What are the comparative numbers of readers of these two publications?

If anyone can be influenced by Beck and Dobbs, this will not make the difference. "We're all Americans" is such a positive message, I can't see any Republican politicians stumping against it, and I can't see any fence-sitting African-American or white voters reacting negatively at the polls.

Do they really want that on their calendars?

• New Years Day
• Memorial Day
• Independence Day
• Labor Day
• Day of Fear
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day

Seems sorta odd to me...

Why wouldn't a newspaper announcement be good enough to back up a short-form birth certificate for the purpose of validating someone's eligibility to be President of the United States? The law says it is up to the states to validate whether someone was born in the U.S. or not. And Hawaii has done so.

Beyond that, people have speculated that his birth certificate is somehow fraudulent, and the newspapers establish that it is not. Isn't that what they wanted the long-form certificate for?

Anyway, when was the last time a President was asked to produce his birth certificate to prove he was eligible to be President? Did Ronald Reagan have to produce a birth certificate? If not, why should Obama?

I would think the proper thing would be to recuse oneself because of the conflict of interest, and designate someone not affiliated with his campaign to make the appointment.

If McCain had won, I would not have disputed his eligibility to be President, but I was wondering about the statute you were talking about.

I'm not a lawyer and so I rely on Wikipedia for this sort of thing, but as far as whether a child of a citizen who is born abroad is a "natural born citizen", or just a citizen at birth, is not something the constitution is clear about (according to Wikipedia). I think the courts would hold that it's good enough, and I certainly think it's good enough.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

John McCain (born 1936), who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born of two U.S. citizen parents at the Submarine Base Hospital of the Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone.[32] The former unincorporated territory Panama Canal Zone and its military facilities were not regarded as United States territory.[33] In March 2008 McCain was held eligible for Presidency in an opinion paper by former Solicitor General Ted Olson and Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe.[34] In April 2008 the U.S. Senate approved a non-binding resolution recognizing McCain's status as a natural born citizen.[35] In September 2008 U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated obiter in his ruling that it is "highly probable" that McCain is a natural born citizen, although he acknowledged the possibility that the applicable laws had been enacted after the fact and applied only retroactively.[36] These views have been criticized by Gabriel J. Chin, Professor of Law at the University of Arizona, who argues that McCain was at birth a citizen of Panama and was only retroactively declared a born citizen under 8 U.S.C. § 1403, because at the time of his birth and with regard to the Canal Zone the Supreme Court's Insular Cases overruled the Naturalization Act of 1795, which would otherwise have declared McCain a U.S. citizen immediately at birth.[37] Although the US Foreign Affairs Manual states that children born in the Panama Canal Zone at one point only became U.S. nationals,[38] it also states in general that "it has never been determined definitively by a court whether a person who acquired U.S. citizenship by birth abroad to U.S. citizens is a natural born citizen […]".[39] In Rogers v. Bellei the Supreme Court only ruled that "children born abroad of Americans are not citizens within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment", and didn't elaborate on the natural born status.[40][41]

The law, which was passed in 1937 (after McCain was born in 1936) but was effective retroactively to 1904, granted "born" citizenship to people whose parents were U.S. citizens and were born in the Canal Zone. Retroactive declarative born citizenship doesn't sound like enough to convince a Birther that someone meets the "natural born" qualification, but McCain doesn't need to, does he?

In my opinion, every single one of the Birthers would consider it ludicrous that anyone would question McCain's eligibility to be President. Even if they didn't like his politics, and not just because he's a war hero. He's white. Plain and simple.

These Birthers are the same ones who think Obama is a Muslim because his middle name is Hussein, and they are the same ones who would try to deny citizenship to children of aliens born in California. These people will not accept any proof because the fact of Obama's birth in Hawaii is only a technicality to them. If you ask one of them whether the child of a Kenyan should be eligible to be President of the United States, even if born in the United States, the answer is guaranteed to be "no". They would exclude him if he could, because his father was not a citizen, and his father was black.

Inhofe is wrong. The Birthers don't have a point. Because they aren't arguing a point. They are expressing their racism.