[Mr. Know It All]

FALSE - Walter Annenberg died on October 1, 2002. FactCheck.org was not created until September 29, 2003.

I stand corrected. Nevertheless, I don't doubt FactCheck's sincerity, nor their overall credibility. Can I argue with some of their findings? Sure. Do I think they'd present a fake document? No.

Factcheck.org credibility in question: They swapped out their high quality photo images for low-quality ones, while claiming, all the while, that "nothing was ever done to the original photos."

That would certainly explain the prominent JPEG artifacts. They obviously increased the compression after their servers were swamped with downloads. Looked like they saved a ton of bandwidth. I would have done the same thing if my servers were overloaded.

The original images have been archived and are available elsewhere. Do the higher resolution images show things that the lower resolution images do not? If they were trying to cover something up, they did a pretty awful job of it by releasing the higher-quality images in the first place.

You see, this kind of bizarre claim is the hallmark of a conspiracy theory.

Anyway, I've said what I have to say on the subject, so you folks can choose to do as you please. I'm going to go watch "Iron Man" on DVD with Mrs. Know It All.

[Brian S. Fitzgerald]

The hand-held certificate pictured at the factcheck site has been printed recently, like a college transcript. The digital records of Obama's birth are in the state of Hawaii archives. That sheet of paper is not from 1961.

Is there a link to another image that purports to be from 1961 that we are discussing?

If Obama's parents simply registered the birth with Hawaii, there might be no hospital record. But we are told he was born in a hospital.