Prescott, Arizona, is a wonderful, and beautiful, and conservative small city that even a progressive like me loves as my new hometown. We are the heart of Arizona's new 4th Congressional District that has featured the right-wing pie fight between current Tea Party Rep. Paul Gosar and that Pinal County Sherriff accused of threatening to deport his illegal-immigrant gay lover for disclosing the affair. But even here, not all conservatives are of the nutty variety. Witness today's editorial in the usually quite conservative Prescott Daily Currier about the recent birther dustup:
Now it's the "birther" issue again, and whether President Barack Obama is a legal U.S. citizen who was born in Hawaii and, therefore, qualified to have run for the office in the first place and to seek re-election to another four-year term. Or is his birth place really Kenya, his father's homeland, and a birth certificate to prove otherwise is fraudulent?
Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett is the latest in Arizona's parade of interrogators into this pressing question. Preceding him have been Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and state lawmakers who passed a birther bill, which Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer promptly vetoed. The legislative measure would have required presidential candidates to provide proof of citizenship in order to get on the ballot. As we all know and have been reminded over and over as this issue has ebbed and flowed in political ranks, the U.S. Constitution requires the president and vice president to be natural-born U.S. citizens.
...
It's time for this saga to end, no matter which way it goes. Either Obama is in office legally. Or, he is not.
We wait for the right person to come forward and settle the question once and for all.
We are tired of hearing about it, and we are tired of Arizona's being the laughing stock of the nation.
Let me repeat that last line:
We are tired of hearing about it, and we are tired of Arizona's being the laughing stock of the nation.
2:41 PM PT: Updated to shorten blockquote from the linked source.