Let’s talk about diplomatic immunity. There seem to be a small group of loud people who have no idea at all what diplomatic immunity is. For example:

“Is Obama thumbing his nose at Americans who want to see his birth certificate because he knows his back is covered by UN diplomatic immunity?”

It’s a comment from a Birther, of course. See, if Obama isn’t a citizen of the US, then he’s a foreign citizen, and therefore he can do any illegal thing he wants to do, because diplomatic immunity will get him off the hook … or so the argument goes. What they fail to observe is that even in some alternate universe where Obama actually is a foreign born citizen –the universe we do not live in– he would still just be a foreign citizen and not a foreign diplomat. Obama, in this alternate universe, would be no kind of diplomat at all.

In order to be considered a diplomat of a foreign country, and eligible for diplomatic immunity, a foreign country would have to recognize him as one of their diplomats (for which there are, of course, a stack of rules). Well, he’s not a foreign ambassador or any such thing, is he? Even in the alternative crazyland of the Birthers, no one is suggesting Kenya or Great Britain consider him one of their diplomats and recognize him as such (or would even consider doing so). Thus diplomatic immunity wouldn’t do anything to save him from repercussions due to illegal activities. The US puts foreign nationals in prison for crimes all the time.

Furthermore, diplomatic immunity doesn’t really save someone from truly criminal wrong-doing. We don’t live in the movies. Lethal Weapon II was fiction.

We also don’t live in the above-mentioned alternate universe. In this universe, Obama is an American citizen, and he is the President of the United States of America.

EXTRA NOTE: The day the latest fake Obama birth certificate was totally debunked, I told Lin I bet the Birthers would start arguing the birth Australian certificate from which it was forged was actually the forgery. I always do hate to be right about these kinds of things, but it’s true there are still people arguing for the veracity of the latest forged Obama birth certificate, and one of the loudest arguments is the Australian “original” is actually the fake.