Leon Wolf has already taken down the birthers by showing the negative political consequences of pushing the vast, bipartisan* conspiracy theory, and of course point by point takedowns of the theories themselves have been published, but today NRO has a good summary up.
All at once, the Editors (of NRO or National Review, I don’t know which) take down every aspect of the whole birther movement. It’s a good read.
I already know the answer the truthers birthers are going to give, though. “No, a Certificate of Live Birth is not a Birth Certificate,” they say. Except, well, Hawaii’s Vital Record office uses the terms interchangeably. What is different, however, is the Certificate of Hawaiian Birth. That was a pre-statehood program to get people registered who had been born without getting a birth certificate. People in that position I assume primarily were natives. In any case, a) the program was terminated when Hawaii was granted statehood, and b) the certificate presented by the Obama campaign clearly states Live Birth, not Hawaiian Birth.
Other objections are handled by the article well, I believe, and are complete with historical precedent. It’s worth a read.
Mainstream Republican and conservative activists must push out the birthers to the fringe, where they belong, lest our whole movement become as deranged as the Netroots became over 9/11 conspiracies. I thank NRO for their help in this, reprising the role NR played in attacking another famous fringe, the John Birch Society.
* Linda Lingle, being a Republican and Governor of Hawaii, would surely have to be involved in any conspiracy to forge a Hawaiian birth for Barack Obama.