The locals are chiming in this morning-
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
People who question whether U.S. Sen. Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen continue to request his birth certificate from the state Department of Health, but they won’t get a definitive answer from Hawai’i health officials.
Hawai’i birth certificates — just as with death, marriage and certain divorce documents — are released only to people with a “tangible interest,” such as the people themselves, their parents, spouses, grandparents or other relatives, Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said. (Requests for divorce decrees after 2002 go through the state judiciary.)
“Our state law is very firm on information on vital records. ... You cannot receive someone else’s birth certificate — to protect the person’s confidential information,” Okubo said.
It’s the same law that applies to requests from tabloid journalists for celebrity marriage licenses in Hawai’i, Okubo said.
The Obama campaign said it has posted a copy of his birth certificate at www.fightthesm ears.com in response to Internet chatter that the Illinois senator is not a natural-born citizen. But the posting has done little to curb the nearly weekly requests to the Health Department for copies of the original, Okubo said.
Some skeptics point to the lack of an official state seal on the birth certificate posted on the Obama campaign Web site.
But seals often are placed on the back of the birth certificate, Okubo said, “and whether it shows through depends on how much force was put into it.”
Others wonder why a large black rectangle appears next to the words, “CERTIFICATE NO.”
“The thing that’s redacted is just our file number,” she said. “Potentially, if you have that number, you could break into the system.”
Health officials contacted the Obama campaign a few months ago in response to the persistent inquiries “to see if they could try and resolve the issue with the people who were asking questions,” she said.
“They responded and apparently it isn’t good enough that he posted his birth certificate,” Okubo said. “They say they want it because they claim he is not a citizen of the United States. It’s pretty ridiculous.”
What shouts in that is what Okubo didn’t say. And what Obama did not allow, which is also not mentioned, but shouts out.
She’s coming very close to lying, imo, when she tries to explain why the cert number is blacked out.
That's a stunning admission.
Then simply scan and post the back of the document, too.
-PJ
“They responded and apparently it isn’t good enough that he posted his birth certificate,” Okubo said.
If they contacted the Obama campaign only "a few months ago" and the campaign responded, why does the date stamp on the posted COLB show June 6, 2007? That's more than a year ago, not a few months.