If 9/11 conspiracy theorists are the fringe of the left, Obama birth conspiracy theorists are the fringe of the right. For credibility reasons, on this liberal blog, 9/11 CTers are officially banned. As if to prove CNN's lack of credibility, Obama Birthers are now a welcome part of its discussion.
Joan Walsh has this:
You'll have to see it to believe it, and the video isn't up yet (Update: Now it is, and it's at the bottom of this post). But Tuesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live," rising GOP shill/star Liz Cheney refused to denounce the "Birthers" -- the right-wing fringe movement devoted to denying (for a changing array of reasons) that Obama is eligible to be president. Instead, Cheney defended the Birthers by blaming Obama for their rage.
Walsh looked for Cheney to make a muddled clarification, so as to appear mainstream, while also retaining her cred with the birthers. And...
I love being right! Politico's Ben Smith wrote about my blog post, and asked Liz Cheney if she wanted to clarify her remarks. Cheney emailed this statement: 
I don't have any question about Barack Obama's right to be President of the United States.
My concern is with his policies. I am deeply troubled about the path he is taking this country down -- massively expanding the size of government, weakening our national defenses, increasing taxes on all Americans and nationalizing health care. These are dangerous policies for the nation.
Which also gets back to a point I made some time ago: why the hell is Liz Cheney considered an expert on anything? Because her daddy gave her a job in government? But that's CNN, for you. Click through to Walsh's post, because she now has an embedded video. But it gets worse. Because CNN's own Lou Dobbs has taken up the cause.
Alex Koppelman:
This week, the birthers -- the movement that believes President Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the U.S. and thus not eligible to be president -- have gone mainstream, and in a big way. That's due in part to a YouTube video of a woman shouting at Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., about Obama's birth certificate. It's also the work of CNN's Lou Dobbs, who's apparently found yet another conspiracy theory to love.
Dobbs actually first began giving the birthers a boost last week, when he had Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama in 2004 and 2008 and is now suing over the president's birth certificate, on his radio show, along with Keyes' lawyer, Orly Taitz, the "queen bee" of the birthers. Since then, he's latched on to the movement, discussing it several times on his radio show and on CNN. On a night he was off, a fill-in host on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" interviewed Keyes and Taitz.
You'd think such tripe would get Cheney banned and Dobbs fired. But only if you thought thinking was required to be on CNN.