Despite a full-court press to pass a convoluted, highly-controversial health care reform in the next week before Congress goes on vacation, a radical fringe movement has emerged, drawing attention and legislative action as it builds steam and chatter.

The renewed discussion surrounds anti-Obama claims that President Obama was not born in the United States, might be an illegal alien and is therefore not a legitimate POTUS.

Distraction or serious political credibility problem?
As if Congress didn’t have enough on its plate, bills have been introduced to require future presidential candidates to produce an actual birth certificate and, more recently, to declare Obama a citizen of the United States, born in Hawaii.

Birther “leader” Orly Taitz brought embarrassment to several GOP leaders, including RNC Chair Michael Steele and Republican Whip Eric Cantor, who inadvertently or not, became her friends or followers on popular networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

Politico’s Daniel Libit reported:

Republican National Committee press secretary Gail Gitcho said she has been deluged with calls about [Michael] Steele’s “friend” status with Taitz today — a day when the RNC was trying to roll out its health care counter-agenda.
…
A Cantor spokesman also cautioned against making too much of the “friendships.”
“It is a bipartisan practice and common sense that when a person signs up to be a ‘friend’ or ‘supporter’ on an elected official’s social networking site, they are signaling support of the elected official,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the Virginia Republican. “It does not signal an endorsement of the views of any individual or group.”

Why is this resurfacing now?
“Cable news is often stretched for news in the summer,” Brian Stelter wrote recently in the New York Times. “But the birth certificate case has been fueled by the combustible combination of luck, compelling video, media-savvy doubters — and an outlandish topic.”

CNN talking head Lou Dobbs - a long time immigration reform critic - joined the birther bandwagon in July, suggesting the President might be “undocumented.” Since then conspiracy theorists - many of whom got significant press time during the election - have come out of the woodwork.

Also fueling the debate is video posted on YouTube showing Republican Congressman Mike Castle, of Delaware, getting heckled and booed for defending Obama’s citizenship status.

At the meeting held in late June, Castle was angrily questioned by a woman who said Obama, “is not an American citizen, he is a citizen of Kenya.”

Stelter wrote:

It took more than a week for the incident to receive widespread attention but since then, “there’s been a vast uptick,” in mainstream coverage, Mr. Berg said. One notable exception is the Fox News Channel, which has hardly addressed the controversy this week.

“There’s no positive evidence for this thing, they’re now trying to prove the negative,” Ben Smith of Politico said on the public radio program On Point

On the other side, Michael Medved, the nationally syndicated talk-radio host, had strong words for fellow conservatives who aren’t speaking out against “this incredible stupidity.”

“There are documents up and down the block now, what is it going to take?” Tom Ashbrook asked in On Point Monday.

Michelle Malkin, who can’t seem to find a positive thing to say about Democrats in general pointed out that evidence means nothing to a hard-core conspiracy buff:

The plain truth will never mollify a Truther. There’s always a convoluted excuse – some inconsequential discrepancy to seize on, some photographic evidence to magnify into a blur of meaningless pixels – that will rationalize irrationality.

Others suggest this is a “race issue” - that addressing race directly is no longer acceptable, but calling someone an illegal alien is a proxy argument that resonates with many on the Right.

Heidi Beirich co director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks fringe and extremist group activity, provided some background. “This whole birther theory began in the more anti-semitic and racial segments of the radical right, … and then has mushroomed out to big time conspiracy theorists.”

Christine, from Buffalo, NY, pushed the issue to the absurd as a caller to On Point, “All he has to do is produce a certificate of live birth.

“He is not a U.S. Citizen. He’s an illegal alien. … It’s in the Constitution.”

The Facts
Let’s look at that United States Constitution, which every reporter should carry in their bag along with pencil and paper - Article Two:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

The 14th Amendment has been interpreted to further define “natural born citizen” as one born on American soil.

Even if he was born in Mombassa, Kenya, as the birthers allege, Obama would be a citizen because his Mother is an American citizen.

So far, no reporter covering this issue has cited the constitution itself.

FactCheck.org the non-partisan political fact checking Web site of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications has presented high-resolution images of the official copy of Obama’s Certification of Live Birth.

Actual long form birth certificates, which include more information such as birth weight and parents’ home towns, are not released in many states, including Hawaii.

Hawaii state department of health, the affirmation of the Republican Governor of Hawaii and newspaper birth announcements are offered as evidence of his “natural born citizen status.”