Here is the YouTube video of Cucinelli being asked about it:

and the transcript, as provided by Not Larry Sabato:

Q What can we do about Obama and the birth certificate thing? Cooch: It will get tested in my view when someone... when he signs a law, and someone is convicted of violating it and one of their defenses will be it is not a law because someone qualified to be President didn’t sign it. Q: Is that something you can do as Attorney General? Can you do that or something? Cooch: Well only if there is a conflict where we are suing the federal government for a law they’ve passed. So it’s possible. Q: Because we are talking about the possibility that he was not born in America. Cooch: Right. But at the same time under Rule 11, Federal Rule 11, we gotta have proof of it. Q: How can we get proof? Cooch: Well... that’s a good question. Not one I’ve thought a lot about because it hasn’t been part of my campaign. Someone is going to have to come forward with nailed down testimony that he was born in place B, wherever that is. You know, the speculation is Kenya. And that doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. [Emphasis addedby me. NLS had other parts bolded as well.]

Short diary. Words fail me. The chief legal enforcement officer of the State of Virginia is questioning the legality of any and all actions taken by the President of the United States, using a hare-brained, off-the-wall, thoroughly discredited and debunked piece of garbage as his justification.

At least since Clinton, and possibly since Carter, Republicans have had trouble with the notion than anyone other than a Republican should be allowed to run the country. They never accepted Clinton's legitimacy, and rooted around for years looking for something, anything, that they could use to kick him out of office (since, obviously, the usual route of voting him out of office wasn't going to work), and finally settled on the ludicrous notion of impeaching him for lying about having sex.

Obama is faithful to Michele, so that's not going to work this time. In fact, he is legally so squeaky clean on all counts that it's almost embarrassing. And he got a huge majority in both popular and electoral votes. His invulnerability to any legitimate challenge has driven the Republicans both to distraction and despair, and forced them to come up with insane, off-the-wall, inventions that only a deluded paranoid could possibly conceive of as having any validity.

Which makes the Virginia attorney general either a deluded paranoid, or - more likely - a cynical politician willing to tear the country apart in order to get the votes of deluded paranoids.

Okay, words didn't fail me.

Update [2010-3-15 16:52:28 by DanK Is Back]: In a statement reported by TPM, Cucinelli says "he absolutely believes" Pbama was born in the United States and that his audio-taped remarks earlier (between his election and his swearing-in) were purely hypothetical:

"I absolutely believe that President Obama was born in the United States. I don't buy into the claims that he wasn't. On the recording, I was asked a hypothetical legal question, and I gave a hypothetical legal answer in response," Cuccinelli said in a press release this afternoon.

Sorry, that doesn't cut it. An elected official, especially a high-ranking and high-profile one, has a responsibility to the facts, to the truth, and to respect for the institutions of government. Even as a hypothetical, such talk encourages sedition.