Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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Conspiracy theorists claiming President Barack Obama is not a United States citizen were granted an hour of drive-time radio Friday to lay out the “evidence” by Christian radio host Steve Deace.
Deace discussed the issue with Drew Zahn, editor of the conspiracy theory Web site World Net Daily, who said that while his cohorts have been “ridiculed and mocked” for continuing to follow the story, it simply won’t go away.
“We’re catching heat from almost every direction,” Zahn said.
Zahn and Deace started off blasting the “mainstream media” for not fully investigating an issue that deals with whether “we’re going to follow the Constitution at its most basic level.”
The pair then attempted to debunk any evidence produced that may contradict their theory — including a certificate of live birth and newspapers accounts at the time — ultimately concluding all materials could be easily obtained fraudulently or easily fabricated.
And even if that evidence was proven real, Zahn said the questions would remain.
“Even if we know he was born in Hawaii or not, we still have questions of whether he is a natural-born citizen,” he said. “On his own Web site, he admitted he was born of a father of Kenyan nationality… a dual citizen. Is that or is that not a natural born citizen? We don’t know.”
“Birthers,” as the believers of this particular conspiracy theory are known, believe that either Obama’s mother gave birth to the future president in Kenya in 1961 or that because Obama’s father was Kenyan and Obama has dual citizenship he ineligible to sit in the White House.
Of course, the birthers theories have been thoroughly discredited, and the U.S. Supreme Court last year dismissed a legal challenge to Obama’s citizenship. Despite this, the issue has gained several high-profile supporters, including CNN’s Lou Dobbs and conservative talker Rush Limbaugh.
This is not the first time Iowa’s largest radio station has dedicated large segments to birthers. Afternoon host Jan Mickelson has repeatedly discussed the conspiracy theory, interviewing numerous proponents who have brought lawsuits in regards to the issue.
Deace discussed the issue once before in January, when he interviewed the birther movement’s most high profile advocate, Orly Taitz, a woman news site Politico describes as “the Russian-born attorney/dentist who has become a kind of ringleader for the movement.” Among other things, Taitz has become famous of late for encouraging soldiers to disobey orders from a president who is “ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief of U.S Armed Forces.”
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