I’ve seen any number of references to “birthers” in the press over the last few years, that being a group of individuals who claim that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the US and thus not eligible to serve as president. I’m not saying that I didn’t believe that such people existed, but it does seem farfetched. I was having lunch in a Chinese restaurant at Port Angeles yesterday when a person walked in, sat down, and started chatting with a group at another table. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, but I couldn’t help overhear his assertion “You know, he isn’t actually a citizen.” in reference to President Obama. I was stunned. His knuckles didn’t drag on the ground when he came in and he seemed to have sufficient intelligence to operate a fork, but somehow he had fallen for this absurdity. I wanted to ask him if he was a citizen, and since he clearly doesn’t accept state birth registrations as evidence, how he intended to prove it. But he was a big guy and it doesn’t take any intelligence at all for a big guy to stomp an old slow guy.