Caveat Emptor

Out on the far fringes of American politics are the "birthers," who insist that Barack Obama never presented a valid birth certificate, is not a natural-born citizen and is thus constitutionally ineligible to be president.

There is, however, one slight problem with this theory: Obama released his birth certificate, showing that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961, last year during the campaign. It was certified as genuine by the Hawaiian Department of Health, is the exact same sort of document issued by states all over the country, and is fully accepted at all levels of government as proof of both identity and citizenship. The certificate proves that Obama is indeed a natural-born citizen and is thus eligible to be president.

Of course, the birthers (particularly Joseph Farah of the WorldNetDaily website) argue the certificate is a fake and demand that Obama release his original "long form" certificate. The problem is that if Obama caves in to this shrieking and does so, they will immediately claim that certificate is a fake. There is simply no way to win with these people.

So why not cash in on it? I can't believe it really took this long for someone to get around to it, but someone calling himself "colmado_naranja" claims to have an Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama and is offering it for sale on eBay. (The seller has of course refused to post a photo of the alleged document, claiming it "would lead to a flood of facsimiles on the Internet [and] would inadvertently decrease the value of the certificate as well.") The bidding starts at $1000, but you can buy it outright for $1 million.

eBay has yanked the listing numerous times, pointing to their rules against the selling of real or fake government documents on the site. Naturally, this made WorldNetDaily add them to its ever-growing list of conspirators to install an ineligible fraud in the White House.

But what if some sucker patriot really does manage to plunk down gobs of cash for this thing? Personally, I think they'll wind up with something like this:

The guy who's trying to peddling this thing obviously hopes his victims never heard the phrase caveat emptor - let the buyer beware.