Obama were is your real birth certificate
HONOLULU — State officials in Hawaii on Monday said they have once again checked and confirmed that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.
Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said she hoped to end lingering rumors about Obama's birthplace.
"I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," she said in a brief statement. "I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."
So-called "birthers" — who claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States — have grown more vocal recently on blogs and television news shows.
Fukino issued a similar press release Oct. 31, but was prompted to speak out again because of the renewed attention on Obama's beginnings. Hawaii's Health Department has been flooded in recent weeks with questions from individuals and several national TV news networks asking for proof that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.
"They just keep asking over and over and over again," Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said.
The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. Birthers contend that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland. They've challenged his citizenship in court.
One widely circulated YouTube clip of a town hall meeting showed a Republican congressman getting booed for saying Obama is a citizen. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN's Lou Dobbs have also raised the issue, and 10 Republican members of Congress co-sponsored a bill that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.
However, it appears Congress has moved on and has accepted Obama's island birthplace. The U.S. House on Monday unanimously approved a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii becoming the 50th state. A clause was included that reads: "Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."
State law bars the release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.
However, Obama's birth certificate along with birth notices from the two Honolulu newspapers were brought forward even before he took office. But that's done nothing to shake the belief by many Obama critics that the president was born abroad.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Gibbs: Birth Certificate Controversy is “Made-Up Fictional Nonsense”
July 27, 2009 3:18 PM
Whether by Snopes, Politifact, or Factcheck.org, those in the business of gauging the truth have definitively stated that President Obama was born in the U.S., in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.
The campaign last year provided a copy of his certificate of live birth, as issued by the state of Hawaii.
Last October, Hawaii state health director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued a statement: "There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record. Therefore I, as director of health for the state of Hawaii, along with the registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”
Both of Honolulu’s major newspapers, the Advertiser and the Star Bulletin have provided, from their archives, birth announcements from that week: “Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Highway, son, Aug. 4."
And yet, for whatever reason, some persist in believing that the President, despite all evidence to the contrary, was born outside the U.S.
Today at the White House briefing, press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked by liberal talk radio host Bill Press if there was anything he could say to make the “birthers” go away.
"No," he said. "The God’s honest truth is no."
Gibbs said he almost hesitated to even bring it up in the “august” setting of the White House press room, and then decried the "made-up fictional nonsense of whether or not the president was born in this country."
"If I had some DNA it wouldn't assuage those who don’t believe he was born here," Gibbs said, talking about how he posted the president's birth certificate on-line last year to make the story go away, to no avail. “The President was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the 50th state of the greatest country on the face of the earth.”
Gibbs said there were 10,000 more important issues than to be debating a the president’s citizenship, “which has been proven ad nauseam.”
Why does it keep coming up? Gibbs was asked.
"Because for $15 you can get an internet address and say whatever you want," Gibbs said.
And yet this is a story that persists – aided in no small way, White House officials say, by Republican members of Congress who have introduced legislation to require future presidential candidates to present copies of their birth certificates “to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications.”
“What you’re doing is appeasing the nutcases,” Chris Matthews said to Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., one of the legislators in question. “You’re verifying the paranoia out there.” He held up the copy of the birth certificate provided last year by the Obama campaign and told Campbell to “mail this birth certificate to the wacko wing of your party.”
Asked about the birthers, Liz Cheney on CNN last week tried to explain the sentiment, saying, “one of the reasons you see people so concerned about this is people are uncomfortable” to have a “President so reluctant to defend the nation overseas.” People are “uncomfortable with an American president who seems afraid to defend America.”
James Carville said Cheney “refuses to say this is ludicrous because she actually wants to encourage these people to believe this.”
Other Republican congressmen clearly find it a nuisance. Here’s Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., trying to talk to Sussex County citizens about health care reform.
Conservative talk radio host Michael Medved today told NPR’s On Point that “conservatives need to speak out against it and be clear and not play games like Liz Cheney was doing. It is a fringe movement which is now poisoning and threatening the Republican Party."
…but to many in the White House it’s no joking matter.
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