My guess as to why Obama released the certificate now is that recent polls were showing that solid majorities of Americans were starting to wonder why he wouldn't release his certificate, and if that meant the questions being asked might be legitimate.

In other words, the other side was no longer considered nut cases by most Americans.

We can always expect the politically correct response from the establishment GOP, which is why Palin's response is somewhat different from the other Republicans. Shouldn't the GOP be asking, like many Americans are, why the President of the United States allowed this "distraction" to continue on for more than two years while the country burned?

I was thinking...now that we have this lull in burning issues, what if Trump calls in his dogs from Hawaii and they join up with "the Factor's investigative team"...we could have a really awesome pack of conservative sleuths to trap leftie malefactors.

A characteristically petty response from the various GOP torchbearers. Their crazy base focuses on this issue, and then when Obama finally lowers himself to discuss it, they claim it was his fault (and even his plan) all along.

Republican politicians currently fall into two classes: lunatics who are genuinely on the side of the crazies (Palin) and those who are so cowed by the Tea Party that they have to say ignorant things they don't believe (Romney). Every candidate who announced that they'd "take the president at his word" about the birth certificate was simply winking at the Tea Party, and owes Obama an apology. But he won't get one, because the GOP currently views any act of class as a sign of weakness.

No one thought the Palins, Bachmanns, and Trumps in the GOP were ever going to show any perspective on this issue. Maybe I was wrong to expect more from Romney. The one joy is that the same ignorance and knee-jerk suspicion of anyone different that feeds the birthers also feeds suspicion of Mormon candidates. Romney will get the primary voters he deserves soon enough.

The proper response from any Republican should be:

"Who cares?"

or:

"So what?"

or:

"Now that this important matter of national concern has been properly addressed and put to rest, I can, finally and thankfully, sleep tonight."

In defense of birthers....we have a shadowy, anti-American character who spent his young childhood in Indonesia, had a Kenyan, communist father, who is very dodgy and evasive about the details of his life as president of the United States. It seems normal to me that people might demand some assurance that such a person did at least narrowly meet the strictly legal and constitutional requirements for eligibility for his office.

The thing that strikes me about these "issues" is the near identical rhetoric and ripostes that both sides employ. These kinds of nonsense issues - Obama's birth certificate, Bush's National Guard service, Clinton and the death of Vince Foster, etc., etc. - are just that: nonsense. But they stimulate rage, calumny and a thirst for retribution among partisans of both sides that can never be settled because it is the nature of the "issues" that they never CAN be settled.

These "issues" are about 95% elaborately developed conspiracies resting on just enough fact to give them the semblance of a foundation. Their inventors and those who grab hold of them employ perfect logic - and it is quite good logic - in support of their claims. The problem is not in the logic but in the almost entirely nonexistant reality that such logic is generated to support. Of course anyone who dares challenge the foundation of the great controversy is simply dismissed out of hand as an agent of the enemy or as stupid or hopelessly ignorant.

But even worse than the fantasists who invent these "issues" are those who make use of these to traduce and slander anyone and everyone even remotely associated with them as birds of a feather. This is done by people who understand quite well the nature of the "issues" and decide to use them as a vehicle to further the view that ALL their political opponents are evil or sub-human. These people use logic too. These use it to create an attack on their perceived enemies and to widen the net that encompasses the tiny number of true believers to include everyone with whom they have a political disagreement. These people are worse than the true believers who hold to the nonsense "issues" as if they are gospel. These people are far more rational than that but they make use of he irrationality of the few and claim it is the true condition of the many knowing this is not, in fact, true. This is slander and libel used deliberately to inflame the basest passions and instincts. In its worst form this leads to murder. So far, in this country, it is limited to vile rhetoric and heated arguments.

These nonsense "issues" should be ignored by all rational men and women of good will and honest intent. They shouldn't be addressed at all except to perfunctorily be dismissed as the twaddle they are and then move on to matters of far greater importance. Given the general level of poltical discourse now extant and the general level of morality that prevails among so many I do not expect this to happen.

I agree with bwarsch. He reveals the long-withheld "long form" when for two years they've been telling us there is nothing to reveal.

Could they not appear more shallow, deceptive and deceitful?

MsStevie, you need to read Andrew McCarthy's well-researched article, "Suborned in the USA" which exlains the long form/short form facts and what was intentionally withheld.
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