Glenn Beck on birther issue: 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'

Glenn Beck

On the air today, popular radio host Glenn Beck mocked "birthers" and claimed there is a concerted campaign to get those questioning Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility onto the airwaves – a strategy Beck said would actually benefit Obama.

"There's always games being played behind the scenes at a talk radio show," Beck said. "Rush has always called them seminar callers. But instead of being coy with the seminar callers or with you, I'm just going to expose the game that is going on. Today there is a concerted effort on all radio stations to get birthers on the air."

"I have to tell you, are you working for the Barack Obama administration?" Beck scoffed. "I mean, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

The ongoing dialogue then spun off into ridicule as Beck caricatured those who question the sitting president's eligibility with straw-man arguments reminiscent of jibes made by Obama's apologists in other news outlets.

Beck defined birthers as people who believe Obama was born in Kenya or other foreign country, was raised as a Manchurian candidate and somehow brainwashed Hillary Clinton into not exposing his fraud. According to Beck's running joke, birthers believe someone – maybe Obama's KGB "control" – preemptively placed Obama's birth announcement in 1961 Hawaiian newspapers with a "roadmap" of getting an African man into office.

As for Obama producing a long-form birth certificate to actually prove his place of birth, Beck questioned, "Why do that when these people ['birthers'] are so discrediting themselves?"

Get the must-wear clothing item for 2010! "Where's the birth certificate" T-shirt!

The radio host further argued that by distracting the public from actionable issues, "birthers" have become "a dream come true" for Obama, an ideal situation akin to the fantasies of adolescent boys after Hollywood bombshells.

"Barack Obama looks at the birthers as Megan Fox," Beck said, referring to the star and sex symbol of the popular "Transformers" films.

"Birthers," however, reflect a far greater diversity of opinion than is assumed by Beck's characterization. For example, while the term has been applied to anyone questioning Obama's eligibility to serve as president under the Constitution's "natural born citizen" clause, many "birthers" don't doubt Obama's Hawaiian birth, but instead take issue with his father's foreign citizenship.

While other top radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin and Lou Dobbs, have all said unequivocally and publicly that the Obama eligibility issue is legitimate and worthy, a few – including Beck and fellow Fox TV host Bill O'Reilly – have taken the position that the issue is, in O'Reilly's words, "bogus." Both Beck and O'Reilly cite the contemporaneous appearance of birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers as prima facie evidence Obama was born in Hawaii and "birthers" are conspiracy nuts.

However, what neither talk host realizes is that newspaper birth announcements are not placed by parents phoning their local paper with the good news that they had a child. Rather, as WND has reported based on interviews with the two Hawaii papers involved, the Obama newspaper birth announcements stemmed from information automatically sent to the papers by Hawaii's Department of Health upon the state's issuance of a "Certification of Live Birth," which, as WND has also reported, is considered insufficient on its own to positively document the president's birthplace.

Many people remain unaware that a child does not even have to be born in
Hawaii to receive a "Certification of Live Birth – that's the "short form" that provides no hospital name, delivering physician or any of the other information that traditionally appears on a legitimate birth certificate. And yet the "short form" COLB is the one and only piece of evidence
the White House has cited in defending its assertion Obama was born in
Hawaii.

Hawaiian
law specifically allows "an adult or the legal parents of a minor
child" to apply to the health department and, upon unspecified proof,
be given the birth document.

The only requirement for proof
cited in the law doesn't address the birth of the child either, just
"that the legal parents of such individual while living without
Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of
Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately
preceding the birth or adoption of such child."

Demand the
truth by joining the petition campaign to make President Obama reveal his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate!

And since Obama's long-form birth certificate remains locked away from public view and sealed by privacy laws, no brainwashing device – such as Beck alluded to in his program – would be necessary to keep Hillary Clinton from discovering the contents of Obama's original birth certificate.

Obama's birth papers, however, aren't the only piece of the sitting president's past that Obama has refused to reveal.

As WND has reported, other documentation not yet available includes Obama's kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.

Because of the dearth of information, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip

The campaign followed a petition that has collected a figure now approaching 500,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.

The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

On today's broadcast, Beck did agree with birthers on questioning the constitutionality of Obama's presidency – not because he fails to qualify as a natural born citizen, but rather because of his policies and actions:

"Why don't we go after the things that are provable, after the things that actually you need to stop right now?" Beck concluded. "And if you want to argue, then let's argue based in fact, based on things that are provable and true. And what do you say? Do you want to argue the Constitution? Good. Let's show the number of people in Congress and in the Senate that don't even read the Constitution – can't tell you right now if healthcare is even in the Constitution. Let's talk to the scholars. Let's talk to the average Joe that understands this isn't in the Constitution. Let's argue the Constitution on the laws and the systems that they are building today. Instead of arguing the Constitution and whether or not he was born in America, why don't we argue the constitutionality of a little known thing called czars and the power that these people have?"

If you'd like to sound off on this issue, please take part in the WorldNetDaily poll.