While I was away not much minding the store for the past couple of weeks, I find that the Obama birth certificate story has finally garnered a widespread level of MSM attention -- exclusively targeted at making it all go away, of course, along with anyone at all intrigued by it.
So I wrote this week's column (to come) about it, just in time for the president's August 4 birthday.
Meanwhile, I find a couple of fascinating new points have been added to the perplexing tale. One that I didn't know is the fact that Hawaiian state law makes birth certificates available for children born out of state, even out of country, so long as their parents claim Hawaii as their legal residence in the year prior to birth. I had heard, vaguely, from a State Department friend how Hawaii was known as a popular transit point through which foreign-posted Americans, for example, could sometimes "pick up paper" for their foreign-born children, but now we've got the statute. I believe this was unearthed by WND.com, which today has posted a story on what you might call a citizen-archivist named Parker Shannon. This 70-year-old retiree makes an interesting observation about the Internet-posted Obama birth document (links from the original):
Shannon also claims a widely circulated image of a Certification of Live Birth often touted by the White House and some members of the national media as proof Obama was born in Hawaii is a forgery.
He cites as just one example the use of the term "African" to describe the race of Obama's father on the COLB.
Parker Shannon of the Obama File says the use of the word "African" to denote the race of President Obama's father is evidence the Certification of Live Birth touted by the Obama camp is actually a forgery. |
"There is a narrow list of [acceptable] words, none of which are 'African,' which is what is on the Certification of Live Birth. Whatever [expletive deleted] liberal counterfeited the thing couldn't bring himself to say 'Negro.'"
WMD.com continues:
Indeed, a 1961 summary of U.S. vital statistics by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now known as Health and Human Services) indicates:
Births in the United States in 1961 are classified for vital statistics into white, Negro, American Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Aleut, Eskimo, Hawaiian and Part-Hawaiian (combined), and "other nonwhite." The category "white" includes, in addition to persons reported as "white," those reported as Mexican or Puerto Rican. With one exception, a reported mixture of Negro with any other race is included in the Negro group; other mixed parentage is classified according to the race of the nonwhite parent and mixtures of nonwhite races to the race of the father.
Many people remain unaware that someone doesn't even have to be born in Hawaii to receive a COLB, as those birth documents can be granted to children born out of state or even America.
To date, Obama has steadfastly refused to release his long-form hospital-generated birth certificate including details such as the name of his birth hospital and attending physician.
But his original birth certificate is not the only document at issue. WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.
Weird. At least. What is more perverse, of course, is the institutional, Right-to-Left, right-from-the-start, MSM incuriosity about any of this.