On Thursday, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow took on the “birther” movement, warning viewers not to Google “Obama born” lest they find themselves plummeting down an online rabbit hole of “crazy.” She pointed out several attempts in Alabama to take Barack Obama off the ballot in that state on the grounds that he’s not really a U.S. citizen.

The most frequently sent email tip we get here at Mediaite, other than fan mail meant for Geraldo Rivera, are pleas to feature MORE of Pastor James David Manning. You ask, we withhold. Then grudgingly oblige. Last week, we told you about some very important, highly exclusive intel Manning had obtained about Newt Gingrich and [...]

The Noveau Birther Movement (The Racers, perhaps?) has honed in on two rather unlikely targets: GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. See, one of the “birther” movement’s earliest proponents, James David Manning (chief pastor of New York City’s ATLAH World Missionary Church, located in “All The Land Anointed Holy,” or Harlem) is asking the question no one else is asking: Are Gingrich and Romney black?

The entire first block of Anderson Cooper‘s program last night was devoted to keeping Rick Perry “honest” on his comments, or more accurately non-comments, about President Obama’s birth certificate. The previous night, his 10pm competitor Greta Van Susteren interviewed Donald Trump on his current view of Obama’s birth certificate. Trump (somewhat disingenuously) suggested that they “shouldn’t be talking about it” and even mocked her for posing it as the first question (he then proceeded into la la land with comments like “I am not a fan” and “not a believer” in the validity of it). In fact, in the two weeks before Rick Perry’s interview in Parade Magazine came out, the fake controversy surrounding Obama’s birth certificate earned barely a mention on cable news. According to the television transcript database TV Eyes, the terms “birther” and “birth certificate” was only mentioned 8 times across all of cable news. But since Friday, the terms “birther” and birth certificate were referenced 180 times; Fox News mentioned both 29 times, CNN 48, and MSNBC led with 103 mentions.

After resurrecting the long-dormant “Birther” conspiracy about President Obama’s birth certificate in an interview with Parade Magazine, Texas Gov. Rick Perry doubled and tripled-down on the issue this week. Now, though, The St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Perry now says he has “no doubt” that President Obama was born in the United States, and that he was “kidding around” when he raised the issue several times this week. Has his flirtation with the Birthers, and Donald Trump, rendered his candidacy a joke?

During Rick Perry‘s press conference today about his flat tax plan, CNN reporter Jim Acosta posed a question to the Texas Governor about his recent comments about President Obama’s birth certificate. “You raised the issue of the president’s birth certificate over the weekend. I’m just curious what will it take to convince you that the president was born in this country? And do you have any plans to release your birth certificate?” Acosta asked.

Rick Perry, man. Bless his heart. The GOP presidential hopeful just seemingly refuses to filter or censor himself for the media, which results in such gems as Perry telling CNBC that it’s “fun” to keep the so-called birther controversy over Barack Obama‘s country of origin going.

The biggest problem with yesterday’s revelation that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has reopened the President’s birth certificate as a campaign issue was the fact that there was no audio or video of Perry’s interview with Parade Magazine. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough remedied that situation, somewhat, this morning, when he drafted Willie Geist and Mark Halperin into a dramatic reenactment of the beleaguered former frontrunner’s absurd interview, in which he expresses doubt about the President’s birthplace.

Just when you thought it was safe to take Orly Taitz off of your producer’s speed-dial, Texas Gov. and struggling Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry throws a “Birther” Hail Orly in a Parade Magazine interview. Months after President Obama crushed then-GOP frontrunner Donald Trump by producing his long-form birth certificate and Osama bin Laden‘s long-form corpse, Perry told Parade that he had no idea if the document was real, and that he hopes to secure The Donald’s endorsement.

It turns out that a recent “birther” sign — which also appeared at the recent Iowa debate in the form of a large billboard — comes courtesy of the folks over at WorldNetDaily, who are not quite the greatest fans of Obama. Maddow described their mission as essentially “trying to make a buck off the more gullible elements of the conservative base.”

She then pointed to some of the group’s previous projects, such as their reports on the need to wage a war on Islam itself rather than on terrorists acting under their own fundamentalist interpretations. Maddow brought on Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman, who broke a rather amazing series of reports about how the person behind that WorldNetDaily report has been instructing FBI counter-terrorism officers using ideas prevalent in what Maddow describes as the fringe of the right wing.

On Thursday, Rachel Maddow celebrated President Obama’s 50th birthday by going through a list of people bringing up the birth certificate controversy even after it was put to rest when the long-form version was released earlier this year. She aired a clip of Rush Limbaugh ragging on Obama about the birther story, and it was just assumed that the audio was recent, given Obama’s birthday this week and Limbaugh’s reference to the commander-in-chief turning another year older.

