Ken Berwitz

Let me preface this with a couple of things I have said over and over and over again:

-I do not claim to know whether or not Barack Obama is legally eligible to be President of the United States.

-I do claim that when someone can prove his eligibility with virtually no effort or cost by producing his birth certificate, but instead expends a huge amount of both to prevent anyone from seeing it, or his college records or his school enrollment information, the single most logical reason is that there are one or more things on those documents that he does not want us to see. 

A lot of people I respect a great deal are petitioning for so-called "birthers" to move on.  From a purely practical perspective I don't blame them either.  I cannot forsee a way Barack Obama will be ousted as President (it would turn this country upside down in two seconds flat).  Plus, since people who question his eligibility have been so completely demonized in every possible way over the past year, they are going to be seen as unreconstructed nutcakes no matter how factual and logical their arguments are.

One such petitioner is Charles Johnson at www.littlegreenfootballs.com. 

Readers of this blog know my respect level for Mr. Johnson, by the number of times I use his material.  Not surprisingly, he and I agree on most issues.

But Charles is one of the people who demand that the eligibility issue be dropped.  He has gone from simply believing Barack Obama is a natural citizen, to ridiculing the people who think otherwise, to an almost pathological fervor against any mention of the possibility that Mr. Obama is not eligible to be President. 

Charles disdainfully calls people who disagree with him "Nirthers" and refers to the document they are demanding to see as a "nirth certifikit" (I'm not exactly sure of what that means, since he often uses the term with a with a picture of a sea lion holding the "nirth certifikit", but I guess he does).

This brings us to his blog today. 

First let me show you what Charles put up.  If you have any trouble seeing the two documents it refers to, just click here:

Debunking a Corollary to the Nirth Certifikit Theory

Weird | Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:34:32 pm PDT

Even among people who accept that Barack Obama is a US citizen, a sort of “spinoff” idea keeps coming up in our discussions of the Nirther craziness: that Barack Obama “won’t release” his original birth certificate (some people refer to it as a “long form” certificate) because there’s something on it he wants to hide.

The two most common explanations suggested by LGF commenters for this “hidden info” are that the birth certificate: 1) lists Obama’s religion as “Muslim,” or 2) lists his race as “black” or “white” (both possibilities have been argued).

Here’s an image pointed out by LGF reader “keithgabryelski” that definitively debunks the Hidden Info corollary to the Nirth Certifikit Theory.

The image shows an original state of Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth” from 1962, posted at a site that provides information on obtaining passports, as an example of a valid birth certificate. It’s a reasonable assumption that the Hawaii birth certificate form didn’t change much (or at all) from August 1961 (when Barack Obama was born) to June 1962, and that Obama’s original birth certificate had the same information on it.

Note that there is no space on the form for any kind of religion, and no space for either the religion or the race of the baby, although the race of both parents is listed. (NOTE: Click the blank space to see the birth certificate.)

If you compare this to the officially stamped “Certification of Live Birth” for Barack Obama released by the Hawaii Health Department, you see that all of the vital information from the original form is indeed listed on the Obama document — both parents’ races included — and nothing important has been left out.

Status: debunked.

Fascinating.

As you can see, Charles' point is that a "Certification Of Live Birth (COLB) and an original birth certificate have a couple of pieces of the same vital information. 

Ok, as far as it goes.  But what about the rest of what is on the original birth certificate?  Charles says nothing has been left out. 

Baloney.

One of the key arguments Charles and others have made against the so-called "birthers" is that the COLB and the actual birth certificate are either one and the same (Chris Matthews loves to tell us as much, and he's far from the only one) or that it doesn't matter because both documents have the same information.

Oh yeah?  Well LOOK at them.  Notice that the original has the name of a hospital.  The name of the doctor.  The address of the parents.  Their occupations.  And maybe other stuff as well (you can check for yourself).

The COLB offered up by Barack Obama has none of this information. 

Wouldn't it be helpful to know what hospital Mr. Obama was born in?  He has claimed two different ones over the past several months.

Wouldn't it be helpful to find out the name of the Doctor who delivered Mr. Obama?  For all we know he might still be alive.  If he were, say, 35 then, he'd be only 82 now.  It certainly is feasible. 

One thing is sure;  no doctor has come forth to take credit for delivering a President of the USA.  Nor has any nurse, nor any administrative person nor any other hospital personnel right down to a 17 year old candy-striper who would be just 65 today.  Did they all die, every one of them? 

And I would especially love to see the address on his birth certificate, since no one can be found who remembers the Obamas living at the address in those fortuitous birth announcements we've been shown.  In fact, the only person I've heard of who did live there at the time - the next door neighbor, Beatrice Arakaki, who still lives there - has no remembrance of them at all.

Isn't information like that available for journalists who cared to know for sure?  Wouldn't it be easy to check public records and find out who lived at 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, in August, 1961, when Barack Obama was born?  Don't you wonder why no one (at least so far as we know) has bothered to check.  How remarkable. 

Regarding Ms. Arakaki, I suppose you could make the argument that it is unfair to expect her to remember an inconsequential couple who lived next door almost a half century ago.  But given the extremely unusual household - an 18 year old Caucasian female and an older Black African male - in a state with almost no Black population at the time (and only a very small one even now) - I think it is fair to assume Ms. Arakaki would likely remember them.

So, as they used to say in those old StarKist tuna commercials, "sorry, Charlie".  Juxtaposing a long form and COLB doesn't resolve this issue, it highlights the reasons that the issue exists.

I still don't know what the truth is when it comes to Barack Obama's citizenship status.  But I remain very suspicious of it.  And I don't think you need to be a "birther" to feel this way.