My Take On The Obama Birth Certificate Controversy

When stories first began to break in October 2008 about a lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania by a former Hillary Clinton supporter questioning Obama's citizenship and asking him to provide an original copy of his birth certificate, I paid it little mind.

When similar lawsuits popped up in a dozen other states in the days leading up to and following the 2008 election, I started to take a casual interest in the affair. Still, I did not expect much to come of it.

When I made a passing reference to the controversy while blogging on the night of the election and promptly received the first negative comment in the then five month history of my blog, I was amused.

When I saw how the Obama campaign - and later the Obama administration - responded to the brewing controversy, and saw how fanatically devoted Obama supporters were to discouraging inquiries into the circumstances of Obama's birth (and shouting down the inquiries that did arise), I started to seriously wonder if something was amiss.

When I repeatedly commented about the difference between a long-form birth certificate - such as this 1963 Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth which lists the hospital where the birth took place and the name of the attending physician - and the short form Certification of Live Birth provided by the Obama campaign (which does not list the hospital of birth or the name of the attending physician), only to be answered by Obama supporters who invariably ignored the distinction and sent me links to either Obama's FightTheSmears.com website (since taken down) or the FactCheck.org article that supposedly dispels the rumor (without adequately addressing the distinction made above), I began to realize that the Obama camp really, really wanted this issue to go away.

Any parent with a shred of common sense knows the telltale signs that their child is hiding something, even if the parent does not necessarily know what is being hidden. Any parent with a shred of common sense also knows when their child is making a partial concession to a demand for the truth - by revealing non-incriminating or partially incriminating information - in the hopes that the parent will not inquire into the matter any further.

The fact is, I did not take the birth certificate controversy seriously until I saw the lengths the Obama administration had gone to to avoid releasing the long form birth certificate which lists the hospital where he was born and the name of the attending physician. The Obama camp contested the original Pennsylvania lawsuit, and continues to actively fight the myriad of lawsuits that have arisen in other states asking for the same information. And recently, an Army Reserve Major by the name of Stefan Frederick Cook filed a lawsuit contesting his deployment orders to Afghanistan on the grounds that Obama lacks the standing to issue such an order because he has never provided incontrovertible proof of his U.S. citizenship. The day before the date set for the case to go court (July 16th), Major Cook's deployment orders were mysteriously canceled without any explanation being offered for such a highly irregular action. When it became clear that Major Cook and his attorney were going to press on with the lawsuit, the Department of Defense pressured Major Cook's private employer to fire him (the employer confirmed that the pressure came from the Department of Defense). The lawsuit has since been dismissed on the grounds that the original reason for the lawsuit - Major Cook's imminent deployment - was no longer at issue.

I want to be clear about something, for the sake of anyone who decides to draw attention away from the main point of this blog post by starting a comment thread with a tit-for-tat breakdown of whether or not Barack Obama was born in Kenya or Hawaii and what is or is not Hawaii law. My contention with this controversy boils down to one point, and one point only: Obama can make this entire controversy go away by producing an original copy of the long form birth certificate, showing the name of the hospital and the name of the attending physician who delivered baby Barack. Not the Certification of Live Birth document that has been circulating for nearly two years and which lacks the name of the hospital where he was born and the name of the attending physician who delivered him, but the actual long form Certificate of Live Birth. If he produces this document, and it proves he was born in Hawaii, then I will be satisfied and let the matter rest. Until he produces this document, and stops wasting massive amounts of taxpayer dollars resisting all efforts to publicly disclose this document, I will question what Barack Hussein Obama II and those serving in his administration have to hide. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald