Born in the U.S.A.

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Analysis Since we first wrote about Obama's birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.

Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?

Doocy: What do you mean they have a "false birth certificate" on their Web site?

Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.

Corsi: No, it's a -- there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.

Corsi isn't the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:

The birth certificate doesn't have a raised seal. It isn't signed. No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.

In the zoomed-in view, there's a strange halo around the letters. The certificate number is blacked out. The date bleeding through from the back seems to say "2007," but the document wasn't released until 2008. The document is a "certification of birth," not a "certificate of birth."

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.

You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven't been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: "[We] couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world." The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.

Blowup of certificate number Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama's information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn't have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible "scenario" without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.

We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn't meet the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."

We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: "It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over."

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.

Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

–by Jess Henig, with Joe Miller Sources United States Department of State. "Application for a U.S. Passport." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

State of Hawaii Department of Health. "Request for Certified Copy of Birth Record." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

Hollyfield, Amy. "Obama's Birth Certificate: Final Chapter." Politifact.com. 27 Jun. 2008.

From my experience, factcheck.org really is pretty non-partisan.

You must have forgotten this episode in the life of Dan Rather:

Update on Bush's Guard Sevice: New Evidence of Preferential Treatment

September 9, 2004

(NOTE: This update was withdrawn Sept. 10 due to serious questions that emerged regarding the authenticity of the Killian memos released by CBS News.)

And, one has to wonder why did they didn’t use a high-resolution flat-plate scanner, rather than taking a photo of it lying on a desk.
***Because then some real experts would be all over it.

And of course, since they knew that he was going to be the presidential nominee in 2008,
***His mother was just into establishing citizenship, like lots of other illegal alien kiddies across the nation.

If she was in Kenya, how did she get the hospital in Hawaii to list the birth in its report to the newspaper?

44 posted on 08/21/2008 7:58:00 PM PDT by MindBender26 (Leftists stop arguing when they see your patriotism, your logic, your CAR-15 and your block of C4.)

Well Hillary says welcome to the 2008 Denver Convention Surprise. Yes, Bill let the secret out of the bag on August 3, 2008 when he made the comment while traveling in Africa about being constitutionaly eligible to run for President.

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Now we know that the Proud African newspaper in Houston had the headlines right when they proclaimed June 12th, 2008 that you were Kenyan born! Why did they make that claim?

Is there some truth to their claim? Fess up Barack.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Not convincing. Annennberg is a liberal organization. They are the ones who won’t release the evidence about Obama’s connections with Ayers.

Whether Obama was born in Kenya or Canada or elsewhere, or there is something else he is trying to hide (parents unmarried, different name, etc.), the COLB is not a reflection of the true history of Obama’s birth. And that is the information we need.

If Obama is elected President and is unable to serve, his VP (Biden?) will become POTUS. How will the American people feel when a third or fourth tier candidate becomes president through the fraudulent acts of Obama and the Democrat Party?

Well, since you ask what Polarik would do, the first thing is to tear their freakin photos to shreds, and show them what Bozos they are for being fully complicit in a fraud.

Oh, my! Did they just shoot themselves in the foot. No, make that they shot themselves in the butt. There are SO-O-O many thing wrong with that COLB photo, which I also happen to have -- that is, I have both photos and original scans of two 2007 COLBS that were pinted in the same time period.

They are dead meat.

That really does pretty much settle the whole “it’s a forgery!” claim. Only people hanging onto that belief are the right’s version of 9-11 troofers...

Just thr opposite. They provided a lot more proof that their scanned image is totally bogus.

If she was in Kenya, how did she get the hospital in Hawaii to list the birth in its report to the newspaper?
***A phone call or A proud gramma or a bottle of wine to the desk reporter, or a few other approaches. Obama’s campaign didn’t put the birth announcement from the newspaper on the fight-the-smears website as proof of his eligibility, so that information isn’t in play. It does contribute to the overall evidence, but it is not what is at issue.

I look forward to your report.

Don’t forget my suggestion about writing a book. You get to make money off this whole melodrama when all is said & done.

Hey, if these particular facts are “pro-Obama,” then that’s just the way it is. From my experience, factcheck.org really is pretty non-partisan. If they’d have found facts that were “anti-Obaman,” they’d have published those.

IOW, “pro” or “anti” don’t change the facts... You're right. It don't change the facts that they published a forgery for two months.

Don’t forget my suggestion about writing a book. You get to make money off this whole melodrama when all is said & done.

Thanks, Kevmo. I might just do that, and I'll add some acknowledgments for folks like you.

Polarik will never see the “original” document. Actually, Kevmo, the photos will do just nicely since this week I got not only two scans of 2007 COLBs comtemporary with Obama's forged COLB, AND a digital photo of it as well.

There are so many things wrong with it. The position of the signature stamp relative to the seal. The position of the date stamp relative to the other two.

And REAL 2007 COLB borders that prove the Obama COLB borders were added as the last piece of the puzzle. The photo, and the scan I have totally blow away any argument that the borders in the COLb image are real.

Of course, if Polarik got a look at the original evidence and could compare it to the scanned in version, I’m willing to bet the two documents wouldn’t be a match. That’s why we don’t see a scanned in version of the document the factcheck guys are holding.

Well, I don’t know what to do from here. It is something beyond our capabilities unless that lawsuit bears some fruit. The fact remains that what is up on the fightthesmears website is a most likely a forgery.

Try an "etched in stone" forgery.

Tomorrow, I'm blowing the lid off this latest subterfuge.

I'm taking no prisoners.

Any of you guys ever go on a snipe hunt.

This is one big Obama-organized shipe hunt.

Stop, take 20 deep breaths, stop and think!

Millions were spent on opo research. Any candidate running against him early on would have dropped the bomb.

Finaly, does anyone have any idea how just plain stupid this entire line sounds?

57 posted on 08/21/2008 9:51:01 PM PDT by MindBender26 (Leftists stop arguing when they see your patriotism, your logic, your CAR-15 and your block of C4.)

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“Of course, it’s distantly possible that Obama’s grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

I'm going to b*tch-slap those smug faces right off of them.

And there is a sharp fold in the document that didn't show up in the scan. But, it does have the weird mis-alignment of the borders in the four corners.

Woese than that, its borders do not have the wierd sh*t that the borders in the scanned image has. Not even closes.

The Seal and signature block were NEVER one on top of the other.

I think most of what you wrote there is correct, but you are incorrect when you say that “settled law” would deem Obama to be a natural-born citizen if he was born in Kenya. Obama’s father was a foreigner, and his mother a U.S. citizen, and under the law in place at the time of Obama’s birth a person born outside of the U.S. to one American parent and one foreign parent was a citizen at birth only if the American parent had resided in the U.S. for at least 10 years and at least 5 of which were after the age of 14; since Ann Dunham was 18 at the time of Obama’s birth, she couldn’t have resided in the U.S. for 5 years after the age of 14, so if Obama was not born in U.S. territory he would not have been a U.S. citizen at birth.

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