Notes from the fringe

Scott noted a couple of days ago that something doesn’t become a “simmering controversy” because professional lunatic Alan Keyes thinks it’s a controversy. That’s true — Keyes after all is the kind of GOP crazy person who “doesn’t count” as a serious figure among The Very Serious People who determine these things (even though he was the party’s senate candidate against Obama — imagine how it would play if the Dems ran the equivalent, say a 9/11 Truther, in a senate race).

But how about an actual U.S. senator? Of course the real “controversy” should be why so little attention is given to the fact that the very top of the Republican Party saying features crazy people saying (and doing) crazy things.

As long as we’re in Imaginationland, it’s mildly amusing to consider what would happen if it were discovered that Obama actually had been born in Kenya, and that his mother’s U.S. citizenship wouldn’t serve to qualify him as a natural born citizen, constitutionally speaking.

Just to make it interesting, suppose the Obama himself wasn’t aware of this “fact” while he was running for president, since the definitive evidence wasn’t dug upby indefatigable bloggers until later (work with me here). Under these circumstances, would he resign? Would the federal courts entertain a lawsuit to . . . um, do what exactly? Issue a declaratory judgment that he wasn’t president? Would he be impeached? I think the answer to these questions is pretty clearly no. It’s an idiotic constitutional provision and ought to be ignored.