Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Jerome Corsi, an endless fount of stupidity, has an incredibly dishonest article at the Worldnutdaily accusing the media of inconsistency for allegedly paying so much attention to the question of whether McCain was eligible to be president and paying none to the Obama birther bullshit. The headline screams:
Meet the surprise 1st 'birthers' of 2008 presidential election Eligibility issue huge for press, FactCheck.org, Democrats when McCain was focus of attention
And Corsi blathers:
Many of the same news organizations and research groups today dismissing concerns about Barack Obama's constitutional eligibility were far more eager to cover the issue when Republican presidential candidate John McCain was the subject.An archive search shows the question of McCain's birth certificate and his eligibility to be president was actively pursued by Democratic Party activists and the mainstream media in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, despite the ridicule now heaped upon those questioning Obama's qualifications under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
This is a flat out lie. Yes, the issue was raised and there were a handful of articles about it. All of them quickly concluded that it was a non-issue and it was never brought up again, not by Democrats and not by the media.
In a piece that led off with the question, "How can Panamanian-born McCain be elected president?" FactCheck.org conceded McCain did meet the natural-born citizen requirements.
As did everyone else who looked at it. That's why the issue was dropped. That's the same reason why every sane person thinks Corsi is nuts, because this is a non-issue.
Politics
Comments
Being mistaken is one thing. Deliberate lying is another. Corsi has proven himself blatantly dishonest. Why does anybody listen to him?
Posted by: Reverend Rodney | March 13, 2010 9:32 AM
Ed Brayton: All of them quickly concluded that it was a non-issue and it was never brought up again, not by Democrats and not by the media.
Well, at least all the ones that had any pretense at being mainstream, as opposed to high-caliber kook.
Posted by: abb3w | March 13, 2010 9:32 AM
"As did everyone else who looked at [Ombama's citizenship status]. That's why the issue was dropped [by all senisible perosns]. That's the same reason why every sane person think [Birfers are just plain] nuts, because this is a non-issue."
Fixed it for ya Ed. :) - Dingo
Posted by: DingoJack | March 13, 2010 9:34 AM
Corsi writes for the correct site.
I wonder if we can get a search of the 'nut' to compare counts of Obama vs McCain questions of eligibility stories?
Nah, what would be the point?
Posted by: MikeMa | March 13, 2010 9:43 AM
The funny thing is that there is at least one legal scholar, Gabriel Chin of the University of Arizona, who has argued that McCain is not a natural born citizen, due to quirk in the law at the time of his birth
http://www.michiganlawreview.org/assets/fi/107/chin.pdf
On the other hand, there are precisely ZERO legal scholars (unless you consider Orly Taitz a legal scholar) and ZERO law review articles (unless you consider bother blogs to be law reviews) that claim Obama is ineligible.
Despite that, there is no question that had he won the election, McCain would be in the White House and I sincerely doubt any of the birther morons or anyone else would be screaming that he is a usurper. Funny, isn't it?
Posted by: JusticeLeague | March 13, 2010 10:19 AM
In 2008 I got into several debates with people who believed McCain wasn't eligible. The forum was my being a member of the Email Pushback Team, a group of volunteers that fisked viral emails back at those forwarding such with their cumulative audience cc'd. I fisked both conservative and liberal viral email propaganda in form of an email response that linked to citations falsifying their propaganda.
What the McCain birfers had in common with the Obama birfers was that they opposed Sen. McCain from winning election and falsely believed that statutory law was on their side. Most of these opponents were also to the right of Sen. McCain and favored a more conservative 2008 GOP Presidential nominee, the freerepublic people were the most frequent promoters.
The non-conservative opponents of Sen. McCain who believed he wasn't eligible distinguished themselves from the Obama birfers by conceding once enough legal scholars weighed in that Sen. McCain was eligible. Truth matter to them and when they realized that this was not an opportunity to honestly go after Mr. McCain, they let it go. Obviously we know truth is not important to the types of conservatives that enable the Obama birfer story.
The McCain birfer story seemed to die out very soon after he was nominated. I assume for two reasons: conservatives had to now rally around him to go after the Democratic nominee, and non-conservative enablers of the story conceded their mistake, in spite of the fact McCain's nomination should have increased the motivation to claim he was not eligible.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 13, 2010 10:53 AM
About a year ago I was waiting in a beauty salon here in politically conservative Orange County, CA, when I overheard a conversation about who was a US citizen. I had a feeling I knew where this was going to go so I sat back and listened. It didn't go all the way into "birther" territory, but I heard a few people claim that only people born in the US itself were "natural-born citizens". At that point I chimed in about how all the people who have been born on US military bases around the world are US citizens at birth. Then I threw in how if that was indeed the case, if only people born in the US are "natural-born citizens", John McCain wouldn't have been eligible to run for President because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The conversation ended rather abruptly at that.
