CNN has got to cut Lou Dobbs loose

PASADENA, Calif. — The president of CNN/US is quick to trumpet his network as the real-news alternative to right-wing Fox News and left-wing MSNBC.

But his message was lost behind his disingenuous answer to a question about CNN's resident loose cannon, Lou Dobbs. And Dobbs' involvement in fanning the flames of the long-settled "controversy" over President Barack Obama's citizenship.

Jonathan Klein sought to deflect criticism by obfuscating. Clearly, despite the fact that even CNN is convinced that there's a legitimate Obama birth certificate in Hawaii, Dobbs kept the story going.

On CNN, Dobbs repeatedly made comments like, "There are questions here, folks. Questions that could be easily resolved if only the president would produce a copy of his birth certificate, a copy other than the one he already released."

What? As CNN itself reported, Hawaii's health department went paperless in 2001; all birth records from 1908 on were put into electronic files. Including Obama's. The proof is there; Dobbs just refused to admit it.

Let's not forget that Dobbs has a history of making unfounded charges on CNN.

Three years ago, without any sort of documentation, Dobbs told viewers that the LDS Church was encouraging Mexican Mormons to immigrate to Utah "irrespective of the cost to taxpayers."

"I was just struck by the idea that The Church of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church, seems to be looking south just as avidly and aggressively as the Catholic Church to add to a few folks to those pews," Dobbs said.

He was irresponsible then; he's irresponsible now. And irresponsible is a polite way of saying he's a nutcase.

Dobbs did what nutcases always do. He misrepresented reality and attacked those who dared question him.

"The left-wing media has attacked me because I simply asked the question," he said on the air.

That's baloney. He was criticized because he kept a non-story alive. Because, in the face of indisputable evidence that he was wrong, he continued to question and criticize.

Klein himself sent out a memo to Dobbs' staff that read, in part, "It seems this story is dead — because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef."

But that didn't stop him from defending Dobbs' indefensible behavior.

"You know, there are two strands to this story. There are the facts and then there (is) the flap, right? And what Lou and everybody else at CNN has done is very clearly report and run down the facts," Klein told TV critics. "There is no doubt, according to the State of Hawaii, that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. And Lou Dobbs himself has repeated that over and over and over again."

And Lou Dobbs has questioned Obama's birth over and over and over again, which Klein conveniently ignored.