Dave Weigel of The Washington Independent caught up with Congressman Trent Franks (R-Az.) at the "How to Take Back America" conference and offered him a chance to put himself firmly outside the 'birther' camp. Franks instead used the opportunity to acknowledge that he had once been presented with information that caused him to question President Obama's citizenship, and that Obama should release his long-form birth certificate to clear up any remaining doubts:
There was a time, right before and right after the presidential election where information was brought to me that put Mr. Obama's citizenship in question, in my mind. And I looked through it, we did all kinds of research, and we found material, in papers in Hawaii, newspapers, that I don't think could have been forged, that show he indeed was born in Hawaii about two years after statehood and that solved the issue for me...
...Probably, Barack Obama could solve this problem and make the birthers, you know, back off, by simply showing us his long-form birth certificate. That'd solve the problem. There's some other issue, I don't know what it is, that he doesn't want people to see the birth certificate on.
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One wonders what information could have possibly been presented to Franks to cause him that amount of consternation about Obama's citizenship.
Another case of right wing hysteria has to do with conspiracies surrounding the Census, conspiracies that have particularly been promoted by Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Weigel was a guest on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" tonight to discuss the horrific case of the Census worker who was found hanged with "FED" carved into his chest.
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