Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey is rooting for the Supreme Court to deny the lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship,

The latest buzz surrounds the decision by Clarence Thomas to circulate the appeal petition to the entire court after David Souter rejected it immediately. That really doesn't mean much, as the Tribune explains. Of the 842 petitions circulated in that manner, only 60 got a spot on the court calendar, and not all of those succeeded. Thomas may have been interested in the technical aspects of the suit rather than the merits, or perhaps it was a slow week.

...I'm sure the comments section will fill with various conspiracy theories over Indonesian school records, Kenyan births, and so on. None of it -- absolutely none -- has any real, solid evidence showing that Obama was born anywhere else than Hawaii apart from sheer speculation and hearsay, and even less evidence that Obama's stepfather renounced Obama's birthright citizenship, which he didn't have the power to do anyway. It's a conspiracy theory spun by conspiracy theorists (Philip Berg is a 9/11 truther) who use their normal thresholds of evidence for this meme.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court can't kill the conspiracy theories. It can only kill the lawsuits, which is what they will almost certainly do tomorrow when they meet.

Personally, I hope that they take the case so that they can squash this whole issue once and for all. Barack Obama is an American citizen and if the Supreme Court officially rules that way, then these particular stories will, for the most part, go away.

PS: This story isn't a conspiracy theory per se. A President has to be an American citizen from birth to qualify for the presidency and I think some of the questions raised about the certificate of live birth that has been floating around are legitimate (although I also think the preponderance of the evidence shows that it's real). Combine that with the fact that Obama spent much of his childhood in a foreign country and I understand why people have questions.

That being said, this whole debate has taken on the tone of a conspiracy theory. I have yet to see anyone who believes that Barack Obama is not an American citizen put together any sort of logical, coherent explanation for why he thinks that's the case. Nor have I seen any attempt to explain things like "a newspaper clipping from the 1961 Honolulu Advertiser that mentions Obama being born."