It doesn't happen terribly often, but I'm with Andrew Sullivan on the need to lay Obama birther-ism to rest— a subject on which he's been blogging with some energy over the last day.

Indeed, it's almost as if birthers have allowed an intense and sometimes irrational dislike of a political figure to lead them to conspiracy theories while rationalizing the indulgence with concerns about the vetting process and rants about the failed responsibilities of a complicit media. It's almost like they continue to ignore evidence to the contrary of such theories in order to preserve their favored narrative long after the question (and election) is settled, even when induced to abandon it by friends, adversaries, and Occam's Razor alike.

They might even think to themselves, "Maybe I am crazy to even wonder. Or maybe we have witnessed one of the biggest frauds in American political history and the biggest failures among the American media in a very, very long time."

Yes, it does seem a lot like that.

Update: Andrew Sullivan performs the patented Sully 24-hour about-face on the birther issue. He's now saying the president should show the original birth certificate, using the same argument he used for the Trig documents. This new position has the virtue of being consistent with his Palin position, but it's unclear how he will continue to call Republicans and conservatives who have been less than affirming of Obama's citizenship stupid, illogical, and crazy. Liberals certainly won't appreciate him legitimizing the issue while they're using it as a cudgel. He is proprietor, after all, of the "the most popular one-man political blog site in the world."