What does it say about the Birther issue when Fox News covers its debunking while CNN continues to stoke the controversy? Yesterday, Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued a second definitive statement that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, as his Certificate of Live Birth states, after having seen the records in the Department of Health for herself. A second Honolulu newspaper produced a birth announcement for Obama in August 1961 as well:

In an attempt to quash persistent rumors that President Obama was not born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, Hawaii’s health director reiterated this afternoon that she has personally seen Obama’s birth certificate in the Health Department’s archives.

“I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai’i State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago….”

On Oct. 31, Fukino originally tried to put an end to the belief among so-called “birthers” that Obama was not born in the United States and thus was ineligible to run for the office of president.

Last July, a Hillary Clinton supporter doing oppo research on Obama dug up a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser from August 1961 that noted Obama’s birth in Hawaii. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has also found one in its own archives from that month:

Theories that Obama was born abroad abounded during the presidential campaign, even after an official Hawaii birth certificate was produced, along with August 1961 birth notices from two Honolulu newspapers. Numerous lawsuits and emergency appeals were lodged challenging Obama’s eligibility to be president, and all were rebuffed.

People wonder why Obama doesn’t demand that Hawaii release the original records to put an end to the Birther nonsense. The biggest reason? It wouldn’t work. The same people who believe that Obama forged a Certificate of Live Birth twice corroborated by the state that issued it will insist that Obama got someone to forge any new records produced by Hawaii as well. It’s the same reason that having Palin produce her gynecological records won’t satisfy Andrew Sullivan and why producing the phone records from United 93 families to prove that they haven’t been in contact with the supposedly still-alive-but-hiding passengers on the 9/11 flight won’t change Truther minds. The conspiracy theorists have far too much invested in their argument to retreat.

Obama has a valid COLB attesting to his Hawaiian birth, two statements from the state Department of Health explicitly noting his birth in Honolulu, and not one but two contemporaneous reports of his birth there. He’s a natural-born American citizen. I realize that this evidence won’t convince the fringe true believers, but maybe it’s enough to get the rest of America to ignore them to the same extent we ignore the Truthers and the Trig Truthers. Hopefully that will be soon, so we can build conservative credibility to fight the real battles — ObamaCare, cap-and-tax, and other attempts to socialize the American economy.