I tend to agree with Andrew McCarthy regarding the Obama birth certificate flap. It isn'tso much as to whether or not the President is a natural-born American, but about his honesty and integrity.

To me, since the Board of Elections has endorsed the President's qualifications, even if he was born on the moon, the election is valid. But the question remains as to why Obama refused (and still refuses) to answer any questions about his past. I mean, if I were running for public office and I were asked to show proof of my citizenship, I would be more than happy to show it to whomever needed to see it.

Why not?

But by withholding, Obama set himself up for these questions that even if they are ridiculous, have cost a lot of time, money and effort for absolutely no reason. Plus, Obama comes across as hiding something and while he may feel the whole country loves him and he can do no wrong, his current polling is beginning to paint a different picture.

Simply put, it is his own arrogance that will be his downfall and he will have no one but himself to blame should it all come crashing down.

Here is McCarthy's excellent editorial:

Suborned in the U.S.A.

Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Hussein Obama claimed it was a “smear” to refer to him as “Barack Hussein Obama.” The candidate had initially rhapsodized over how his middle name, the name of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, would signal a new beginning in American relations with the Muslim world. But when the nomination fight intensified, Obama decided that Islamic heritage was a net negative. So, with a media reliably uncurious about political biographies outside metropolitan Wasilla, Obama did what Obama always does: He airbrushed his personal history on the fly.

Suddenly, it was “just making stuff up,” as Obama put it, for questioners “to say that, you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections.” “The only connection I’ve had to Islam,” the candidate insisted, “is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam.” Forget about “Hussein”; the mere mention of Obama’s middle initial — “H” — riled the famously thin-skinned senator. Supporters charged that “shadowy attackers” were “lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim.” The Obamedia division at USA Today, in a report subtly titled “Obama’s grandma slams ‘untruths,’” went so far as to claim that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother is a Christian — even though a year earlier, when Obama’s “flaunt Muslim ties” script was still operative, the New York Times had described the same woman, 85-year-old Sara Hussein Obama, as a “lifelong Muslim” who proclaimed, “I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith.”

Such was the ardor of Obama’s denials that jaws dropped when, once safely elected, he reversed course (again) and embraced his Islamic heritage. “The president himself experienced Islam on three continents,” an administration spokesman announced. “You know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father . . .” The “Muslim father” theme was an interesting touch: During the campaign, when the question of Barack Hussein Obama Sr.’s Islamic faith reared its head, the candidate curtly denied it with an air of what’s-that-got-to-do-with-me? finality: “My father was basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn’t know him.” And, it turns out, the spokesman’s fleeting bit about “growing up in Indonesia” wasn’t the half of it: Obama had actually been raised as a Muslim in Indonesia — or, at least that’s what his parents told his schools (more on that in due course).

These twists and turns in the Obama narrative rush to mind when we consider National Review’s leap into the Obama-birth-certificate fray with Tuesday’s editorial, “Born in the U.S.A.”

The editorial desire to put to rest the “Obama was born in Kenya” canard is justifiable. The overwhelming evidence is that Obama was born an American citizen on Aug. 4, 1961, which almost certainly makes him constitutionally eligible to hold his office. I say “almost certainly” because Obama, as we shall see, presents complex dual-citizenship issues. For now, let’s just stick with what’s indisputable: He was also born a Kenyan citizen. In theory, that could raise a question about whether he qualifies as a “natural born” American — an uncharted constitutional concept...

Please continue reading the article here.

Here is another valuable lesson from my friend Doug Ross, regarding what the future holds if we continue down the path the Democrats are leading us:

Blue State Bloodletting


Consider the men and women who control every elected branch of government, Democrats all. A president from Chicago. A house speaker from San Francisco. Powerful committee heads from Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills and the Bay Area.

Strikingly, the worst economic hardships are suffered by residents of their "blue" states; the very same areas that these bureaucrats purport to represent. Consider the following facts.

• Oregon, Michigan and California have the highest unemployment rates in the country.

• The red states, including the Dakotas, Idaho, Texas, Utah, and North Carolina, are the fastest growing regions.

• Economic forecaster Bill Watkins notes that when the economy rebounds, people and businesses will naturally migrate to "places that are affordable and don’t have the fundamental tough tax and regulatory structures", i.e., red states.

• Blue states have allowed public sector employment to explode; and are dominated by public employee unions since the sixties. New York and California are examples where public sector employment has grown unchecked and been allowed to dominate the political process.

• These unions bask in lavish benefits that become onerous even in good economies. Now, in California alone, state pensions are $200 billion in the red.

• San Francisco has more than 700 retirees earning over $100,000 a year.

• Blue states also have allowed environmental regulation to overwhelm the real economy. Climate change regulations have crushed manufacturing companies in California, which has lost roughly 400,000 jobs in that sector in only eight years.

• Blue state trucking firms are dying and harming minority business-owners most of all.

• In California's central valley, large cultivated areas will be forced to return to desert-like conditions due to regulations that hope to save an obscure fish species. In May alone, 30,000 agriculture jobs were lost, which were mostly held by Latinos, and unemployment is 17% in the region and as high as 40% in some towns.

• Michigan fares no better. Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm has attempted to create "green jobs" for years. Yet by every measure, Michigan is dying.

• Michigan ranks at or near the bottom for unemployment, out-migration, the worst place to start a business, per capita income (from 16th to 33rd under Granholm's tenure).

• Detroit has a 22% unemployment rate and 33% of the population receives food stamps. Six of the worst ten U.S. job markets are in Michigan.

• Already burdened with the highest tax rates in the country, blue state middle income earners (households earning between $125K and $250K) are about to be lumped in with the "rich".

• Despite his "no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States" rhetoric, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states that went blue for President Obama.

• This approach, according to political scientists, is natural for products of the Chicago machine. Opposition is unheard of. 49 out of 50 aldermen are Democrats—and follow policies adopted by the small central cadre, similar to the Politburo.

• Once policy is set, Daley operatives like David Axelrod begin spinning up the media and twisting recalcitrant arms to bully ahead and sway public opinion.

• But, without question, machine politics demonstrably hurts its citizens. Democracy doesn't exist in these areas; taxpayers and businesses flee the core cities, and sometimes blue states entirely, to free themselves from unresponsive regimes that grow unchecked in good times and bad.

This is the environment that Barack Obama and his close-knit cadre of Chicago hacks intend to replicate. Government for the government and not the people. Unions bosses grown obese with monopoly power. And one-party rule.

It is a recipe for disaster, California- and Michigan-style.

Have a wonderful and meaningful weekend!