The Allegation That Won't Go Away

During the election cycle the charge emerged that Barack Obama was not actually a citizen of the United States. At the time I looked into it a little on the internet and it appeared to have little merit. The one nagging issue however, was the inept way that Obama was responding to the charge. That strange behavior has continued. Any ordinary person would expect that the production of a valid birth certificate would be no great problem. Instead the President has stone-walled, been evasive, presented legal resistance to reasonable demands that he prove he is a citizen. Since it is a constitutional requirement to hold the office to which he was elected, it is also rather strange that no definitive response has come from the other branches of the government. Why won't this go away? My mom taught me when I was growing up that if you keep seeing smoke there was probably a fire.

So which is it?