ConfirmThem

There is a big difference between a short-form birth certificate[1] and a long-form birth certificate.[2] The short form released by Obama is a very brief document that was printed in 2007.[3][4] An example of a long form birth certificate from Hawaii is obviously older and much more detailed.[5]

John McCain has already released his long-form birth certificate.[6] Why won’t Senator Obama?

There is confusion surrounding Obama’s infancy. According to David Maraniss of the Washington Post,[7] his mother moved with him from Hawaii to Washington State, after his father left Hawaii to begin studies at Harvard. But other sources say the parents had already split before the father began studies at Harvard, when Barack Obama was barely a month old. See Jonathan Martin writing in the Seattle Times,[8] and see Rick Montgomery writing for the McClatchy Newspapers[9] and see Rick Anderson writing in the Seattle Weekly.[10] This raises questions about where and why they split, and the long-form birth certificate would help answer whether she might have learned in Kenya about his other wife. Maybe the child was born in Kenya and registered later in Hawaii in order to avoid the hassle of naturalization.

Is Obama very probably a natural born citizen? Absolutely. But why won't he go ahead and prove it?

And this ridiculous, black helicopter-like thread has what, exactly, to do with federal judges? There's plenty of legitimate fodder on which to criticize Obama (the judges he'd nominate, his view of the Constitution, even non-judicial topics like taxes, the bailout, Russia, Georgia, Syria), and you're frittering away the remaining precious time before this election trying to foment public suspicions about the highly remote possibility that Obama is constitutionally ineligible for the presidency? C'mon, Andrew. There are better places to spend one's time. Not even Drudge or Fox News is paying attention to this, and Philip Berg isn't exactly the most credible messenger around. And even if, on the way off-chance, this "silly rumor" *is* true, who exactly (besides Barack, his grandmother, and God) can confirm it beyond a reasonable doubt? How would it be proved? What court will invalidate Obama's claim to the White House? (Already, one judge -- a Clinton appointee, no less! -- has dismissed Berg's suit) And most important, how many voters really will be swayed by this in the next six days? What a waste of precious time and energy. Can we get back to judges, please? More specifically, the difference between whom McCain would appoint and whom Obama would appoint?

The issue is standing. An ordinary voter has no standing to sue in a case like this. But that still leaves presidential electors and state government officials who do have standing. If by some small chance Obama is not a natural born citizen, then I would prefer to find out before the election, rather than afterward. Can you imagine the consequences of finding out after the election? And what other explanation is there for Obama's stonewalling about the certificate?

The fact is, Obama has produced a short-form birth certificate for the public. That's all the evidence that any federal judge, whether appointed by a Republican or a Democrat, will want to quickly dismiss a lawsuit by anyone. Can you really envision any judge wanting to wade into the middle of this anyhow? I can't. The last time judges involved themselves in details of a presidential election, it cost the SCOTUS lots of credibility. And whether it's right or not, I think that the existence of the short-form birth certificate is more than enough for any voter as well -- I can't actually envision an ordinary voter being swayed by (or even understanding) the whole "he-produced-a-short-form-but-not-a-long-form" assertion. It's no more a viable campaign argument than the ridiculous rumor that Ayers actually wrote Obama's book (and we see how much traction *that* has gotten with voters). And if anything, I think this kind of thing costs the GOP credibility with voters, because it makes Republican supporters look crazy-paranoid.

Why isn't Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate? Who knows. While he's willing to fight rumors (or "smears," as he calls them) at his website, perhaps he's less interested in offering up hard documents for the wackier rumors, figuring that no matter how many papers he produces, he won't be able to satisfy his detractors and it will just lead to endless inquiries (a view undoubtedly informed by the endless investigations into Clinton in the '90s). Maybe his campaign is trying to ignore this issue altogether, figuring that producing the long-form would bring the issue more into the press. Or, possibly there is indeed something in that birth certificate that proves your "silly rumor."

But even if #3 is true, that leads to my last question: how, exactly, do you propose to prove this in the remaining 140 hours before this election, Andrew? The real issue here right now isn't standing; it's proof. As I wrote earlier, underpinning your entire case is that there needs to be compelling hard evidence that a plaintiff (with standing or not) could use in a lawsuit to get that long-form birth certificate unsealed. There doesn't appear to be any at the moment, and unless something changes, it just makes this entire issue a waste of time. You yourself wrote that you’re 99 percent certain that Obama is natural born. Is it worth devoting precious time toward a quixotic questfor that 1 percent? Please, focus on something in the next five and a half days that will actually persuade voters. Because I don't think this is going to do the trick.

This would be an equally significant (or insignificant) issue after the election. Having a president who does not meet the constitutional qualifications is not merely an election issue.

It's just very depressing that the Obama campaign is being so secretive in so many ways. For example, as I mentioned in another blog post, they've raked in tens of millions of dollars in contributions of $200 or less, and they refuse to disclose the sources of those contributions.

I just have a queasy feeling that the White House, and thus the Supreme Court, may be in the process of a hijacking. Not a legitimate election victory, but a hijacking.

I don't disagree that this is an equally significant (or not) issue after the election, Andrew. It isn't merely an election issue. And what will happen after the election, I believe, is that some state government official or presidential elector will indeed sue Hawaii to unseal Obama's long-form birth certificate. But nothing realistically will happen on this until after the election, which is why it's not worth wasting time and energy on it now, with time disappearing rapidly.

My suspicion, though, is that even after the election, a judge won't want to wade into this. I remember the suit filed seeking to invalidate the results of the 2000 election because it alleged that Bush and Cheney technically were residents of the same state, thereby making them constitutionally ineligible. A reasonable case could have been made for that argument (although I wouldn't have made it), but poof, it went up in a cloud of smoke before a judge.

Getting a look at the long-form birth certificate would be a discovery issue. What the judge decides to make of it is another matter.

Indeed, that's right. Getting a look at the long-form birth certificate would of course be a discovery issue. I still suspect a judge wouldn't pursue anything unless it was glaringly obvious in that document that Obama wasn't born here. But, it would indeed be fascinating to see what's in the long-form birth certificate. Whether anyone other than the judge and the parties in a suit would end up actually seeing the long-form birth certificate in discovery, who knows. I'd hope that it would be made public.