Barack Obama's 'pod people'

By Marylou Barry

"How come everybody's hiding this?" Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio asked over the weekend on "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio." His question was in frustration at trying to elicit a comment from Republican politicians, including the presidential candidates, regarding Barack Obama's ever-shadier-looking eligibility for the office of president of the United States.

I was not at all surprised at the candidates' lack of response because as a freelance journalist – although admittedly not as a law-enforcement official – I had tried the same tack myself a few months earlier to no avail.

The simplest of questions

Directing my inquiry on Feb. 5 to the nearest resource each campaign website listed as a press contact, I wrote:

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"Dear Candidate:

"Would you please answer the following three questions about your stand on the ongoing concerns the American people have about the eligibility of their elected leaders? I need your reply by Friday, Feb. 10.

"I am a freelance writer intending to use your answers for major news and editorial site publication. I will reproduce your responses verbatim and will not abbreviate them as long as my finished article fits within the permitted word length (approximately 750 words).

1. "Do you believe candidates for president and vice president of the United States should be held to the natural-born citizenship requirement of the Constitution?
2. "If nominated, will you select only an eligible, natural-born citizen as your running mate?
3. "Do you believe Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate and school enrollment records should be reviewed to ensure that he also is a natural-born citizen?

"Thank you for your response.

"Respectfully …"

Five working days is plenty of notice to come up with a stock response that should already be on file in each of these "information" offices, but, as I expected, there was no reply from any of them. In fact, the closest any candidate has come to acknowledging that an eligibility problem even exists was Newt Gingrich's remark to eligibility attorney Orly Taitz: "That's a project you should pursue."

Funny how outspoken these four guys can be when it comes to lambasting each others' records and campaign positions, but when it comes to requiring their Democratic opponent to adhere to the same constitutional requirements that bind them, you can hear crickets chirping. I'm not sure exactly what or why, but something is extremely wrong with this picture.

A sci-fi corollary

Americans who get their news from the so-called mainstream media may not sense anything amiss, but by now those of us who have been following the eligibility saga since its emergence four years ago feel sure we've fallen headlong into a remake of "The Body Snatchers."

How many knowing and willing "pod people" does Barack Obama have, we've got to wonder. A thousand? A million? Ten million? How many cohorts in Congress and the press does it take to keep a secret this big covered up? What kind of reward or pressure is being applied to keep them from asking the obvious questions?

The stick beats the carrot

"The stick" is the more likely motivator, at least for the media, says Sheriff Arpaio's lead eligibility investigator, Mike Zullo, who has been told that many reporters have had their jobs threatened if they asked the wrong questions. And who can say there's not a big database somewhere of every peccadillo – either real or invented – committed by every politician, information that could be ruinous if it ever got out? Hey, whatever became of Carnivore, anyway?

Thank you, Pravda

Meanwhile, in the near-total vacuum of moral political leadership, prominent law-enforcement officers interrupt their other duties to try to solve the apparent crime of the century, which the elite in our country don't seem to want solved at all. And the American people remain confused, walk-ons and extras in this sci-fi flick from hell, the only players without a script, unable to tell the real from the pod, wondering how those they elected can take such disinterest in their jobs and the nation they have sworn to protect.

In fact, if it weren't for conservative websites and unfettered foreign newspapers – The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and, against all odds, Pravda – how would we know what was going on in our country at all?

It seems only the pod people know for sure, and the pod people – at least yet – are not talking.

Marylou Barry is a blogger and the author of a series of children's books. Visit her website at Marylou's America and her bookstore at House with the Light Books.