Finally. At last. Once and for all. The Barack Obama birth certificate controversy is resolved. Or not.

Prodded for years by so-called “birthers” who question the president’s status as a natural-born citizen of the United States and for weeks by potential White House aspirant Donald Trump, Barack Hussein Obama II took decisive action to silence the critics Wednesday by releasing a detailed copy of the Hawaiian birth record verifying that he was, indeed, born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.

Having long ignored the birther clamor, taking the position that it was silly and no big deal, the president ended up treating it as if it were a very big deal. He even held a news conference to talk about it. But he stuck to his guns on the silly part.

“We do not have time for this silliness,” Obama said. “We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve.”

Correct on all counts. We can only hope Obama’s forthright handling of the issue this week will end the silliness. Trump was marginally silly when he gloated that he had “accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish” and sillier yet when he suggested that an army of experts needs to examine the birth certificate to make sure it’s not a fake.

But no amount of inspection is likely to discredit the president’s birth certificate, but a fresh round of skepticism will prove one thing: Conspiracy nuts, uh, theorists, treasure their conspiracies and are reluctant to let go of them, even when facts prove conclusively that they are trafficking in fantasy.

 

 


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