Tardy though they are, we welcome MSNBC to finally joining every major conservative news outlet — including Fox News, The American Spectator, Human Events, National Review and Sweetness & Light — in discrediting the idea that President Obama wasn't born in this country and, therefore, is ineligible to be president.
Now the big question: Was Joe Biden born on this planet?
Inasmuch as the "birther" movement was hatched in the station wagon of MSNBC's favorite left-wing fantasist, Larry Johnson, maybe the mainstream media can stop acting as if it's a creation of the Republican National Committee.
Which party contains 99 percent of the people who believe (or believed):
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O.J. is innocent;
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Bush shirked his National Guard duty;
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Sarah Palin's infant child, Trig, was actually the child of her daughter;
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Justice Antonin Scalia threw the 2000 election to Bush so that his son could get a legal job with the Labor Department;
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The spectacularly guilty Mumia Abu-Jamal was framed;
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The Diebold Corp. secretly stole thousands of Kerry votes in 2004;
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Duke lacrosse players gang-raped a stripper;
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Bill Clinton did not have sex with "that woman";
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Heterosexuals are just as likely to contract AIDS as gays;
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John Edwards didn't have an affair with Rielle Hunter;
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John Edwards' campaign aide Andrew Young is the father of Rielle Hunter's child.
And as has been recently noted, a 2007 Rasmussen poll showed that 35 percent of Democrats believe Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance, while 26 percent aren't sure …
Holy mackerel.
Another favorite MSNBC guest, Janeane Garofalo, believes Enron's Ken Lay faked his own death. It's weird that Keith Olbermann didn't ask her about that when she was on his show a couple of months ago, given his sudden interest in stamping out conspiracy theories.
Also trying to revive his failing TV show, MSNBC'S Chris Matthews has been denouncing the birthers on "Hardball" nightly and demanding that every elected Republican who appears on his show do the same.
How many times has Matthews forced Democratic officeholders to denounce Al Sharpton for the Tawana Brawley hoax? Or for that matter, how many times has he forced Sharpton — a frequent guest on his show — to admit the case was a fraud?
Sharpton has veto power over all Democratic presidential candidates. Even Al Gore, a former vice president of the United States, was required to kiss Sharpton's ring.
If there ever comes a time when Republican presidential candidates have to get the blessing of the head of the birther movement to run, I'll say: I'm wrong — Republicans do have as many conspiracy nuts as the Democrats.
Not content with merely humoring their nuts, Democratic officeholders promote conspiracy theories themselves.
In 2003, Democratic presidential candidate and future Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean approvingly cited the left-wing lunacy that Saudi Arabia had warned Bush in advance about the 9/11 attacks. He promised a caller to National Public Radio that, if elected, he would investigate.
In the fall of 2004, Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she believed Bush was holding Osama bin Laden and planned to release him just before the election. (She later claimed she was joking — a surprise to all three witnesses who heard her say it.)
Sen. Barbara Boxer officially objected to the certification of Ohio's votes in the 2004 election — on the Senate floor — and demanded an investigation into the "Diebold stole Kerry votes" conspiracy theory.
And, of course, a Democratic House and Senate actually used official government proceedings to investigate the original nut-job conspiracy theory, the "October Surprise," maintaining that Reagan struck a secret deal with the Iranians not to release the hostages until after the 1980 election.
Now, the only October surprise will come under ObamaCare: Order an MRI in April and get it by … October — surprise!
Rosie O'Donnell — who has headlined many a Democratic fundraiser — is a prominent 9/11 "truther." She believes the World Trade Center was blown up with explosives, not taken down by terrorists in airplanes.
Most shockingly, the Democrats have a hand-in-glove relationship with Michael Moore, crackpot documentarian, whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" is chock-a-block with demented conspiracy theories, including:
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the 2000 election was stolen;
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the Bush family clandestinely spirited the bin Laden family out of the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks; and
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Bush went to war in Afghanistan, not to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attack, but to help the Unocal Corp. obtain a natural gas pipeline in Afghanistan.
Terry McAuliffe, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee
attended the glittering Washington, D.C., premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and emerged endorsing Moore's wacko Unocal conspiracy theory. "I believe it after seeing that," McAuliffe said.
Show me RNC Chairman Michael Steele saying "I believe the birthers" and I'll give 10 percent of my book profits to Air America, raising their profits to — let's see … about 10 percent of my book profits.
Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark proudly accepted Moore's endorsement in 2004, and Moore was an honored guest at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, sitting with former President Carter.
What is the likelihood that a birther will be sitting with former President Bush at the 2012 Republican National Convention?
Other Democrats who attended Moore's movie screening included Sens. Tom Daschle, Tom Harkin, Max Baucus, Ernest Hollings, Debbie Stabenow, Bill Nelson, and representatives Charles Rangel and Jim McDermott.
Show me a half-dozen Republican senators attending a birther movie premiere, and I'll pretend to believe that Olbermann went to the Ivy League Cornell.
