Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced yesterday that he will not seek the GOP nomination for Arizona governor. See, he's too busy with other important stuff. For one thing, Arpaio has self-appointed himself the investigator of President Obama's birth certificate. Yeah, that's still going on here. These pinheads had promised some "unbelievable" shit by the end of March, but that day's come and gone and, as New Times says, all is quiet on the crazy front.
Arpaio, Jerome Corsi, Mike Zullo, and a gaggle of other goons have been on the birth certificate case for a couple years, hooking up with Donald Trump from time to time — who also promised "unbelievable" evidence from his gumshoes in Hawaii but then ... crickets.
In case you're wondering why a county sheriff in Arizona is on the birther watch, it's because he was encouraged to go there by the Surprise Tea Party (Surprise is a Phoenix suburb). These birtherbots started a petition in 2011 to encourage the "toughest sheriff" in the USA to look into the Kenyan Konnection. Sheriff Arpaio dropped less important work, like investigating hundreds of sex crimes committed on children, in order to follow the birth certificate trail, because that's the kind of tough crime fighting we taxpayers hired him for.
The guy who started the petition in Surprise, who literally wrote it and gathered signatures, is Brian Reilly. He's been a player in the birther cause (although he doesn't call himself one — just a concerned citizen). In 2012, Reilly was also sworn in as a member of Sheriff Arpaio's official Cold Case Posse, and in this capacity he traveled to at least eight states conducting birther research. Reilly of course did not vote for Obama, he hates the Affordable Care Act, he's is a lifelong NRA member, and he campaigned for Nixon and Goldwater. You get the picture.
Reilly is also the author of a most delicious online editorial, Banned 'Birther' Breaks the BR Censorship Barrier at the Obama Conspiracy Theories blog. I don't think I've seen his essay mentioned here, even though it's been up since March and there are hundreds of comments at the popular site. Early on Reilly says:
I’ve been banned at many Birther websites, including Birther Report. Many Birther sites put my comments into an endless, black cavern of moderation with my comments never seeing the light of day or the courtesy of a reply or a posting. My comments don’t fit the Birther narrative.
His crime? Even though he's been a major cog in the birther wheel since day one, Reilly eventually realized the whole thing is a fraud conducted by large-ego numbskulls who often turn on one another, and he said so, which got him banned from the usual birther websites. He played the game for a long time, committed his own time and money to the cause, and finally accepted the truth that other crazies are still trying to ignore:
The May 22, 2012, Obama, Hawaii Verification of Birth sent to Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett was, for me the undoing of the investigation. The final nail in the coffin. The pin that popped the balloon. The coup de grace. For months, Sheriff Arpaio and Zullo said they only wanted to “clear the President.” Well, the certified Verification of Birth cleared the President confirming all of the information on the PDF copy of the Obama birth certificate. Obama was born in Hawaii. He’s an American citizen. He’s President of the United States.
The gobsmakery is most tasty, the schadenfreude delightful.