Oprah to Obama on the Birth Certificate: What Took You So Long?

Hours after gravely intoning that the nation could ill-afford to waste any more time discussing the (admitted) "silliness" of birtherism, President Obama appeared on Oprah, where he and Michelle yukked it up about, er, the silliness of birtherism. To her credit, Oprah asked the president a question that Tipsheet readers may find familiar: Why now?

The president laughed off the question before repeating his dubious "I-want-people-to-focus-on-the-budget" claim. As I suggested yesterday, if he were being totally honest, he'd likely have proffered a variation of his surprisingly frank self-assessment on his Senate vote against raising the debt ceiling: It was all about politics.