Rep. Trent Franks Considering Birther Lawsuit?

Is Rep. Trent Franks really considering filing a lawsuit to demand that President Obama release his birth certificate?  According to the Mohave Daily News, the answer is yes:

The other main issue dealt with numerous speakers questioning Obama’s birth certificate and why there wasn’t an investigation into whether he is a naturalized citizen. One woman said a newspaper announcement of his birth in Hawaii was not sufficient. Another asked how he could have a passport without a birth certificate.

Franks said there was not enough evidence that Obama is not an American citizen. He did say there was a lot of conflicting evidence of Obama’s citizenship and that he was considering filing a lawsuit, the only congressman to do so. Franks asked why the president did not simply produce a birth certificate.

David Weigel has more.

And on a related note, there is just something hilarious about Joseph Farah complaining that Ann Coulter’s attack on the Birthers is “much less informed than is her usual standard”: 

Coulter committed what many see as the unpardonable sin of attacking “birthers” – those “nuts” and “fruitloops” like me who actually want to see Barack Obama release his birth certificate and other documents he is so clearly hiding from the American public – documents crucial to knowing who our president really is and whether he is constitutionally eligible to hold office.

The attacks from friends, which I consider Ann to be, always hurt much more than attacks from adversaries. My skin is thick. It has to be in this business. Coulter’s comments were scathing, and she painted with a broad brush. I was grateful she didn’t make it personal in her comments on TV and in her WND column – the place where more people read Coulter than anywhere else. Nevertheless, I noted that her statements on this subject were much less informed than is her usual standard.

But the real hurt came when some WND readers began forwarding me Coulter’s personal responses to their questions. They included what I consider to be scathing personal indictments of me and the company I direct … Then came the vicious personal attack: “not one known conservative public figure or publication believes this – except WND, which I believe is pushing it to get website hits, bc no sane person could believe it – but the MSM keeps interviewing the nuts to make all conservatives look crazy and to distract from the serious problems with obama.”

It really grieves me that Ann Coulter dismisses the one real investigative news agency’s work and relies on warmed-over pabulum from the American Spectator and an unknown blog. There’s a reason the American Spectator is named as such. It is a spectator when it comes to news. It is simply untrue that the Spectator found the birth announcements during the campaign. The first known source of the newspaper birth announcements was a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger in the summer of 2008.

Coulter’s problem seems to be her contempt for real reporting – unless it is conducted by a pedigreed “conservative” source. Unfortunately for Coulter, as a lifelong journalist involved in investigative reporting for 30 years, I can tell you there is no such animal as a pedigreed “conservative” news outlet that does real investigative reporting. Apparently WND is just too “independent” for Coulter’s trust.