It has come to the attention of this publication that Certain Persons (one Philip J. Berg by name) attempted to halt the recent Presidential Elections by insisting that one of the candidates, and the ultimate victor in the contest, was not born in balmy Hawaii but instead in Darkest Kenya.

While certainly Mr. Barack Obama’s name is somewhat exotic for the tastes of a white-bread easterner such as Mr. Berg, one need only look to the profusion of exotic names in the telephone directory of any of our cities to see examples of even more unlikely names of people who are, nonetheless, just as American as anyone else born on this soil.

Mr. Berg’s shrill insistences have gone so far as to antagonize the justices of the Supreme Court, where he attempted to petition for the court to hear his case and to delay, if not cancel, the recent elections. Needless to say, his petition was denied and the election has gone forward unimpeded.

This petition is merely the latest in a long line of misinformed pronouncements by persons of various degrees of lucidity to contest Mr. Obama’s birthplace. Rumors of ineligibility for the office of the Presidency have circulated since Mr. Obama’s candidacy was first announced; one might be excused for assuming that said rumors were the action of persons with racist leanings, given the sheer number and variety of the approaches taken towards more-or-less one angle.

The august persons at Snopes have taken the time to catalog a number of these rumors and show the proof of the falsity of the same. Indeed, even the state of Hawaii has flatly stated that Mr. Obama’s birth is uncontested and that the allegations are so much tommyrot.

It would appear, however, that Mr. Berg has chosen to carry on with his rather ludicrous crusade, given that his writings have been recently updated.

While perseverance in the face of adversity is usually to be admired, it is the opinion of this writer that the stubbornness shown by Mr. Berg has gone beyond the bounds of reason and is, perhaps, exemplary of mental delusion. His past activities adhere to the pattern as well; it appears that Mr. Berg is a conspiracy theorist of the first water. Thus, while it is fairly obvious that the complaints given are without merit, it is unlikely that we have heard the last of Mr. Berg on this particular issue.