President Obama’s release of his birth certificate last week should finally end the silly controversy over his birth place.

Yeah, right.

Some people will never be satisfied, and they are already finding fault with the evidence submitted last week. Obama could have had Jesus himself attest to the authenticity of the certificate, and some people would still find a way to discredit it.

Nor do they even find it necessary to offer any real evidence, which is, of course, because there isn’t any real evidence that Obama was born anywhere but in Hawaii.

Consequently, they just have to fall back on pure nonsense. One birther, for example (I won’t dignify him by mentioning his name) said in response to the release that he still didn’t believe it, because the listing of Obama’s father’s race as “African” just “sounds like it would be written today, in the age of political correctness, and not in 1961.”

How’s that for reasonable evidence?

Then consider this bit of hypocrisy. After a couple of weeks of Donald Trump’s pounding on the subject of Obama’s birth certificate, a certain former vice-presidential candidate (I don’t think I need to mention her name) blamed Obama for using the issue to take attention away from more important issues. Other Republican leaders also chimed in to criticize the president on the issue.

What planet are these people living on, and how can they say stuff like that without blushing in shame?

These Republicans are the same people, after all, who either sympathized with the birthers or didn’t have the spine to state openly and emphatically that the whole birth certificate controversy was nonsense. Had they done that, last week’s action wouldn’t have been necessary, and there wouldn’t be a story.

Speaking of Mr. Trump, I noticed that one of the featured speakers at the recent Tea Party celebration in Cody thinks Mr. Trump should be our next president. Given that Mr. Trump has declared corporate bankruptcy four times, has called himself both pro-choice and pro-life at different times and once declared that we “must have universal health care,” it sort of makes you wonder if Tea Party supporters are a bit confused about just what they stand for.

That confusion seems to extend to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was in the news recently whining that President Obama was ignoring his state.

Specifically, Perry was complaining that the feds weren’t coming to the aid of his state, which has been experiencing a severe drought and some disastrous fires.

Now normally, that might be a valid complaint — although the state has received considerable help and money from the Forest Service to fight the fires — except for one thing. It wasn’t that long ago that Perry was declaring that Texas didn’t need the federal government. He wrote a book about fighting to save America from Washington, and even hinted that Texas would be justified in seceding from the United States.

Well, I guess it’s a good thing the governor didn’t follow through on the idea about seceding. At least it’s a good thing for Texas; I’m not sure about the rest of us.

All of this simply shows that political hypocrisy and cluelessness is still in fashion, and if President Obama thought releasing his birth certificate would end silly debates, he was dreaming.

The sillies are still out there, and their season is just beginning.