Fox News is apparently realizing that the 99.99% (or more) of those in the tea parties who engage in hyperbole, conspiracy theories, or just general lunacy are making the other 0.01% (to be generous) look bad. So, Cristina Corbin offers "Tea Party Rallies Remain a Cauldron for Conspiracy Theories" (link). In her quest to distance the partiers from fringe ideas, she gets her facts wrong:

Other Tea Party members continue to question the president's citizenship -- a sign reading "Show Us Your Birth Certificate" popped up at a recent rally in Traverse City, Mich.

"What's more disturbing is that he's not answering them," Tea Party member and conservative blogger Andrea Shay King said of the questions over Obama's birthplace.

The Hawaiian government twice confirmed during the 2008 presidential election that a copy of Obama's birth certificate was authentic. Factcheck.org tracked down the birth certificate and posted copies of it online.

See the Obama citizenship page for the facts. Hawaii has released two statements, one on 10/31/08 and the other on 7/27/09. The second, of course, was after the election and not before as Corbin states. Further, her use of "copy" is highly misleading since Hawaii admits that they never authenticated the picture shown on Obama's website (or shown by FactCheck). And, her use of "tracked down" is problematic since they were supposedly shown the certificate by the Obama campaign at their campaign office in Chicago, and that was after having been invited there. What they posted online also wasn't a "certificate" but a "certification of live birth" or COLB.

If you're going to claim that concerns over this issue are a "conspiracy theory", at least try to get simple facts right.