I don’t think it’s a stretch to think that an official reporter can get access to newspaper microfilm that an ordinary citizen cannot. Taken at face value, this story essentially implies that the notices unearthed from the state library’s copy of the microfilms were identical to the notices obtained from the newspapers’ microfilms. This at least rules out one of the more imaginative explanations for these notices: that someone sneaked in and somehow manually edited the microfilm. Given that there likely dozens of copies of these microfilmed records scattered at various research libraries across the country (including, for example, Library of Congress, I would guess), it never made sense to me that such a forgery would be attempted much less executed without detection.
On a related point, I’ve never spent a day in Hawaii, but I’ve worked in large government bureaucracies, including those housing Vital Records offices, so I’m familiar with their SOPs. It’s pretty obvious that Vital Records put out some sort of standard press release or listing of all the births recorded in city (or county) X during the preceding week (or whatever time interval there was between press releases). This accounts for why 2 different papers simply printed the info in identical order and it also accounts for why the twins whose birth certificates were filed or approved after Obama’s likely didn’t show up until the next week’s list.
The foregoing in no way rules out the possibility that Obama’s grandmother or mother filed for a birth certificate for a birth that occurred outside Hawaii. But any alternative story of where Obama was born has to accept these newspaper notices about his birth as genuine rather than additional forgeries etc. To me the recent news that Obama’s grandmother lived at the address listed confirms their legitimacy. Especially given the presence of a guest house out back, it’s highly plausible that Obama’s mother would have lived with her parents especially in the latter days of pregnancy.
She and Barack Senior allegedly got married in Feb., Barack born early August and then as best we can tell she was IMMEDIATELY off to Seattle to take fall classes. So it’s pretty obvious from this change of events that there was a rather severe falling out between the 2. The parents clearly weren’t particularly pleased with the situation their daughter had gotten herself into, so in that context, it’s hard to imagine they’d keep bankrolling an apartment for her (since she was enrolled in school in Hawaii after Fall 1960) when they had a perfectly good place for her to stay rent-free etc.
Thank you. This makes sense to me.