Israel Insider: Obama Birth Certificate A Photoshopped Fake

The birth certificate of Sen. Barack Obama is a photoshopped fake. That's the conclusion reached by the Israel Insider, which has been investigating the authenticity of the birth certificate the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama produced to put to bed rumors that he is not a natural born citizen eligible to hold the office of President of the United States. The issue was the buzz of Internet blogs just weeks ago but seemed to fade away once the campaign produced a Hawaiian birth certificate, which first appeared on the Daily Kos blog and later the Fight The Smears site established by the Obama campaign to counter anti-Obama rumors on the Internet. The Israel Insider became suspicious of the birth certificate's authenticity when various versions of the same document appeared in Photobucket, including one listing Obama's birthplace as Antarctica with another showing North Korea as his birthplace. But the information the news site obtained from the Hawaii Department of Health led it to conclude the purported Obama birth certificate is a fake. That includes the following:

• An authentic Hawaiian birth certificate includes an embossed official seal and an authoritative registrar signature coming from the back side of the document. The Obama certificate is missing both.
• The state does not issue electronic versions of a birth certificate under any circumstances according to Janice Okubo, the Director of Communications for the Department of Health.
• The certificate number which would allow the document to be traced to confirm its authenticity is shown as redacted.
• The Obama certificate has the notation "filed by registrar." Other official birth certificates obtained from Hawaii show the notation, "accepted by the registrar."

The Israel Insider takes note of the fact that the Obama campaign has flaunted this suspect document:

The Obama campaign, however, continues to flaunt the unstamped, unsealed, uncertified document -- notably in very low resolution -- on its "Fight the Smears" website, with campaign officials vowing that it's authentic, sending the image around as "proof" to reporters, and inviting supporters to refer to it as they battle against supposed distortions and calumnies against their candidate. However, the campaign refuses to produce an authentic original birth certificate from the year of Obama's birth, or even a paper version with seal and signature of the "Certification of Live Birth."

Nor has it even published an electronic copy with the requisite embossed seal and signature. The failure of the Obama campaign to do so, and its willingness instead to put up an invalid, uncertified image -- what now appears to be a crude forgery -- raises the dramatic question of why the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate might have to hide.

The Israel Insider speculates that Obama may be hiding something bigger here--the possibility his mother gave birth to him in another country. She was a teen-age mother at the time and it's been reported she was in the State of Washington with her new baby just weeks after she gave birth to him, even though her family lived in Hawaii at the time. Because of her age at the time of Obama's birth, the fact that his father was a citizen of Kenya and the fact that she re-married and moved to Indonesia when Obama was only six, there are circumstances under which Obama would not have been deemed a natural born citizen if he was born abroad, notwithstanding his mother was a U.S. citizen. "Because if Barack Hussein Obama II does not produce definitive proof of his "natural born" American citizenship with original, verifiable documents, he will be setting the stage for a very public battle over his personal credibility, the basic legitimacy of his candidacy, and its possible criminality," the Israel Insider writes.

An aspect raised by another blogger, Texas Darlin, is why the purported birth certificate for Obama was not acquired until June, 2007, reportedly because the original had been lost. It seems unlikely Obama would not have had a need to acquire a certified birth certificate before this time. She uncovers even more discrepancies. She writes:

A reader who was born in 1963 at Kapioloni Medical Center, the same place where Obama says he was born, sent me a scan of her “Certificate of Birth,” which the Vital Records Office sent to her in 1997, according to the date stamp on back. Her document includes significantly more detail than Obama’s, such as the age, race, birth place, occupation, and address of both parents, the signatures of both parents, signature of the attending physician, name of hospital, and other information. Her document also includes an embossed seal and a separate stamp/signature from the VR office that certifies the birth, just like Patricia Decosta’s Certification of Birth, which we have been using for comparison.

This entire matter is really reaching the absurdity level. Why is a foreign newspaper doing the research which the mainstream media in the U.S. should be doing on Obama's birth? How can a person be poised to become president of the U.S. and, yet, the American people have still not been provided definitive proof he is any more eligible to be president than Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Why do we impose tougher vetting requirements on a federal employee seeking national security clearance than we do a potential president? Once again, the Obama campaign has only itself to blame for this issue by producing a suspect document. As Reagan said of the Russians, "Trust but verify." That's all we're asking of Sen. Obama. Please, verify your "natural born" status as required by the U.S. Constitution.