Obama releases birth certificate: Will that stop birthers?

Now that President Obama has released his long-form birth certificate, the birthers can all rest easy that the president of the United States is in fact a “natural born citizen” and thus qualified for his job. Right?

Wrong. Basically, they’re still not completely convinced.

The questions keep coming. Like this: “Why did Obama spend millions of dollars to keep this document secret?” writes Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, on his group’s website.

Or this: “I’m sure someone will investigate this BC and prove it to be a fraud, like what they have tried to pass off in the past,” writes Worried Grammie on the Tea Party Nation site.

Orly Taitz, an original champion of birtherism, told New York Magazine after Wednesday’s big “reveal” that she’s willing to let the birth certificate issue go. Really?! Well, sort of. She called the newly released long-form document “a step in the right direction.”

Then Ms. Taitz elaborates: “As long as the experts are saying, ‘Yes, this is a genuine document that was created at the time [of Obama's birth],’ I would say that that would put this issue to rest.”

But wait, there’s more. Turns out when she says “this issue” she’s referring to place of birth, not eligibility to be president. According to New York Magazine, Taitz still questions whether Mr. Obama is a "natural-born citizen," as required by the Constitution – despite his Hawaiian birth and American mother – because his father was a British subject.

"Nobody knows, because the courts never took it upon themselves to provide a determination on this issue," Taitz says.

Another theory floating around is that Obama lost his citizenship, because he was adopted by his mother’s second husband, an Indonesian named Lolo Soetoro, and then moved to Indonesia. There is no evidence that Obama was legally adopted by Mr. Soetoro, now deceased, but we do know that Obama lived in Indonesia with his mother and Soetoro for a few years as a child. Though living abroad does not necessarily mean losing one’s citizenship.

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