Obamanation

Corsi provides a useful history into the thinking that informed Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, the natural-born citizenship clause. In brief, the founders did not want a president with divided loyalties. Regardless of where Obama was born, the fact that his presumed father was a British citizen at the time of Obama's birth, and had every intention of remaining one, made Obama's case at least as worthy of adjudication as McCain's. But that was not to be. From the beginning, one questioned Obama's eligibility, indeed any of his credentials, at his own risk. The introductory section of Corsi's book shows those who may have forgotten with what incredible impunity the Obama campaign was allowed to proceed.

"I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men," West said. "It's understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white…When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening."

In a stunning development, Jerome Corsi's birther book, Where's the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President, has been recalled, its publisher announced Wednesday [BS]

President Obama's 2012 presidential campaign today started selling "Made in the USA" t-shirts featuring images of both President Obama and the long-form birth certificate he released copies of last month. "Wear your support for this campaign with an official Made in the USA T-shirt," his website advertises. Donate $25 or more today and we'll send you your limited-edition shirt.

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama's Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper's front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news "fairly."

Former President Jimmy Carter and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari were hoping to visit the State Department this week to brief officials on their recent trip to North Korea, but nobody at the State Department was available to meet with them. Carter and Ahtisaari, both Nobel Peace Prize laureates, had been eager to give their readout of their meetings in North Korea April 26 and 27 to U.S. officials and press their case for a resumption of food aid to the Hermit Kingdom. The two are members of the Elders, a group of senior figures who have been informally engaging with regimes that official governments won't deal with, in the hopes of finding pathways to peace. They traveled to North Korea last month with former Irish President Mary Robinson and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Bruntland. Other members of the Elders include Kofi Annan, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi.

After Osama bin Laden was killed, 13-year-old Vito LaPinta posted an update to his Facebook status that got the Feds attention. "I was saying how Osama was dead and for Obama to be careful because there could be suicide bombers," says LaPinta. A week later, while Vito was in his fourth period class, he was called in to the principal's office. "A man walked in with a suit and glasses and he said he was part of the Secret Service," LaPinta said. "He told me it was because of a post I made that indicated I was a threat toward the President."

Addressing the graduates of Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis yesterday, Obama said he met the daughter of the principal and found out that she attends a different school. "She was worried that the boys would be afraid to talk to her if her mom (the principal) was lurking in the hallways," Obama said. He quickly added: "Which is why my next job will be principal at Sasha and Malia's high school -- and then I'll be president of their college."

host Fareed Zakaria. In an interview with fellow CNN host Elliot Spitzer, Zakaria admitted Obama and he talk regularly about the Middle East and international policy, a point that Spitzer said makes his heart "warm:

Kill each other over money and white boys for fun. That line, in case anyone missed it in a previous column on the topic, comes from rapper Common's song "Don't Come My Way." It is a blatantly racist sentiment and incites violence. Another of his lyrics—this one from the song "The Bitch in Yoo"—spells America with three k's ("amerikkka") and is too heavily peppered with profanity and iterations of the b-word to reprint. So much for the lunkheaded liberal efforts to excuse the man's opus as "socially conscious" or to dismiss objections to it as a manufactured controversy. Inviting a progenitor of hate speech to the White House is an affront on all things American. It is every bit as misguided as it would have been for the president—who is half-white, after all—to invite a white supremacist to the East Room to recite selections from his collected "verse." [H/T to Patti http://hillbuzz.org/2011/05/12/thursday-open-thread-may-12-2011/#IDComme...

In an afternoon session, first lady Michelle Obama had welcomed various poets to the White House poetry event, but notably ignored the rapper, whose stage-name is Common. ... Common was introduced at the evening session without any reference to the conservatives' derision of his poetry or to some police advocates' dismay.... [CONSERVATIVES? SOME POLICE?] The president could not easily walk away from the rapper for fear of offending vital supporters in the African-American community, and he could not afford to fully embrace the rapper at this evening's event because that endorsement risks the president's effort to portray himself as a post-racial healer of social divisions....

While even casual hip-hop fans wouldn't characterize him as a controversial rapper, Common found himself under the microscope after First Lady Michelle Obama invited him to the White House for an arts event. In question: the lyrics to "A Song for Assata," about convicted cop-killer and former Black Panther Assata Shakur. FOX News and Sarah Palin condemned the decision after the Daily Caller published some of Common's lyrics, including some that criticize former President George W. Bush. For New Jersey police, the outrage centers on "A Song for Assata" lyrics like "Your power and pride is beautiful. May God bless your soul." Shakur, formerly known as Joanne Chesimard, was convicted for the 1973 slaying of Trooper Werner Foerster on the New Jersey Turnpike. She escaped prison in 1979, and is living in asylum in Cuba.

President Obama doesn't seem to have even peered out his Air Force One window to view the swelling Mississippi, a minimal show of interest for which George W. Bush was pilloried when he took a peek at the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At least Bush bothered to look.... White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One, was asked whether Obama had bothered to get a view from above. "I haven't seen him do that but I haven't been with him for the full flight so far...."

In her new biography of Ann Dunham, A Singular Woman, New York Times reporter Janny Scott corrupts Barack Obama's nativity story even more than a cynic might have thought possible. In so doing, Scott follows an ignoble media tradition that deserves exposure as does the story that it corrupts.