared wars. Don’t expect this to change in your lifetime or mine.

As for Obama’s legitimacy, I just wish birthers would give this a rest. Pounding away at this makes conservatives sound like cranks (except to other conservatives). For us liberals, the birther theory is just one short step away from black helicopters and reverse engineered alien spacecraft now operated by the Council for Foreign Relations, George Soros, and the Bilderbergers.