BIRTH PAINS.

William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection complains that evil RINOs Tucker Carlson and Charles Krauthammer (!) were making fun of Ted Cruz's Canadian heritage:

Tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier both Tucker Carlson and Charles Krauthammer were excoriating Cruz over the issue of Obamacare defunding. That’s fine. 

If you think he’s wrong or foolish or whatever, make the case. 

But as part of their arguments each brought up that Cruz was born in Canada. Carlson mentioning that there were questions as to whether Cruz could be president and Krauthammer joking that Cruz could be Prime Minister of Canada. 

What did that have to do with anything? The topic was defunding Obamacare and Senate strategy. 

...You can make the case against Cruz’s tactics, if you want, without going where you went.

Jacobson seems to find the subject of birth status and eligibility far beneath the dignity of our political discourse. Well, he does now, anyway --here's Jacobson, April 26, 2011:

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is doing damage to Republicans by raising the birth certificate issue. I think it’s way too early to tell, but it is just as likely that Trump is doing major damage to Obama. 

Obama may be winning in some circles, but the polling indicates that increasing percentages of Americans — including substantial percentages of independents — do not believe Obama was born in the U.S. or are unsure. I’ll have more on the polling tomorrow, but you never hear about the numbers for independents, you only hear about the numbers for Republicans.

Hint, go out to dinner with four independent voters; then try to guess which one of them thinks Obama was born elsewhere. Because if the polls are accurate, one of them does. 

Worse than that, the release or not of the original birth certificate now has become a test of wills. The dispute has morphed from “where was he born” to “why doesn’t he just release the damn thing, we have to do it.” It has become a metaphor for the overall image of Obama as viewing himself as above the rest of us, as reflected in his now-famous line about people in small towns clinging to their guns and religion...

You may also see Jacobson's later post announcing that the White House had released -- or, as Jacobson had it, "purported to release" -- Obama's long-form birth certificate, which Jacobson claimed made the media look foolish and vindicated him.

I was going to call this post "Christ, What an Asshole" but really, I could call any of them that.