Certification of Live Birth - COLB-EZ, COLB and COLB-A

SO I have been following and increasingly posting/commenting on this whole “birther” thing (I tend to comment at 2PJ’s). I mean, Obama has gotten a copy of what the State of Hawaii issues, something good enough for passports, and still the “birther’s” find reasons to doubt him (it’s a forgery, he has dual citizenship, his grandmother in Kenya saw him born there, his Indonesian step father adopted him and Lord knows what all else).

As I posted earlier today, this Orly Taitz (lawyer/dentist extraordinaire!) has produced an image and perhaps a real paper copy of a Kenyan birth certificate for Barrack Obama. The source, according to her, must remain anonymous because if Obama knows his/her identity, Obama will have the source killed. It’s disappointing to think that no judge will ever let this Kenyan Birth Certificate into evidence in any trial. It would be fun to find out if the book record of Obama’s birth that it references even exists, and if it does, what it says on the page referenced by the birth certificate.

Meanwhile, I have been fascinated by this whole conflict over the long form versus short form certification of live birth in Hawaii. I finally took it upon myself to educate myself about these forms. Here’s what I found out.

First of all, World Net Daily, a fairly conservative and clearly pro birther website, made a big deal about the existence of some Hawaiian homeland state agency, which provides benefits for people of native Hawaiian descent. The thing is, to prove your ancestry you need that long form COLB, which details some of your heritage. And I looked at this Homeland website and indeed it mentions the need for the long form COLB, even though the Hawaiian Department of Health says they do not give out the long form COLB, at least not without very good reason. How can this be, how can this be reconciled?

Well, the Homeland website references the long form, and says you should contact the Department of Health, but it doesn’t say you will receive the long form COLB. Instead in implies that someone from the DOH will look at your COLB, and either talk directly to the Homeland people or else give you some kind of certification that you are a native Hawaiian.

Which is interesting, because that is essentially what the Hawaiian Secretary of Health did for Barrack Obama. The Secretary went and looked at Obama’s long form COLB in their records, and then came out and said that Obama’s long form COLB is on file, and that he could confirm Obama is a US citizen.

Certainly the Hawaiians used to make the long form COLB available, in fact it was likely the only type of birth certificate back 48 years ago. But starting about thirty years ago Hawaii started computerizing (you remember Hawaii 5-0 and their computer), and now when you ask for a birth certificate they literally print one up, based on the data that was entered in over the last thirty year. So that COLB that Obama posted on the web is not authentic in the sense that if Obama requested it on May 7th of last year, it was probably printed on May 14th. That’s how they do things now in Hawaii. Their Department of Health website has no mechanism for requesting the long form, only a COLB of their choosing.

Of course, the Hawaiians could release Obama’s long form COLB to the media or whomever. But I don’t think they are going to do that, at least not until either the President asks them to or a judge orders them too. After all, if Hawaii released the long form, it would piss off the President because Hawaii had caved to the nutjobs, and it would piss off the “birthers” because it would not prove their arguments.

Obama could talk to the Hawaiians, have them xerox the long form COLB or take a picture of it, or even put it on display in a museum. But Obama is not going to do that. If he caves to the “birthers”, who knows what nutjob group is next. Obama has apparently drawn the line at a document good enough for a passport.

As I say, I find this whole thing fascinating. To deny obvious facts like that has painful implications for our nation’s future. Congress might pass a law about driving big cars or about carpooling to work, And there’s always a group like the “birthers”, who might well say that the effectiveness of conservation is a myth. That’s why it is probably a bad idea for Obama to ask Hawaii to release the long form COLB. To prevent birthers and others from thinking Obama has to give them everything they think they want, especially since they don’t/won’t have a good reason for asking for it.