When a once-respected writer, editor and blogger wants to examine and reexamine her birth canal in excruciating detail like it’s the Zapruder film, and numbskulls like Alan Colmes offer the medically innovative theory that flying on a plane caused her son’s Down syndrome*, maybe it’s a bit much to expect Sarah Palin to come riding to Barack Obama’s defense on birth-certificate questions.

Talk-radio host Rusty Humphries asked three questions of Palin about Obama’s birth certificate, and none of her answers seemed to dismiss the issue; in fact she notes, “I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record.”

In a subsequent post to Facebook, she wrote that ”at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.”

Is Sarah Palin a birther? No. Is she willing to lift a finger to dispel the beliefs of birthers? No, it appears she’ll leave that to President Obama and his supporters. Considering how frequently he came to the defense of her family when they were attacked by overzealous Obama supporters — none that I can recall** — I don’t think she has much particular obligation to strain herself in these circumstances.

By the way, I’ve notice a strange phenomenon whenever I make a sarcastic reference to Obama’s birth certificate. Usually I’ll get a couple of e-mails from birthers, going on at length about how I’m pooh-poohing legitimate concerns, sometimes polite, SOMETIMES WITH THE CAPS LOCK KEY STUCK.

But I’ll often get a rebuke or two from a lefty, who’s outraged that I treat the issue with any tone other than their thermonuclear outrage. A joke, like my one from last week that the doctoral thesis of Obama’s mother begins with her description of giving birth to him in Kenya, inevitably triggers some sort of huffy denunciation that I’m fanning the flames of conspiracy theories or legitimizing the argument that the Oval Office is occupied by a Kenyan secret agent.

I think this shows how psychologically intolerant some of these folks are; it matters not that I agree that the rumor is false; I must, upon every reference, react in the same emotional tone that they do, and denounce the rumor as the most outrageously outrageous outrage of all time.

** UPDATE: I was wrong; shortly after the news of Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy broke, Obama did say,

“I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits,” Obama said. “And people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”

As we saw, however, that good note of dignity and decorum was largely ignored by the more furious corners of the liberal world. Perhaps some readers will conclude I’m being a little unfair to the president, but I feel he could have, and should have, returned to this type of comment later in the campaign, and perhaps rebuked folks like liberal talk-show host Ed Schultz, who asked Larry King on September 2, “What kind of mother is she?” These days, Schultz gets front-row seats for prime-time White House press conferences . . .

*ANOTHER UPDATE: Alan Colmes reaches out to NR, arguing he never said that Palin’s flight caused her son’s Downs Syndrome.

Back on August 30, Colmes wrote on his web site, a post entitled, “Did Palin Take Proper Pre-Natal Care“:

Rogers Cadenhead gives the timeline associated with the birth of her newest child. She had a speech in Dallas and, even after the water broke, continued with her activities, and then boarded a plane for home. She did consult by phone with her doctor.
Still, a Sacramento, Calif., obstetrician who is active in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said when a pregnant woman’s water breaks, she should go right to the hospital because of the risk of infection. That’s true even if the amniotic fluid simply leaks out, said Dr. Laurie Gregg.

Many, many, many, many, many readers on both sides of the aisle interpreted the remark as insinuating that Palin’s decisions prompted Trig’s Downs Syndrome. Colmes later concluded his words were being misconstrued, said that he never meant that, and pulled the post entirely, because conservatives were leaving “vile comments.” (Poor guy.)

Anyway, readers deserve to have all the facts, including Colmes’ defense that he never meant to suggest that the plane flight caused the Downs’ Syndrome, and that he simply wished to inform readers, trying to decide whether the next Vice President of the United States should be Joe Biden or Sarah Palin, about her decision to get on a plane after consulting with her doctor and the potential that that she didn’t take proper pre-natal care while carrying Trig. He wasn’t accusing her of causing the Downs; he just accused her of recklessly endangering her unborn child.