April 06, 2010 08:08 PM UTC

Cory Gardner, Meet "Col. Birther"

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Independent reported yesterday, following the original story in the Greeley Tribune:

Greeley Native, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and full-fledged birther Terry Lakin is refusing to deploy to Afghanistan until he sees evidence he can believe in that Pres. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States. Lakin released a YouTube last week speaking in familiar talk-radio terms about his doubts regarding the president’s citizenship and his legitimacy as commander in chief. Today he received a letter from his brigade commander warning that he faced court marshal and time in prison…

Greeley native Lakin was reportedly warned off his suit by sympathetic lawyers to no avail. Lakin has teamed up with a group behind a website called “safeguardourconstitution.com.” He is the highest-ranking active duty officer to publicly challenge Obama’s natural-born citizenship and he seems intent to play a game of chicken with the president.

“If they court-martial [Lakin], it will be huge,” said Safeguardourconstitution Spokesperson Margaret Hemenway. “They will risk making a martyr of him.”

The so-called birther movement has had at least some reported traction in the northern Front Range. In August, buzz surrounded a town hall meeting in Ft Collins that featured Republican state Rep. and CD4 Congressional candidate Cory Gardner. At the town hall, Gardner seemed to waffle ambiguously on the birther issue after it was raised by a member of the audience. Gardner later stated plainly to the Denver Post that he believed the President was a natural-born citizen.

Yet comments made by Gardner campaign spokesman Mike Ciletti directly after the town hall to the Ft Collins Coloradoan worked to cast doubts on the president’s legitimacy and track fairly closely to the comments made by Lt. Col. Lakin in his YouTube.

“Cory believes there’s probably, from the little bit that he has read on it, Obama is most likely a citizen. But he finds it very curious that this could all be ended if he just released the long-form birth certificate and put it to bed.”

…Called for response to the Lakin case, the Gardner campaign declined to comment.

We’d say it’s a fair question to put to Cory Gardner, having tread precariously close to, and then backed away from, “birtherism” himself. Col. Lakin lives in what would be Gardner’s congressional district–shouldn’t he making a clear, unambiguous statement against this silliness? There are several legitimate reasons why someone can claim conscientious objector status, embrace of whacked-out racially tinged conspiracy theories about the President isn’t considered to be one.

Then again, we’d say voters should expect no less from aspiring Congressmen.