Now that President Obama has attempted to quell the surge of birtherism by providing a copy of his oft-requested long form-birth certificate, will that satisfy the birthers? Will they go away now?

Nope.

Long before President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, Tea Party leaders and other birthers had already concocted outlandish new twists on birther racism.  Clumsily forged Kenyan birth certificates, failed lawsuits, cries of conspiracy, and the cottage industry of birther books and videos have popped up in the last few years.  Indeed, leading birther activists have invented an incomprehensible array of bogus arguments and convinced themselves that a black man could not possibly be president of the United States.  Now, they are not going down without a fight.

Taking umbrage at the attention that the Doonesbury comic strip has drawn to a "Birther Bill" sitting in a House committee, Texas congressman Louie Gohmert (Republican) recently told Washington Post blogger Mary Ann Akers that the bill, H.R. 1503, has nothing to do with needling President Obama. If it ever was voted up and signed, Gohmert says, the bill would not take effect until the next presidential election in 2012. It would mandate that the campaign committees of the various contenders for president submit birth certificates and "other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility..."