It turns out that some of President Barack Obama birth records have been made public for years — and it doesn’t look as if people are waiting in line to examine them. That’s the gist of an AP report. Here’s the beginning of the report, which needs to be read in full:
HONOLULU — Lost in the renewed scrutiny into President Barack Obama’s birth records is the fact that anyone can walk into a Hawaii vital records office, wait in line behind couples getting marriage licenses and open a baby-blue government binder containing basic information about his birth.
Highlighted in yellow on page 1,218 of the thick binder is the computer-generated listing for a boy named Barack Hussein Obama II born in Hawaii, surrounded by the alphabetized last names of all other children born in-state between 1960 and 1964. This is the only government birth information, called “index data,” available to the public.
So far this month, only The Associated Press and one other person had looked at the binder, according to a sign-in sheet viewed Wednesday in the state Department of Health building. The sheet showed about 25 names of people who have seen the document since March 2010, when the sign-in sheet begins.
Go to the link to read it all including more details about the long form birth certificate. Unsurprisingly, what you have heard and read by partisans, and new and old media partisan commentators is not accurate about the long form and why it is not out there.
I wonder if any of the 25 who’ve looked at the binder are those crack detectives Donald Trump has out there digging up the truth about Obama’s birth certificate?
Maybe Trump’s detectives are the same detectives OJ Simpson hired to find out the truth about who killed his wife Nicole.
The AP further notes that these records fit in with newspaper announcements “published soon after Obama’s Aug. 4, 1961 birth and a “certification of live birth” released by the Obama campaign three years ago, the only type of birth certificate the state issues.”
Go to the link and read it in full.
But the AP has done actual investigative, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting here. That’s fact based journalism.
Emotion based politics is so much fun — and politically rewarding: pick a political mantra, repeat it over and over again whether it is true or not, and it catches hold. Any day I expect to hear Sean Hannity announce that the Easter Bunny is an agent of ACORN.
To those who are using it for political ends, this is great news: you can create an entire new reality and either politically diminish or politically destroy someone. And, most of all, you can effectively implement divide and rule politics. And if you look at polls within the GOP: it works.
And suppose the state of Hawaii and Obama produce documents galore that answered every single politically-motivated question being raised about Obama’s birth certificate, what would happen then? The birthers would say the documents are fake and demand to see more.
The intent isn’t the truth. The intent is to define, divide and politically destroy.
If you haven’t already read THIS and THIS for birther related posts. And be sure to read John Avlon’s post HERE about birtherism and independent voters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.