Born in the USA?

Byline: The Register-Guard

Somewhere out on a grassy knoll above Area 51, Agents Mulder and Scully are furiously decoding a message from Nostradamus in their quest to determine whether Barack Obama is really an alien.

No, not that kind of alien. Alien as in not a "natural-born citizen" of the United States.

Of course, many red-blooded Americans don't need confirmation from Nostradamus. They already know Obama is an alien because they read it on the Internet. It was right there in blue and white, on the same page that offered proof that Obama is a radical Muslim who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance, which was right smack dab next to documentation that Obama matches the description of the anti-Christ in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Hey, the truth is out there on the Internet for anyone with the courage to look.

Too bad the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court must be too old to know how to find the truth that is out there on the Internet. The high court on Monday rejected an emergency appeal from Leo Donofrio of New Jersey, claiming that Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.

Never mind that the Obama campaign posted a digitally scanned image of his Hawaii birth certificate on the Internet to counter rumors that he was not a natural-born citizen. (Curiously, some Internet information is regarded with skepticism. What's up with that?)

The birth certificate is a fake, according to the Obama Is An Alien squad. Fair enough. Documents can be faked. So a team from FactCheck.org went to the Obama headquarters in Chicago to view the actual birth certificate. They concluded, after physically examining and photographing the document, that it was genuine.

Then Chiyome Fukino, director of Hawaii's Department of Health, and Alvin Onaka, registrar of vital statistics, confirmed on Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu and that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.

Not good enough, says the Obama Is An Alien crew. They claim there are sworn affidavits (on the Internet, of course) from "Obama family members" who maintain he was born in Kenya. And everybody knows the liberal goons at FactCheck.org are funded by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, which once funded a program that Obama and his terrorist pal William Ayers ran. Ergo, FactCheck.org is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Obama campaign.

Though Donofrio's appeal was rejected, at least one other appeal over Obama's citizenship remains at the Supreme Court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues, despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary, that Obama was born in Kenya. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have found no merit in Berg's lawsuit.

Unfortunately, rejection actually reinforces the fantasies of conspiracy theorists. The Supreme Court's unceremonious denial of Donofrio's case will be seen as proof of its merit in the glazed eyes of the Obama Is An Alien true believers.

It is an axiom of conspiracy theorists that critics are part of the conspiracy. After Obama's inauguration, the conspiracy will evolve into a battle to wrest the soul of America from the mesmerizing, messianic grip of an illegitimate president. Gary Kreep, who heads the United States Justice Foundation and is representing Alan Keyes in one of the lawsuits over the Obama's eligibility, has said his group will file suit to challenge every one of Obama's actions as president.

Mulder and Scully may be Obama's only hope. It's a race against time to find the truth - and post it on the Internet.