Barack Obama speaks at the White House. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty

It's not because the president is black, of course.

It's because those upstanding Americans who cheered as Barack Obama's predecessor rode roughshod over the constitution in his war on terror have found a new enthusiasm for a strict adherence to the US's supreme law. Specifically they're interested in a clause requiring the president to be born a natural born citizen (although that doesn't mean to say they're not still worried about Obama also being a secret Muslim).

A long brewing conspiracy theory has it that Barack Obama entered this world as a subject of the British crown in East Africa because his father was Kenyan. A Hawaii birth certificate and birth notices in the Honolulu press went some way to dampen down the feverish speculation when it first emerged during Obama's election campaign, driven by a handful of rightwingers who helped scupper John Kerry's bid for president.

But now the issue has returned with a vengeance driven in part by a high profile CNN presenter, rightwing talk radio and a video of a woman haranguing her Republican member of congress prompting her supporters to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Now members of congress are sponsoring a bill to require all future presidential candidates to show their birth certificates.

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