Hillary Birthed Birther Movement — Hillary Clinton gave an unpresidential rant in Reno, yesterday, Aug. 25, in which she accused her adversaries of being Ku Klux Klan members and subscribers to conspiracy theories.
Birthers — a dismissive allusion to ‘truthers’ who are those who believe that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks — cite the unwillingness of President Obama to release the “vault” birth certificate held in Hawaii that would indicate whether his claim as a natural-born citizen was attested to by medical personnel. They also allege that the President is unwilling to release records showing that he applied to Occidental College as a foreign student. They also cite claims by Obama’s Kenyan relatives that he was born in Kenya.
Birthers claim that the President has spent $1 million fighting the release of records that would clear all such questions.
The prime birther was Philip J. Berg of Montgomery County who filed suit in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, Aug. 21, 2008 claiming that Obama was ineligible to be president. Berg is a Democrat who once chaired the Montgomery County Democratic Party and served as a state Deputy Attorney General for eight years.
The lawsuit was dismissed in October by U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick — a former Delaware County Common Pleas Court judge and the estranged brother of judicial reformer Bob Surrick.
Berg took the appeal straight to the Supreme Court which rejected it in December.