I've written before that I'm pretty tired of this, and less than amused by the few who keep trying to keep the "Is President Obama Really a US Citizen" meme alive. Over at Breitbart's "Big Journalism", Kurt Schlichter has also had it, and gives the whole thing both barrels.

"Birthers" are very much a fringe thing, but there are times when fringe things are dishonest about something serious enough that they deserve to be targeted in the public arena. And the responsibility for doing so should fall, as it does here, to their allies/ co-belligerents on the political spectrum. Responsibility is something that has taken a huge holiday in modern culture, on way too many levels. Politics is no exception, for reasons of technology and policy. Centralized party systems have become weak in America, and we can talk sometime about whether that has really been a good thing. But no matter the reasons, the result is a shift to generalized responsibility within political movements to balance accountability with coalition building.

That's why I'm cautiously pleased to see conservative spokespeople who continue to take on this particular issue, and hope the more general lesson spreads. The years ahead may well be filled with very angry politics, across the spectrum. Political centers of gravity that take more responsibility are something we're going to need, as a nation, in order to pull through.