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I surmise that Abercrombie, who has promoted the hoax, attempted to get Dr. Palafox to fabricate a phony certificate of live birth and present it as the original long-form COLB. However, honest man of integrity that Dr. Palafox is, he would have nothing to do with such Chicago-style antics. Hence, the only sensible thing he could do is to withdraw his nomination.

I do not think it needs to go this far. Abercrombie seems to me to have bumped into the controversy when he supported Obama for president based in part on some sort of state affinity and then followed through by reading the letter to Kalipoli Hospital allegedly from Obama claiming that Obama was born at Kalipoli in January 2009. In retrospect it seems apparent that Abercrombie was trying to get a share of the Obama limelight with his local constituents. This seemed to work out well for both Abercrombie and Obama back then, but after Abercrombie became governor, the situation changed because he was now in a position to verify that the contents of the letter are accurate. Obama put him in the position of needing to verify it because the WH would not publicly validate the contents of the letter, leaving Abercrombie, in a logical sense, swinging in the breeze on the birth certificate issue.

Once Abercrombie became Governor, he therefore had a green light by virtue of his office and no red light -- effectively another green light -- from Obama to investigate and back his own earlier claims on behalf of Obama that Obama was born in Hawaii. Apparently Abercrombie gave it an honest try. Apparently he met some sort of difficulty-- either discovering something was missing, or wrong. This apparently surfaced in the press as a statutory block to reveal birth certificate details from the HDOH.

Abercrombie, now in a bind, backed off as well as he could manage without looking like a total fool. But the controversy only increased after he backed off his promise to clear the air. So another political solution acceptable to the Obama camp would have been to get the new HDOH Director to make some sort of announcement to the effect that Abercrombie was correct in his interpretation of the statute.

The only problem if this is true would have been that the HDOH Director would have do some of the political muckwork right off the bat as one of his first acts of office. If he assented, he would perhaps have had to compromise his integrity. If he declined, perhaps he would run the risk that he himself might become a political target by the Obama camp.

As events transpired, they fit the hypothesis that the latter conjecture happened, that the Obama camp was insufficiently pleased by Abercrombie's latest back-off and wanted a more politically convenient story told to the media and the public by Abercrombie's new HDOH Director, Palafox, and when Palafox refused to play ball, the Obama camp came up with anonymous rumors to threaten his good name. The scenario would continue that Palafox instead of taking directions from the Obama camp, simply refused, and when the allegations surfaced, simply resigned.

The guy is probably lucky to be alive given the stakes involved. Palafox bounced back by getting reappointed to his previous job. But that is more collateral damage for Abercrombie's state cabinet. Now Abercrombie has to find a person with compromisable principles who will fill the HDOH Director's office and be willing to play ball with the Obama camp in the sense of preserving the allegedly convenient untruth that Obama's birth certificate exists but is unavailable for public view by statute. If Palafox is a WYSIWYG type of guy, and slimeballs are a political risk to nominate for public office, Abercrombie has himself an ongoing public political hot potato, thanks to his naiive support for Obama (under the bus you go, Neil).

Complicating the situation is that the Hawaii Governor is the head of the Hawaii State Democratic Party, who is in charge of vetting candidates for local, state, and national offices in upcoming primaries. How can Abercrombie/HDP simultaneously claim that Obama is constitutionally qualified to run for president in the Democratic primary in 2012, and that Abercrombie/HDP cannot find or otherwise verify that Obama is born in Hawaii as Obama claims?

If Obama's MO is examined for answers, the phrase "never let a crisis go to waste" comes to immediate attention. So Hawaii could pass a candidate vetting law, but include a grandfather clause allowing exception to be made for incumbents such as Obama at the presidential primary level. All they would need would be the active cooperation of the Hawaii legislature (a given), and the Governor's signature. But that would once again put Abercrombie on the front line of any controversy about such a bill (and there would of course be controversy because the bill would in effect be selectively removing current law in order to permit Obama to continue towards re-election). This is Chicago politics implemented on a national scale. The presumption is that the local electorates will go for transparent political monkey business out in the open "just like in Chicago."

The difference, of course, is that this messiness is not just localized to Chicago any more, it may spread to every state that Obama needs to get elected (in effect, every state in the union, because he can't withstand the political fallout from failing to pass vetting in any holdout state such as Arizona). I suppose we'll get an answer one way or another when events unfold and history is eventually written by future events to come. Just how much 'skin' does Obama have in getting himself re-elected? Interesting times indeed...