The reason that the congressional Republicans won’t touch this issue is because they woud have to disavow the word of fellow Republicans, like the previous Governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle who said:
“You know, during the campaign of 2008, I was actually in the mainland campaigning for Sen. McCain. This issue kept coming up so much in the campaign, and again I think it’s one of those issues that is simply a distraction from the more critical issues that are facing the country. And so I had my health director, who is a physician by background, go personally view the birth certificate in the birth records of the Department of Health, and we issued a news release at that time saying that the president was, in fact, born at Kapi’olani Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. And that’s just a fact. And yet people continue to call up and e-mail and want to make it an issue. And I think it’s, again, a horrible distraction for the country by those people who continue this. ... It’s been established. He was born here.”—Governor Linda Lingle, R-HI.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-now/2010/05/hawaii_gov_lingle_answers_the.html
And, the Director of Health for Hawaii under Governor Lingle’s administration:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=e9D4n6_Uifk&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3De9D4n6_Uifk
Any committee chair in the House Of Representatives could issue a congressional subpoena for Obama’s original birth certificate in order to compare it to the whitehouse.gov version, but none of them will go near this issue. I believe it is because of Governor Lingle’s and Dr. Fukino’s assurances.
Your reasoning is faultless, but depressing. I’m hoping for a Black Swan event, if only to keep my spirits up.
Ah well, I suppose I just happen to have a few minutes day to indulge you a response, so here goes:
The specific wording of your explanation for Congress's choice to fiddle-while-Rome-burns, is wrong of course. If any Republican congressman is aware of an opportunity to publicly disgrace Barack Obama, there could be many motives for him to resist involvement, but there are very few politicians I think who would shrink back merely for fear of disavowing the word of the likes of Fmr. Gov. Linda Lingle and Dr. Chiyome Fukino. On the contrary, A typical Republican is quite content to disavow his fellows especially when he thinks doing so could win him increased recognition and favor among his constituents.
But I'm sure you didn't mean to have those particular words subjected to scrutiny, you merely meant them to provide a rather sideways segue into your larger point. So on that point, yes, I suppose it's possible that congressmen resist this issue not because they hate to disavow Lingle et al, but because they, like you, have only selectively and superficially reviewed the evidence.
I certainly can't deny that Lingle's words when taken by themselves make a decent case to the superficial observer that there's nothing to see here. I do not know what motivated the governor to issue that statement, but in the context of a very long list of questionable actions and statements flowing from officials in Hawaii, I find it woefully inadequate to seal our confidence that Hawaii and Team Obama have been fully direct and honest with respect to the birth certificate.
For starters, consider that Fukino (whom you seem to regard as an implicit source of reassurance about the birth certificate) used tortured and evasive language in the two key statements she made while still the Director. Then there is the matter of changing the name of the short form, the admission of Okubo, when pressed, that there was no way for her to say what the purported short form doc represented. There's the quiet name change of the short-form document and the quiet retraction of the recommendation that Long-form birth certs be used for applications to the Homelands program as well as the instructions for obtaining those forms. Let's not forget the fact that Hawaii kept insisting its hands were tied by the letter of the law regarding privacy protections, and yet they had no lawful justification for issuing oddly vague public statements about the birthplace and disposition of records for Obama. Oh and let's not forget the fact that Hawaii turned to the state legislature and their proposed vexatious requestor bill for relief while never once seeking relief by proposing to skeptics or the press that Obama himself could simply request that a certified copy of the long-form be mailed out directly from HDOH to some key doubting parties.
We have the curious matter of Virginia Sunahara, for whom at one time there were no records responsive to be found at HDOH, but then later was discovered to have a record that spurred Hawaii to fight the deceased infant's brother in court to prevent him from obtaining a long-form copy of her birth certificate, since doing so, HDOH laughably claimed, might bring harm to the fragile document. Let's see, there's the statement by Abercrombie, that there was something (something he would imply is less than thoroughly convincing) "actually written down in the state archives." Around the same time, as Butterdezillion reminds us, there was the curious appointment of Palafox and subsequent resignation by the same despite the fact that he had "no idea why" he resigned. Also chronologically coinciding was the inexplicably career jeopardizing detailed disclosure and immediate retraction by Mike Evans, radio personality and personal friend to Abercrombie. I'm sure you saw as completely innocent, the wrangling eight-week red-tape delay of HDOH to authorize an official verification be sent to the Secretary of State in Arizona, before ultimately capitulating with a weirdly worded verification, and equally innocent, I suppose was the refusal to confirm that content was "identical" in the verification sent to the Kansas Secretary of State.
