BartBlog

The right-wing hoopla about Obama’s birth certificate is ridiculous. I’m not sure whether or not I have seen Obama’s birth certificate posted on the site, so I am posting this old news because these images may be of use to you in the future.

You may want to fact-check this, but if I recall correctly, the state of Hawaii has legislation prohibiting the release of certain original documents in order to safeguard record-keeping. Only copies of the originals can be released, and to protect against identity theft, copies of birth certificates can only be released to the person named on the certificate. In June ’08 the Obama campaign released this:

And yes, as per Hawaii state statutes, it is a copy that was reproduced in June 2007 (which explains the modern typeface), but it is also “prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.” The date/signature stamp and embossed seal is not visible in the photo on Obama’s campaign site because it is on the reverse side of the certificate.

Alvin T. Onaka’s signature stamp

The raised seal

Certificate number

Blowup of text

The freepers have claimed that this certificate is a “horrible forgery,” but have yet to produce any evidence to back that claim up. Their approach, straight out of the Nazi playbook, is to make continual accusations and demand that the accused prove their innocence. They hope that simply by repeating a claim often enough, useful idiots will come to believe it. But here in the United States, we follow the principle that the accuser must prove the accused guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. What that means is that when Barack Obama is accused of fraud, it is they who are required to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, we as citizens are obligated to ignore such baseless accusations. Furthermore, since it is a copy that was reproduced from the original long form, that may make it a “forgery” technically speaking, but regardless of copy quality, it is certainly not a forgery by any legal definition. That makes their point as moot and irrelevant as right-wing ideology. Another thing that makes it irrelevant is that under U.S. law, Barack Obama, even if born outside the U.S., is a U.S. citizen. His mother was born and raised in Kansas and met Obama’s father while both of them were attending the University of Hawaii. Because Barack’s mother was a citizen and had lived at least ten years of her life inside the U.S. prior to giving birth, Obama is a U.S. citizen no matter where he was born.

Here’s what an original “long form” birth certificate from Hawaii circa 1961 would actually look like:

The LA Times looked into this:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/obama-birth.html

Media matters and FactCheck.org also looked into it:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200810230020?f=h_popular
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

Even the wing-nut conservative WorldNetDaily looked into it and agreed it is authentic, although the link to that is now dead.

While Hillary was still in the running, Lori Starfelt, a member of the PUMA movement in the Democratic Party opposed to Obama’s nomination, nevertheless found a birth announcement in an August 1961 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser. Hawaii has two major newspapers, the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star Bulletin. BOTH newspapers include birth announcements, and pages found in the archives of BOTH newspapers record the August 4th, 1961 birth of Barack Obama.

What more do these wing-nuts need…besides a dose of common sense? Does anyone really think that Hillary’s and McCain’s campaigns, the DNC and every other organization either for or against Obama in the election failed to look into this? Or that there was some grand conspiracy by Obama’s parents to smuggle a newborn baby from Kenya into Honolulu to obtain a birth certificate and birth announcements? What is lacking in that story is motive. It’s not like Obama was born with a presidential seal on his scalp and his parents knew back then that Barack needed to be “Natural Born.” Why bother with such a deception, which includes a very risky flight half way around the world with a newborn baby? None of it makes any sense on many different levels.

This is just another example of an attempt by the right-wing to stoke resentment in its minions by playing the race card, and to obstruct the new administration…just like the Nazis did with the Weimar Republic.

Additional Reference:

Micheal Rivero at http://whatreallyhappened.com/