Remarkable. The White House today published a copy of President Barack Obama‘s long-form birth certificate. Here it is:
The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn’t good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country. Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate.
The statement also pointed out what every thinking person has known all along: that the original birth certificate the campaign posted on its website in 2008 was already a formal and official document — “what Hawaiians use to get a driver’s license from the state and the document recognized by the Federal Government and the courts for all legal purposes.” As they also say, with a bit of exasperation, “That’s because it is the birth certificate. This is not and should not be an open question.”
If Barack Obama and the White House are exasperated, who can blame them? “He’s not a real American” has been a pretty racist notion all along, and beyond that, it’s been just plain dumb. What an embarrassment to the nation’s news outlets and citizens that it had to come to this. As it is, it’s still a minor victory for the crazies: the president, even if taking the high road, is forced to “prove” once again that he’s a citizen.
Not that this will probably change many minds. If this was an issue based on facts and logic, it would not only have been settled long ago — it never would have been an issue at all, any more than it was an issue for George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan.
The White House also published the request correspondence between Barack Obama’s lawyers and the Hawaii State Department of Health.