“Today’s action doesn’t solve this issue,” Marco Ciavolino, a staffer at the Terry Lakin Action Fund, told the Colorado Independent in response to news that President Obama released an image of his “long-form” birth certificate today. “The first thing is, you know, why did the president wait so long to release this birth certificate? The other immediate thing is that there is no physical copy to inspect, so far. It’s just a pdf. So here we go again,” he said, laughing. “It’s really not that hard.”

Greeley native and former Army doctor Terry Lakin made a splash last year when he said he would refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan until he was presented convincing evidence, including the alleged missing long-form birth certificate, demonstrating that Obama was born in Hawaii. Lakin was the highest ranking member of the active-duty military to subscribe to the so-called birther conspiracy, which holds that the birth records of the president are illegitimate or have been falsified.

Shortly after he declared his intentions to the press, Lakin was met at the Pentagon clinic where he worked by officers who read him his rights and revoked his access to the building. Military investigators also reportedly seized his computer. Lakin was later court martialed, dismissed from the service without pay or benefits and sentenced to six months at the Leavenworth brig.

Lakin has a child and wife who visit him in prison. The Lakin Fund posts a diary Lakin writes of his life in Leavenworth and his continuing belief that Obama has been less than forthright about his citizenship.

Commentators like Colorado conservative talk radio host Peter Boyles see Lakin as an American hero in search of the truth. Others see his story as a contemporary American tragedy, where a military medal winner has thrown away a distinguished career, hypnotized by the anti-Obama theories that have cropped up and been repeated endlessly on the right since Obama took office, including that the president is a closet Muslim and that he was born in Kenya.

In recent weeks, birther speculation has flared again, fueled by the proto-presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who has rehashed the arguments at high-profile media outlets.

Obama said media coverage of birtherism generated by Trump and apparently irresistible to political reporters spurred him to request his birth certificate this month and to post it online. He said the nation faced real challenges but was being distracted by “sideshows and carnival barkers.”

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he said. “We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do.”

Few, including the president, believe the release of the certificate will end the debate, especially among true believers like Lakin who have invested so much in the theory.

“I’m hearing that there are some anomalies on this birth certificate,” Ciavolino said today. “I’m waiting for our people to weigh in and then we’ll post something on the site.

“The main thing is, even if this birth certificate is legitimate, it doesn’t address the question about whether [Obama] is a natural-born citizen of the United States. This is about the Constitution. The Constitutional question has never been addressed by the courts.”

Although the term “natural born citizen” is not specifically defined in the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution states that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen.

Ciavolino points to the views expressed by Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama for the Illinois Senate and who argues that some of the Founding Fathers thought the term “natural-born” meant that two parents would have had to be citizens. Keyes will not be satisfied, he said, until the matter is decided in court.

“You go to court and present the evidence. There is an issue of law as well as fact…. You present the evidence, then a determination can be made…The American people want to see the Constitution respected, want them to go through the steps required and look at all the evidence and all the arguments and come to an authoritative judgment, not one that’s all piecemeal, where judges say it’s been Twittered about or politicians declaim or celebrity figures like Trump come out. That is not suitable.”

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The Taking America Back conference is scheduled to take place in Miami in September.

Americans have a choice to make, is the general idea. Voters must choose between “the world of standards and morality, self-government and accountability to God” on the one hand or on the other “the world of tyranny and ever-changing moral codes enforced by government.”

WorldNetDaily managing editor David Kupelian, author of the essay “Why I care about the Obama eligibility issue,” is scheduled to speak as is World Net Daily founder Joseph Farah. The latter has been a major source in pushing the birther argument and extensively plugged Corsi’s book, Obama Nation, which questions the legality of the Obama presidency.

Other Farah employees sheduled to speak at the conference include Floyd Brown, who says there’s no proof Obama was born in the the country, and Aaron Klein, who has also written a book questioning the legitimacy of the Obama presidency.

Also invited is Gary DeMar, president of religious right group American Vision. DeMar believes there are questions about Obama’s birth that need clearing up but “even more important,” he has written, is “for [the president] to demonstrate his constitutional loyalty to a nation built on Christian principles.”

Perennial senate and presidential candidate Alan Keyes refuses to refer to Obama as “president” and has filed a suit to gain access to Obama’s birth certificate.

Tancredo made waves among the birther movement and its detractors months ago when he flippantly said we could “Send Obama back to Kenya.”

Only one speaker on the list, Ann Coulter, has gone on record dismissing birtherism. She called the movement’s proponents “cranks”. It may be a long conference for Coulter.

[Original version reported and written by Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Independent.]

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Organizer Michael O’Fallon told CNN the cruise is a chance to “talk politics in paradise.”

“Right now people are wanting to be with other conservatives. Maybe they think they are on an island [already],” O’Fallon said.

Keyes told CNN that the Tea Party was gaining steam because it offers a new option. The whole party system is failing, he said.

Mary Beth Brown, an activist who is calling on the country to impeach the President was one of the featured cruise speakers: “I know all of us need some encouragement to fight this battle, against Obama, who is trying to destroy America. And I know all of you love America and are fellow patriots.”

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RH Reality Check’s correspondent Kay Steiger attended the conference — timed to coincide with Barack Obama’s inauguration — and caught up with Burton about the “egg as a person” legal movement at the aptly named Liaison Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington, D.C.

That, of course, came after listening to former ambassador and perennial paleoconservative political candidate Alan Keyes bloviate for 57 minutes on biblical themes with little mention of the anti-abortion movement.

Since the ballot measure’s crushing 3-to-1 loss in November, Burton appears to have taken those hard-fought lessons to heart for her next expected go-around with voters.

She urged the pro-life movement to begin to hire political consultants, analyze polling data, and raise more money. This, she admits, comes from her active work with the Republican Party. She noted that the personhood movement often doesn’t get support from mainstream Republicans, pointing to the Republican Senate candidate in Colorado, Bob Schaffer, who came out against the personhood amendment despite identifying as pro-life. “Politicians and pro-lifers don’t really get along that well,” Burton said.

Most of all, she noted, the movement needs to unify. “Do you ever see NARAL, Planned Parenthood or NOW fighting against each other? No, because they have one goal and they don’t really care about anything but their goal,” Burton said.

But then things get muddy, as they did during the campaign season, about just what legal rights for fertilized eggs would mean.

Burton wants conservative activists to adopt the personhood campaign’s framework in their legislative efforts to prohibit stem cell research, eliminate emergency contraception, promote informed consent, and criminalize “fetal homicide.” But she steadfastly denies that Amendment 48 would have expressly affected such issues.

“The personhood amendment was a definition,” explained Burton, who is enrolled in a non-accredited Bible-based online law school. “What it said was that in the future, when our courts and our legislators are considering laws relating to those kind of things — I mean in Colorado there isn’t even a law on birth control, so how a definition can affect a law that doesn’t exist, I’m not sure.”

Except there are state laws on contraception among other reproductive health services.

Maybe it’s time to hit the law books again.

“Their relationship,” said Davis, “goes back to [former Colorado Congressman] Bob Beauprez’s race for governor, when Romney was the chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association and had occasion to be with Owens’ operation and be with Bob Beauprez. Clearly he impressed them early on.”

Romney has raised more money than any Republican candidate in Colorado – $848,840, ranking third in the money race behind Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Here are just a few of Romney’s high-profile Colorado benefactors: