The Obama Birth Certificate controversy was and is a legitimate issue.
The Obama Birth Certificate
Early on the morning of April 27, 2011 after Donald Trump challenged him to release it, at a special White House news conference, President Barack H. Obama revealed what he purported to be a certified copy of his "long form" birth certificate. While calling those who have been asking for a release of the certificates "silly," he put the purported document up on a screen for all the world to see. A computer image of the document had already been posted on the White House web page in a Portable Document Format, or PDF, file so the announcement didn't come as a surprise to the media. When I first saw it, I thought that the matter had been resolved, but that only lasted until I took a look at it and saw what was on the document.
I have been following the issue of the Obama birth certificate loosely since the question of where he was born was first raised during the 2008 Presidential Democrat Primaries by supporters of Hillary Clinton. The issue of his having been born outside of the United States was raised early, not by Republicans but by Democrats during the primaries. And with good reason, because Article II of the Constitution states that a president must, without question, be a "native-born" citizen, meaning that they must have been born within the geographical confines of the United States. While I have plenty of issues with him, particularly that he rose to political power in the most corrupt city in America, I have not been placing any particular emphasis on the birth issue. My feelings have always been that he should have released his birth certificate during the presidential primaries. Instead, his campaign obtained the form that the State of Hawaii uses, a form that is not a replica of the original birth certificate as is the practice in many, if not most, other states. Instead, they released a Certification of Live Birth which is a computer generated document using information from a data base. In fact, not only did the Hawaii health department refuse to provide a copy of his original birth certificate, they indicated that it was no longer accessible.
While I have not been personally making an issue of where he was born, at the same time I have been very concerned about the attitude of Obama supporters and members of the media toward those who are concerned, referring to them as "birthers" and generally belittling them without acknowledging that they have a legitimate concern. Personally, I consider such people - the criticizers - as dupes, or dupers, meaning they have been duped by politics, specifically by politicans and in this case by the Obama campaign. It was a legitimate issue at the time it was raised and it is still a legitimate issue. Americans seem to have this idiotic idea that just because an official has been elected, they are above reproach. (Take a trip to the closest Federal correction facility and see just how many inmates are politicians who have been convicted of corruption!) Few Americans are aware that Adolph Hitler came to power through an election, as have dozens of other totalitarian dictators. or that communism became the state government in Eastern European countries in elections. For that matter, the President of the United States isn't even elected in the national elections. When Americans go to the polls on presidential election days, we are actually chosing a slate of electors from our state, who then go to Washington, DC and officially elect the president. It is a system that was established by the authors of the Constitution, with how the electors are chosen being left up to each state. Currently, nearly all states use a system of "winner take all" in which all of a state's electors go to the candidate who has the highest statewide vote, which is not truly representative of the population as a whole, but is slanted toward the major population centers of each state.
The Obama Birth Certificate
