Hawaii Officials Reaffirm Obama’s Birth

Will this finally silence the birthers?  The Hawaii Heath Department has reaffirmed that Obama’s origianl birth certificate is in their possession.

“I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawai’i State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai’i State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai’i and is a natural-born American citizen,” Fukino said in a statement. “I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008, over eight months ago.”

In spite of Fukino’s earlier statement and the agreement of Republican Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, conspiracy theorists, including some members of Congress, have continued to promote the idea that Obama was born in Kenya.

A congressional resolution introduced yesterday by Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai’i, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Island statehood was temporarily postponed because birthers objected to a clause noting Obama was born in Hawai’i, said Dave Helfert, an Abercrombie spokesman.

The line “Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961;” appeared to be construed by birthers as a thinly veiled attempt to get Congress to affirm Obama’s U.S. citizenship, Helfert said.

The “Certificate of Live Birth” is the standard form that is now issued by the state that is considered proof of birth.

“Our Certificate of Live Birth is the standard form, which was modeled after national standards that are acceptable by federal agencies and organizations,” Okubo said. “With that form, you can get your passport or your soccer registration or your driver’s license.”

Furthermore, the placement of Obama’s birth announcement in two Hawaii newspapers contained information that, by law, had to come from the health department, not phoned in from Kenya, as birthers suggest.

“Take a second and think about that,” wrote Robert Farley of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning Web site PoliticFact.com on July 1. “In order to phony those notices up, it would have required the complicity of the state Health Department and two independent newspapers — on the off chance this unnamed child might want to one day be president of the United States.”

Can we all move on from this issue now?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.