Hey, remember the birthers?
Infamous Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio does — which is why he announced a five-person “Cold Case Posse” that will delve into the issue of President Obama’s birth certificate.
The posse follows a request by the Surprise, Arizona Tea Party, who Arpaio met with on August 17. The Surprise Tea Party believes that the long-form birth certificate released by President Obama in April — which put the issue to rest for pretty much everyone — could be a forgery.
“The Surprise Tea Party is concerned,” they wrote, “that no law enforcement agency or other duly constituted government agency has conducted an investigation into the Obama birth certificate to determine if it is in fact an authentic copy of 1961 birth records on file for Barack Obama at the Hawaii Department of Health in Honolulu, or whether it, or they are forgeries.”
“Congress should be ashamed,” Brian Reilly, a spokesman for the Surprise Tea Party, told the right-wing “news” site World Net Daily. “They didn’t even have the backbone to uphold their constitutional oaths of office to initiate this investigation.”
World Net Daily, perhaps the last bastion for birther holdouts (an article on Arpaio also touts the book “Where’s The Birth Certificate?” by WND columnist Jerome Corsi), says that the “Cold Case Posse” will subsist on donations from birthers nationwide.
“This investigation does not involve politics,” Arpaio told WND. “I listen to all the residents of Maricopa County who come to my office with complaints, regardless what their politics are.
“My door is open to everyone, and I don’t kick them out. If a complaint is legitimate, I don’t dump it into the wastebasket,” he continued. “When I get allegations brought to me by the citizens of Maricopa County, I look into the allegations, just like I am doing here.”
Arpaio says he has over 3000 people participating within his larger “posse” program in Maricopa County — including celebrities like Lou Ferrigno of “The Hulk” and Steven Seagal, actor and alleged puppy-killer . But, according to WND, for the birth certificate probe there’s a special “posse within the posse” made up of two former law enforcement officers, two retired lawyers and headed by retired detective Michael Zullo from Bergen County, NJ.
Arpaio’s latest crusade has gotten him on the cover of The Globe, but he told the Arizona Republic that he doesn’t mind being featured in tabloids. “In fact, those are the magazines that do the best journalistic stories,” Arpaio said. “More accurate than anybody else. You laugh at that, but I’ve dealt with the National Enquirer and their stories are always right down the line, believe it or not.”
Get the day’s best political analysis, news and reporting from the TPM team delivered to your inbox every day with DayBreaker. Sign up here, it takes just a few seconds.
