One of my favorite people – and I’m using sarcasm here – Michele Bachmann, R-Minnesota and Tea Party favorite, actually joined the growing list of conservative Republicans distancing themselves from the “birther” issue that questions where President Obama was born. Yesterday Bachmann made an appearance on ABC’s "Good Morning America," admitting that she accepted the validity of a signed, stamped Certification of Live Birth that showed Obama was in fact born in Hawaii.
I’m not sure why the “birther issue” is still an "issue" in the first place. Or, better yet, even why there was reason enough to cause people to think that they had to make an issue of it initially. President Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, which, for those of whom may have forgotten, is the 50th state of the United States of America.
According to the U.S. Constitution, only "natural born" citizens can become president – a clause that some members of the birther movement insist disqualifies Obama because, in their eyes, he was born outside the United States. Skeptics challenge, among other things, our president's constitutional eligibility to be president based on the contention that he was born outside the country. They insist Obama was born in his father's home country of Kenya.
Meanwhile, potential GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump recently seized on the issue, saying he had doubts about Obama's background.