i spent about an hour perusing some of the creepier, more stalker-ish "birther" websites. 

a "birther" is someone who maintains that president obama is ineligible to be president, due to the fact that he was born in kenya, or indonesia, or in hawaii before it became a state.  these are only the most reasonable-sounding of the cockamamie conspiracy theories these people are coming up with.  i saw one that involved aliens, and one that involved obama's grandparents engaged in time travel.

i can't believe that people are still obsessing over this--completely after the fact.  one blogger pointed out, even if any shred of these conspiracies were true, and obama had to get booted out of office, do these theorists think mccain or bush will become automatic president?  i don't think these people realize there is a chain of presidential succession.  if anything, mccain, who was born in the panama canal zone before the law was passed declaring kids born on military bases were natural-born citizens, would himself be ineligible to be president.  not to mention, obama's birth certificate has twice now been certified as authentic by the state of hawaii.

all of this got me to thinking: one must be a natural-born citizen of the united states to become president.  what about my kid?  he'll be born on misawa ab, japan.  technically, he's eligible... but what about when all of those "birthers" start freaking out as he's giving his inaugural speech?  i need to start amassing his citizenship evidence sooner rather than later.