Posted by: Kimmer | March 13, 2010 11:29 AM
If you want to point out blatant lying from Corsi, you missed the most egregious example in this piece:
"In addition to media scrutiny, McCain testified before a U.S. Senate committee and produced his long-form birth certificate for inspection."
That never happened.
McCain never testified before any Senate committee about his citizenship. McCain never produced any long-form birth certificate for Senate inspection. Corsi is not merely twisting real events into his preferred narrative; Corsi is reporting completely imaginary events as if they actually happened.
Moreover, when WND published this article on Tuesday, I e-mailed Corsi directly and informed him of this, so he's aware of the problem. It's now Saturday: do you see any corrections? No? That should tell you about Corsi's journalistic integrity.
Posted by: Loren | March 13, 2010 11:34 AM
I heard that someone posted on Free Republic this week admitting to helping Obama's team fabricate his birth certificate. The post was so popular that Freeperville crashed.
Wish I had the power to troll them that hard.
Posted by: FishyFred | March 13, 2010 12:05 PM
Re Loren
What else should one expect from a lying goat fucker like Corsi who, we should remind the readers, was one of the Swift Boaters in 2004.
Re Justice League
The same argument that could be made relative to a Kenyan born Obama could also be made for McCain. That is to say that under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, the later statutes could be argued to apply.
Posted by: SLC | March 13, 2010 12:08 PM
Corsi forgets that just because other people being stupid does not give one license to follow suit. Even if Democrats made an equally big stink about McCain's citizenship, the Obama centered birther movement is still stir-fry crazy.
Posted by: History Punk | March 13, 2010 12:59 PM
Jerome Corsi is dishonest? I'm shocked, shocked!
If the God they believe in did exist, what would He say about the way right-wingers use the intellect scripture says He gave them?
Posted by: Chris Winter | March 13, 2010 1:11 PM
Well actually there is one thing wrong with this article
It was brought up again by Democrats, but it was because they passed a resolution when Hillary was still the expected candidate that affirmed McCain's right to the presidency and resolved any question of persons born in American territories or military bases. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone when still under full US control
Corsi is always fundamentally dishonest its one quality he is faithful to. The issue was brought up and quickly dismissed as nonsense and a resolution was passed so any wing nuts couldn't manufacture a constitutional crisis because they didn't like McCain.
Posted by: Will | March 13, 2010 1:39 PM
In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of "birthers, baggers and blowhards" have brought you. They are good at "Follow the Leader" of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O'Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although most republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe they have a long way to go.
Posted by: Montana | March 13, 2010 1:52 PM
To nitpick this a bit, Hillary was not the expected candidate at the time.
The resolution was introduced on April 10, 2008 and was agreed to by the Senate on April 30, 2008. Obama had not clinched the nomination by that point, and Hillary was still campaigning fiercely, but Obama already led in the delegate count and was generally expected to win.
Posted by: Loren | March 13, 2010 2:03 PM
I wonder if Mary Matalin still counts herself among Corsi's fans considering that she called his paranoid election year screed on Obama "scholarship, and a good piece of scholarship at that."
The conservative wing in this country is an utter embarrassment. But that will tend to occur when its message is driven by pathetic clowns like Corsi, Beck, Farah, Limbaugh, et al.
Posted by: CHV | March 13, 2010 6:59 PM
Mary Matalin is a piece of work. Carville's hell is knowing that she's the best thing he could get that made as much money as he does. The cognitive dissonance must be deafening.
Posted by: trog69 | March 14, 2010 1:32 AM
Just like Obama birthers, McCain birthers use cheap deceptions. There are legitimate concerns about John McCain's birth status, but this was covered by Congress enacting a retroactive law that covered all American citizens born in Panama. Gabriel Chin of the University of Arizona seems to ignore the law that gave John McCain America citizenship at birth.
Posted by: Anthony | March 14, 2010 2:58 AM
I'm actually quite surprised by this. After all, if it had turned out that BOTH Obama and McCain were ineligible, then Palin would have become President by default... right?
Isn't this what the WND/teabagger crowd want? Why do they hate America and baby Jesus??
Posted by: doctorgoo | March 14, 2010 8:19 PM
Spot the difference:
McCain's legitimacy due to his birth at a military installment (an issue brought up in 2000 and decided then).
versus
Obama's legitimacy due to his birth in Hawaii.
Of course, birthers believe in some sort of grand conspiracy, as if the FSM sent his noodly appendages into the depths of time to concoct birth announcements and forge American and Kenyan birth certificates.
Posted by: Shawn Wilkinson | March 14, 2010 11:18 PM
I think it is kind of cool that the modern republican party has been taken over by Lyndon Larouch types.
Posted by: old | March 16, 2010 3:22 AM