We thought Donald Trump had finally helped kill the Birther movement when his show of sending a team of "investigators" to Hawaii in search of Obama's birth certificate finally pushed the president to call on the state of Hawaii to go ahead and produce an original copy of his long-form birth certificate.
As if the imagery of a team of white guys going across state borders to hunt down the true identity of an ascendant black man wasn't enough of an uncomfortable throwback to a dark era in our nation's history, Arizona's infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now exhuming Birtherism with a five-man "Cold Case Posse."
TPM reports that "Arpaio says he has over 3000 people participating within his larger 'posse' program in Maricopa County — including celebrities like Lou Ferrigno of 'The Hulk' and Steven Seagal."
Arpaio's "Cold Case Posse" aims to investigate whether Obama's birth certificate, now officially released on two separate occasions, is actually a forgery.
Unsurprisingly, the posse was formed at the request of an Arizona group called the Surprise Tea Party.
"The Surprise Tea Party is concerned," they wrote, "that no law enforcement agency or other duly constituted government agency has conducted an investigation into the Obama birth certificate to determine if it is in fact an authentic copy of 1961 birth records on file for Barack Obama at the Hawaii Department of Health in Honolulu, or whether it, or they are forgeries."
Make no mistake, "posse" is the same term historically applied to lynch mobs in the South, and probably the same term once used for groups searching out fugitive slaves.
And if you needed reminding , this famously anti-immigration sheriff is the same guy Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry are all aggressively courting for endorsement.
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