Hawaiians are so sweetly naïve:
Moving to dispel claims that President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, his supporters in the state's legislature have introduced a bill that would allow anyone to get a copy of his birth records for a $100 fee.
The idea behind the measure is to end skepticism over Obama's birthplace while raising a little money for a government with a projected budget deficit exceeding $800 million over the next two years.
"If it passes, it will calm the birthers down," said the bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Rida Cabanilla. "
No, no it won't calm them down. You see, birthers aren't birthers because they looked carefully at the evidence and are legitimately suspicious that Obama was not actually born in the U.S. There is no piece of evidence you could show them that would convince them otherwise. As Richard Hofstadter explained in "The Paranoid Style In American Politics," when you show conspiracy theorists evidence that contradicts their conspiracy theory, it only deepens their conviction that they're right. After all, just look at how vast and sinister the conspiracy is, that it can produce things like falsified documents dating back 50 years!
-- Paul Waldman
