Have Kansas Officials Lost Their Minds ?

All I can figure is that certain state officials in the state of Kansas have lost their damn minds! The Kansas State Objections Board (compromised of Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Attorney General Derek Schmidt, and Lt. Governor Jeff Colyer -- all Republicans) has decided it isn't sure that President Obama qualifies to be on the ballot in Kansas. This board is the body that makes decisions on whether people should remain or be removed from the ballot in Kansas, and they are reacting to a complaint from a single citizen in Manhattan -- a birther who thinks the president wasn't born in the United States.

This board should have immediately rejected this bogus and ridiculous claim, but they didn't. Instead, they have delayed their decision on whether President Obama should be removed from the Kansas ballot (leaving the Democrats with no presidential candidate in that state). They say they don't have enough information, and have sent requests to Hawaii, Arizona(?), and Mississippi(?) to "secure copies of the president's birth records". They have done this in spite of the following facts:

* The president has released both short and long forms of his official birth certificates.

* Hawaiian state officials have all stated those birth certificates are correct, and the president was indeed born in their state.

* The president's birth in Hawaii has been verified by Hawaiian newspapers at the time of the birth, and by doctors and nurses who were present at the birth.

* All "birther" court cases claiming the president was not born in the U.S. have been rejected by federal courts, and none of them have been accepted on appeal by the Supreme Court of the United States.

* The president's family (especially his grandmother and great-grandparents) have established roots in the state of Kansas -- the very state that now doubts his citizenship.

* Mr. Obama has now completed over three and a half years as president of the United States.

Add to this the fact that there is almost no chance of President Obama actually carrying the state of Kansas this November (a snowball probably has a better chance of surviving a summer in the Mojave Desert), and I have to wonder why these state officials are even bothering with the ludicrous objection from the Manhattan "birther". It simply makes no sense.

Have the teabaggers gained such a chokehold on the Kansas Republican Party that they can now force Republican state officials to do stupid and ridiculous things? Or have these officials just lost their damn minds? Either way, it's a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party -- in Kansas and in the nation as a whole.