Since it is a constitutional requirement that the President be born in the United States, it's understandable that some people have been concerned about where Barack Obama was born. Furthermore, when you consider the fact that Barack Obama is a shameless liar, that he grew up in another country, and that there has been a lot of conflicting information out there, it's easy to see why so many people have become concerned about where he was born.
All that being said: Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. Granted, not everyone on the Right agrees with this assessment, but nevertheless, it's so.
Of course, if Barack Obama was born in Hawaii as he says, you might have some very basic questions. For example, why hasn't he bent over backwards to dispel the notion that he may have been born elsewhere? Well, why would he at this point? He has a significant number of conservatives wasting enormous amounts of time on a side issue that can never bear any fruit and, as an added bonus, it makes them look somewhat unhinged to many Americans. When your political enemies are making fools of themselves, why stop them?
The other question that comes to mind is why are there prominent conservatives claiming Barack Obama wasn't born in Hawaii? Here's what you have to understand: conspiracies are traffic magnets. Other than sex, conspiracies are one of the best draws you're ever going to run across. While some of the people still pushing this theory just don't know any better, there are undoubtedly more than a few unscrupulous people on the Right who are beating the drum about Obama's birth certificate solely to draw traffic.
Remember the North American Union? According to much of the same crew that's pushing this birth certificate bugaboo, George Bush was going to merge America, Canada, and Mexico together. They wrote books and articles, sent out newsletters, you name it -- until George Bush left office. Then, the NAU was down the memory hole and they latched onto this issue. If people stopped buying into this, next it would be black helicopters or FEMA camps for conservatives or whatever other silliness draws traffic for these hucksters.
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Now, let's talk about why this whole obsession with Obama's birth certificate is a waste of time.
1) Many people, including some experts, have claimed that the certificate of live birth released by the Obama campaign wasn't legitimate. In all fairness to them, it can be difficult to judge some of the features needed to determine the authenticity of a birth certificate over the Internet. However, the people at FactCheck.org have seen the certificate of live birth provided from the state of Hawaii to the Obama campaign and it is genuine.
FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.
So again, despite claims to the contrary, Barack Obama did provide a genuine copy of his birth certificate to the public.
2) Although Hawaii "state law prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record," the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health has certified that Obama does have a legitimate birth certificate on file in Hawaii.
3) In a print copy of the 1961 Honolulu Advertiser, there's a notice that Barack Obama was born. In and of itself, this is a game, set, match conversation-ender on this subject unless people want to argue that this isn't genuine or that there was a conspiracy going all the way back to the day of Obama's birth to make him President.
Quite frankly, this evidence is as definitive as it gets. Obama has a legitimate birth certificate on file, he released a copy of it to the public, and there is a news clipping that confirms he was born in Hawaii in 1961.
The latest tactic of the Birthers is to demand that the Supreme Court rule on this issue, but I would suggest to you that if the evidence that has already been made publicly available on this issue hasn't changed someone's mind, then having the Supreme Court rule that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii wouldn't do it either.
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