Big Jim? Reddest of red-state Republicans? A man who once said he wouldn’t mind if the Democrats held 70 seats in the Senate so long as the 30 GOP seats were occupied by small-government conservatives? That Jim DeMint?

An anti-Birther?

On Monday, however, the South Carolina Republican found himself defending Barack Obama from the fringier elements of his own political party: the conspiracy theorists who insist the president was not born in the United States.

“I may have disagreements with [the president] on issues,” DeMint told the Huffington Post. “But he is my president, he deserves our respect, and we need forget that nonsense …

“He is not only a citizen,” he added, “he is our president.”

Current status of DeMint’s Constitution-abiding “true conservative” credentials: Shaky. Fortunately for believers, there are more than a dozen other congressmen who now question the official story willing to pick up his slack. Something for discussion in the comments: What exactly is the theory about the Certificate of Live Birth that Obama has produced? It’s obviously based on some sort of original documentary information in Hawaii’s possession, be it a contemporaneous statement from the doctor who delivered him or affidavits from his parents and/or grandparents that he was born in Honolulu. Let’s say it’s the latter. What then? How exactly is evidence that’s accepted by a U.S. state as proof of birth somehow insufficient to qualify one for the presidency?

Update: I’m sure National Review’s “true conservative” credentials would be revoked for this editorial if not for the fact that they were revoked long ago for being snobby elitist east coast New York/Beltway cocktail-party attenders or whatever.

If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.