ELIGIBILITY QUESTIONS...IT'S ALL BECAUSE HE'S BLACK...WE ARE ALL RACISTS! UNBELIEVABLE!

Right-wing fringe claims Obama ineligible for presidency

By Virginie Montet (AFP)

WASHINGTON — A small group of fringe conservatives, many fundamentally opposed to the notion of an African-American as president, are challenging President Barack Obama's eligibility for the US presidency.

On blogs and even before US courts, the so-called "Birthers" are using the Constitution, with its stipulation that presidents be US natural born citizens, to argue Obama should not be in the White House.

Despite proof that Obama was born in the US state of Hawaii, including a birth certificate affirming that fact, rumors continue to spread, fueled by a group that critics say includes right-wing militants, racists and Holocaust deniers.

[EXCUSE ME? WHAT PROOF?]

"These are people who are fundamentally either racist or extreme right-wingers. That's where the whole movement is coming from," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which studies extremist groups.

[REALLY? IS THAT RIGHT?]

The movement is composed of "people who very much do not want Barack Obama to be president, largely because he is black, certainly because he is liberal," he added.

[AND HOW DID YOU COME TO THIS CONCLUSION? CAN YOU SITE YOUR SOURCES? WHO SAID THAT WE "WANT HIM OUT BECAUSE HE'S BLACK"? GO BACK TO FRANCE...YOU INTERFERING FRENCH BIMBO!]

On sites like WorldNetDaily.com, where a petition questioning Obama's place of birth has attracted more than 400,000 electronic "signatories," the so-called Birthers are daily raising "new doubts about the story of Obama's birth."

One of them has already tried in vain three times to sell on Ebay a birth certificate purporting to show that Obama was born in Kenya.

They are also taking their cause before US courts, where several lawsuits claiming that Obama was not born on US soil have been dismissed, including by the Supreme Court, which refused to hear argument on the issue.

At the beginning of the week, authorities in the state of Hawaii were forced for the second time since the senator from Illinois became president to certify that Barack Hussein Obama was in fact born in the Kapiolani maternity ward in Honolulu on August 4, 1961 at 7:24 pm local time.

[IS THAT RIGHT?...YOU MORON]

The US House of Representatives on Monday passed a non-legally-binding text on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's entry in the United States, affirming that "the 44th president of the United States was born in Hawaii."


[WOW and so that makes it true?]

"In America there is a history of conspiracy thinking that... is part of a tradition of dissent," said Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, which studies right-wing movements.

Berlet said a small percentage of the population believes the government has been taken over by a "secret elite" that includes "freemasons, the Catholics, Jewish bankers" and others.

He noted that former president Bill Clinton was also the subject of conspiracy theories that claimed he was seeking the help of the United Nations to confiscate all weapons on American soil.

While the movement has an audience of several hundreds of thousands of sympathizers, their theories are also being broadcast by media figures such as CNN's Lou Dobbs and radio host Rush Limbaugh.

"So you have this right-wing social movement, relatively small but angry, and then you have these major public figures, inflaming them with rhetoric and conspiracy allegations on national television," Berlet told AFP.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 926 racist groups in the United States in 2008, compared to 602 in 2000 -- a rise of 54 percent.

"I think that's very significant, and the numbers continue to rise," said Potok. "Very likely the white supremacist world has been energized by the election of a black man into the White House."

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