Arizona's 'laughable' Birther bill

&quot;Birthers&quot; insist Obama was not born in Hawaii.

(Image credit: Getty)

last updated 8 January 2015

The "birthers" are back. Arizona's House of Representatives voted this week to bar presidential candidates from the state's ballot unless they produce a U.S. birth certificate. The proposed law would force Obama to document his Hawaii birth when he runs for re-election in "The Grand Canyon State." Are Arizona lawmakers taking the "birther" cause mainstream, or turning their state into a joke? (Watch a CNN discussion about the Arizona "birther" bill)

Arizona is flirting with lunacy: First Arizona lawmakers pass a bill "institutionalizing brown-skin racial profiling," say the editors of ChattahBox, and now this "conservative and heavily armed state" is embracing "the crazy fringe of the Republican Party." Arizona is now the "laughingstock of the nation."

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Obama isn't helping: "If Arizona can persuade Team Obama to ask for and release the complete file and shut a few people up, I am all for it," says Tom Maguire in Just One Minute. Presumably, detailed records would just show that Obama was born exactly where he says he was. But the president won't budge: "The most transparent Administration in history is either fueling partisan rancor for their own benefit or hiding something."

Go ahead, Arizona. Make our day: If Arizona actually enacts this cockamamie law, says Jon Healey in the Los Angeles Times, a state court will only toss it out as "an unconstitutional imposition of state eligibility requirements on federal candidates." Too bad: It would be nice to have a federal judge dismiss the birther nonsense once and for all — though it's doubtful even that would shut up these loonies.