Bill Posey Defends Presidential Birth Certificate Bill

Bill Posey Defends Presidential Birth Certificate Bill

Rep. Bill Posey, the Florida Republican who recently introduced legislation that would requires all future presidential candidates to file a copy of their birth certificates, wrote in his blog that he thinks "he did the right thing."

I could easily fill up a page listing all the activities an American needs to show their ID for ... everything from playing youth soccer to getting a drivers license, buying cigarettes and alcohol, to opening bank accounts and even playing little league. So I was pretty surprised to find out that to run for president, despite the constitutional requirement and the media scrubbing that goes on, it's not required for a candidate to file these documents when they submit their statement of candidacy with the FEC.

Posey says he is not trying to challenge President Obama's legitimacy. "There's nothing anyone can do about changing past elections... the President won," he writes. "All the lawsuits in the world are not going to change that." Posey says he is only trying to require the same type of documentation for presidential elections as is required for "average folks."

Via Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent, who notes, "In a vacuum, sure, the issue is whether the mere scrutiny of the international media and biographers is enough to prove that presidential candidates are citizens. In reality, this issue has been pushed by conspiracy theorists, against all evidence, to sue the president."

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