thinks I've glossed over a major difference between Obama's birth certificate and Trig's: The Obama conspiracy theory had bearing on his eligibility for the White House. Palin, by contrast, isn't running for anything, and if she were, the constitutional requirement bears on your own birth, not your kids'. If Obama hadn't released his birth certificate, it wouldn't have been unreasonable to ask for it. Indeed, reporters are supposed to ask obnoxious questions. But Trig Palin isn't running for president, and that makes this fixation a bit harder for me to get exercised about.  Justin Elliott's response to me makes the same point: [I]n the case of Obama, his place of birth presented a potentially urgent constitutional problem. If Obama had been born abroad, there would have been questions about his eligibility to be president, hinging on the murky definition of the phrase "natural-born citizen." Absurd as it all seemed, there was a reason in 2008 for a reporter to ask the Obama campaign for a copy of the birth certificate. (And remember: Obama wasn't the only '08 candidate who faced questions from the press about the circumstances of his birth.)

The parentage of Trig Palin presents no similarly urgent issue. Agreed. But if the only basis for asking for documentary evidence of various biographical facts in a politician's campaign is that they pertain to core legal eligibility for public office, then there would be no journalism at all. On what grounds did reporters uncover that Richard Blumenthal had lied about his war record? Surely not that it would have legally disbarred him from office. The man is still in office. But Blumenthal's war record was only a minor theme in his biography and his mis-statements were few and far between. They were not an integral part of his campaign's message or a central part of his appeal to his base. And there was no obvious reason to doubt him. The story was even ginned up by his political opponent in a campaign. And yet the New York Times rightly had no qualms about running a big story refuting his occasional untrue statements with empirical data. And Politico rightly had no qualms doing its own investigation. How does Justin defend this, given his current refusal to get on the phone and ask Palin for proof? Or talk to more than other journalists?]]>