Carney: Birther Talk a 'Distraction'

Los Angeles Times reports:

The White House on Tuesday castigated those who continue to express doubt about President Obama's birthplace, a rare public comment on what a spokesman called a "settled issue."

"I just think it's a distraction and it's an unfortunate distraction from the issues that I think most Americans care about," press secretary Jay Carney said at his daily briefing. "Anybody who is watching this exchange in the West Wing of the White House would be appalled -- most Americans would be appalled that this is what concerns us here when in fact there are so many issues facing this country that need to be addressed by the president and by the Congress. And that's what he's focusing on."

The "birther" issue has regained enough political resonance that CNN has dedicated two nights to debunking the proposition that Obama was not born within the United States, three years after he was elected president.

Anderson Cooper's program sent a correspondent to Hawaii to check out the various conspiracy theories that refuse to abate among some Republicans, including that the Certification of Live Birth is invalid proof of his origins, that a Honolulu newspaper's announcement announcing Obama's birth in 1961 was a fake, and that his original birth certificate, contained in a state vault, signifies that Obama was born Muslim.

Correspondent Gary Tuchman set about exploding the various theories, establishing that a Certificate of Live Birth, rather than an original birth certificate, is now issued as accepted proof of someone's identity, that the newspaper ad was real, and that there is no space on the original form for religious affiliation.

The CNN reporter also interviewed the former director of the Hawaii health department, who has actually viewed the original certificate with her own eyes.

"It was absolutely authentic. He was absolutely born here in the state of Hawaii," said Chiyome Fukino, a Republican who viewed the certificate at the behest of the office of then-Gov. Linda Lingle.

She called the constant inquiries streaming into the Health department a "remarkable diversion of limited resources to an issue that is easily resolved."

But Fukino conceded that her assertion would likely do little to quell the ongoing controversy. "Conspiracy theorists are alive and well. It does not matter what the evidence is."

Carney, in response to a question from CNN's Ed Henry, called the network's report "a highly credible piece on an established fact."