Perhaps we would do well also to remember that at the lack of any plausible innocent reason, Team Obama took the extraordinary step of sending a law firm courier (with whom correspondence could be protected by attorney-client privilege) to carry the documents by hand from Hawaii to D.C., once they had finally made the decision, nearly 4 years into the controversy, to produce the long form. Lets see, there are all the many motions to stay discovery proffered by lawyers on behalf of Obama, not to mention utter refusal of those same counselors to provide as exhibit to the courts at any time through the lengthy legal battles a copy of even just the short form, let along the long form--though, to be fair, once a copy was unofficially printed on the back side of a page of official correspondence related to such a case in Georgia (nothing sneaky about presenting "evidence" that is officially off the record, is there?). Oh and lets not forget the litany of odd and foggy phrases concocted to for legal briefs crafted in defense of Obama to describe what we're meant to understand as being Obama's birth certificate.
I haven't even mentioned the document itself. In short, to this day no one has proposed a plausible sequence of events that would involve simply innocently scanning and uploading a pdf of Obama's birth certificate that could have resulted in the digital characteristics we observe in the pdf. In particular, there is no normal innocent means by which a document would have visible content hidden by a clipping mask, would have many high contrast elements that bear no trace of red-blue distortion, would have small white specks on one layer that when pealed back reveal the green thatch pattern behind them (x-ray scanning?), or would have multiple single bit-depth layers without corresponding layers of increased color bit depth. Zullo now contends he has a court certified expert who has sworn his conclusion that the document is not what Team Obama has implied that it is. By the way, let's do keep in mind that only one select media correspondent was allowed to touch the raised seal, and that, strictly behind closed doors.
Now I know the Selective Service System registration card isn't the same thing as a Birth certificate, so maybe it's silly of me to mention the fact that Obama's card has a two digit date stamp against all reasonable expectation, but one that is a stunningly perfect fit for what a person might produce if he had to come up with a 1980 date stamp in 2008. Yeah, I guess your right; even if there is something suspicious about the SSS form, it's surely for reasons unrelated what whatever circumstances make the birth certificate seemingly suspicious. Also, for the same reason, I'll ignore the fact that the SSS changed their rules regarding what they have to produce to aid which law enforcement entities only after MCSO began its investigation. And again since these things are surely too distant to be related, let's also think nothing at all about the fact that no one has yet proposed a decent explanation for why Obama is carrying a Conneticut-issued SSN, nor should we bother pondering why microfilm was supplied to MCSO documenting international arrivals for all of the months surrounding Obama's birth but the one week in which he was born. And, come on, it's crazily off topic to mention the photograph released through one of Obama's official web sites that curiously demonstrates how during a time in Obama's youth, his mother's left arm terminated into an oversized hand and wrist bearing pigmentation consistent with a person of African descent.
As I suppose you well know, this is a very brief summary of many of, but far from all of, the ocean of issues which persuade me to think that Obama's background narrative and supposedly supporting identity documents should be subjected to intense further investigation, including subpoenas forcing document access and law enforcement conducted interviews.
. . . But then again, as you've already pointed out most helpfully, there is that comment by Former Governor Linda Lingle, well-known to be a GOP teammate, that really just settles the whole question and should be seen as fully sufficient to set our minds at ease. I mean come on, what real reason is there to doubt the what the Madame Governor said?
Noble Emperor Nero, please accept my apology for supposing that people should take the forgery evidence seriously.
1/ At the highest level the Republican party allready knew in 2008 Obama was not eligible due to basic US citizenship issues. Exposing him in 2013 means exposing the Republicans still in office from 2008 to severe damage, and possible legal sanction.
The Democrats actually helped John Mccain over the finish line to the Republican nomination, because there was a possible counter-charge on eligibilty to be made against Mccain, i.e. the confusion over his exact birth place and its status, so they knew that a “non-agression pact” could be signed with him.
2/ Even the Republicans not in office in 2008 are still subject to threats from those that were, especially the GOP-e ringleader John Boehner.
3/ The Media, especially broadcast TV National networks will be used to beat up any republican immediately with charges of “evil-RACIST!!!!!!!!!” “BIRTHER!!!”
4/ Hawaii politicians are leaning on Hawaii DOH to back up the lies allready told about Obama’s Legend - so any civil challenge in the courts that nails Obama will still be a long drawn out battle of attrition - making any Republican politician who speaks out a punching bag for the MSM for years.
5/ Fox news is cowed by threats against the business interests of Rupert Murdoch, i.e. Fox can be attacked by the DOJ [you are an evil monopoly in the cable business..” and the FCC can attack some Murdoch owned assets and any future Murdoch ambitions to own a new or existing National Broadcast Network go into the toilet.
That means no friendly, or at least neutral, news coverage from Fox if a Repulican lawmaker dares to raise his head above the parapet.