They will see your Bush Derangement Syndrome and raise it.

The idiotic controversy surrounding claims that President Obama is not a “natural-born citizen” and has forged and concealed birth documents in Hawaii that would expose his alleged foreign birth refuses to die.  Even though both the campaign and the Hawaii Secretary of State have released documents that refute claims that Obama was born somewhere other than Hawaii, some members of the conspiracy-minded right find the issue to be a useful outlet for their anti-Obama crusade.

Now, they have turned to promoting mutiny, encouraging soldiers to reject Obama’s claim to be commander-in-chief and join in lawsuits against the President.  Such moves cross the line from even tolerable forms of fringe dissent to potentially criminal actions.  Encouraging soldiers to refuse orders is a violation of both military and civilian law, and rightly so.  Military units cannot function if and when each soldier appoints himself judge over the fitness of the commander-in-chief.  And the old “I’m protecting the Constitution” dodge doesn’t wash — the oath of enlistment requires soldiers to obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed over them without an exception for situations when the soldiers might choose to undertake an investigation into the Presidents’ birth certificate first.

The lawsuits should be dismissed as frivolous but, more importantly, the military members who threw aside their oath out of an excess of extremist political ideology should be disciplined.  Barack Obama is President of the United States.  Deal with it.  If you’re a soldier, that’s your job that you swore an oath to do.

UPDATE:  For those determined to try to hijack the issue by talking about President Obama’s failure to release his birth certificate, the authoritative debunking site Snopes has the smackdown for you.  For those that want to see how deranged conspiracy theorists persist in spite of any evidence and thus prove my points about them, you can simply scroll down to the comments section.

UPDATE 2: I have another challenge to the anti-Obama obsessives who keep reviving this non-issue: How far does this principle extend? Should every corporal given an order by his lieutenant to take a hill first demand a notarized certificate attesting to the officer’s proper commissioning? And if they believe there is a technical detail that is wrong on that certificate, should they refuse to obey the order?

If your answer is yes, you are frankly a moron who should never be entrusted with a weapon or a position of any trust in national security. If your answer is no, you are illogical and inconsistent and should never be entrusted with a keyboard. Either way, your position is indefensible.