Professor Cornel West’s criticism of President Obama as a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs” is reverberating throughout the African American community and the media, and is particularly disturbing to The Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart. After defending his comments last night on MSNBC, West did not sway Capehart from his belief that West is now leading a “Blacker than thou” crowd that is as embarrassing as the Birther movement.

Donald Trump wasn’t enough for you, President Obama‘s re-election campaign rubbed some extra-coarse salt in the wound of another prominent Birther Wednesday morning. Timed to coincide with the release of “smear merchant” Jerome Corsi‘s new book, inconveniently titled “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”, the Obama campaign is offering donors (of $15 or more) the chance to own a “Made in the USA” mug featuring a copy of the President’s now-famous long form birth certificate.

But it would now appear that Trump’s meteoric rise to the tops of these polls and the media frenzy that came along with it may end up being footnotes in his biography (Too Trump To Trump: A Portrait Of Donald Trump, with a forward by Donald Trump. Illustrations by Trump, Donald). Today, Public Policy Polling revealed that his popularity has dropped both quickly and dramatically.

Just when you thought every angle in the “Birther” controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s birth place (and legitimacy as president) had been all too thoroughly scrutinized there comes this. During a live interview with reality TV show host Donald Trump, CNN’s Don Lemon suggested that it may not have even mattered where Obama was born “since what exactly natural-born is has never been litigated.”

In the aftermath of the Birther movement (the afterbirth, as everyone is cleverly calling it), out of the wreckage of Orly Taitz‘s long fifteen minutes, one undeniable truth has emerged: if you really need to see something that is completely meaningless, the revelation of which would be an assault on the values upon which this country is built, Donald Trump is your man. In a few short weeks, The Donald accomplished what thousands of conspiracy theorists, and dozens of court cases, could not, and what the accumulated decency of the American people had so far managed to prevent.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, British journalist Katty Kay conceded the controversy over President Obama‘s birth was an example of “one of those times” when Brits look at Americans in disbelief. Kay admitted Brits could “sit here very smugly and say ‘look, those crazy Americans, they’re doing it again.’”

But aside from the entertainment value of a classic American circus, Kay says the Donald Trump-led media cavalcade over the president’s birth certificate is “actually fundamentally, pretty alarming and very depressing.”

Rachel Maddow walked something of a fine line on her show tonight, balancing covering birtherism (“Reporting on spending press time covering ‘birtherism’ itself, I think is a defensible thing.”) and lending even more coverage and attention to Donald Trump and the headline (and ratings?)-grabbing birther movement. Maddow set out to figure out why (non-Fox News) journalists would devote time to covering the whereabouts of Barack Obama‘s birth certificate

In what could only be described as a bizzarro victory lap, Birther Queen Orly Taitz (who gave this site the proud, somewhat badass moniker “Insane Obama Thugs”) spent her 14th minute on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell. O’Donnell was in no mood to let Taitz filibuster, however, and after a few minutes of attempting to force her to stay on topic, he ended the interview.

Aside from the one-man birther extravaganza that was Donald Trump, who pushed the birther story hardest? According to data from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism reviewed by the Poynter Institute’s Julie Moos, MSNBC had the most coverage, far ahead of Fox or CNN. “While MSNBC’s coverage may have been devoted to questioning or debunking the president’s citizenship issues, that network spent the most time discussing it,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of PEJ.

Various commentators (myself included) have consistently called out the Birther movement, and other attacks on President Obama‘s background, as racial dogwhistles, cynical exploitations of the racial mistrust of others. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz took it a step further Tuesday night, flat-out calling current Birther superstar Donald Trump a racist.

The debate over whether it is legitimate to question President Obama about his birth certificate and his academic records spilled over into Hardball today as Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan hurled humorous insults at one another during a heated debate. The MSNBC colleagues clearly enjoyed the back and forth as neither seemed to shy away from revealing their true opinion about Obama’s academic credentials.

Well there it is. The most respected newscaster at the most watched and dominant cable news network has weighed in on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama‘s citizenship (and legitimacy as president of the United States) and has found for the president. “Fox News can confirm the president of the United States is a citizen of the United States,” said Fox News Shep Smith, adding for dramatic effect, “Period.” Next!

Donald Trump may have only landed on the 2012 presidential radar about two months ago (much to everyone’s chagrin), but in those two months he has done what no birther had yet attempted: he has found evidence that President Barack Obama‘s birth certificate doesn’t exist. That’s his latest headline-grabbing claim, anyway, in an extensive conversation aired tonight on CNN with Anderson Cooper. Needless to say, the latter is somewhat skeptical.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Fox News Sunday and host Chris Wallace tried to get his opinion on whether he was still a “big fan” of Donald Trump. Bloomberg wiggled free from answering whether he likes the idea of Trump as a presidential candidate, but did stress that he thinks the Birther strategy is a losing one.