Let us examine the statements of Doctor Fukino, the Director of Health the State of Hawai'i, made with at least the tacit confirmation of the Registrar of Vital Statistics:
"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai'i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.
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 Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawai'i and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago...." (emphasis supplied)
The first statement avers two significant facts: 1) they have his birth certificate, and 2) the certificate they have is the "original." So whatever else they have in that file, they have his original birth certificate. So, if they have a birth certificate from Kenya, presumably it would not recite that he was born in Honolulu. If the original birth certificate recites that he was born in Honolulu, the certificate was not made in Kenya. Whatever comprises the "original vital records" (emphasis supplied) we know at least that it contains what these officials believed to be Obama's "original" birth certificate from whatever place derived.
Parenthetically, please note that if the original certificate was not from Kenya or some other country, it must have come from America, presumably Hawaii. Significantly, we know It is not possible that the "vital records" which were drawn upon to draft the Certification of Live Birth were comprised only of perjurious affidavits of Obama's mother or grandparents because we know they contained his "original birth certificate."
The doctor's second statement says that the "original vital records" which the doctor has "seen " verify that Obama was born in Hawaii. Significantly, she concludes that this means that he was a "natural born citizen." Finally she concludes by saying that she has nothing to add to this statement or to her original statement of October 31, 2008, thus tying the two statements together.
We have these commonalities of language use between the two statements:
1) the birth certificate is "original."
2) the vital records contained "original" documents
3) the doctor has "seen" the "original" birth certificate
4) the doctor has "seen" the "original" vital records.
The most reasonable rendering of these two statements is that the doctor has seen an original birth certificate which comprises the original vital records. Since the original vital records verify that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, the original birth certificate also verifies that he was born in Hawaii. Since the birth certificate was original and the vital records is made up of original documents, the phrase "vital records" must include the birth certificate. If the birth certificate did not verify birth in Hawaii, and since it is an original document, then the vital records could not verify birth in Hawaii. Since the vital records verify birth in Hawaii, and since the vital records are comprised of original documents, and since the birth certificate is an original document, the birth certificate verifies birth in Hawaii.
Beyond the logic from parsing the words, a reasonable investigator would look at the import of the words: "verifying Barrack Hussein Obama ... is a natural-born American citizen" and conclude that no reasonable person would make that assertion if there was anything in the vital records which suggested birth elsewhere than in America. The issue is not whether Doctor Fukino who drew the conclusion that Obama is a natural born citizen is competent to make that legal judgment, the point is that that conclusion expresses her state of mind. Whether she is competent to make such a legal judgment has nothing whatever to do with the reliability of what she says she saw. She said she saw an original birth certificate and she says the record she examined told her that he is a natural born citizen. There can be no doubt of her intended meaning. No honest person, lay or constitutional scholar, would publicly conclude natural born citizenship if she knew he were born abroad because the issue of foreign birth is precisely what the whole dispute is about. Besides, she had just said he was "born in Hawaii."
Under these circumstances, her statement that the records verify that Obama is a natural born citizen means she is climbing out on the limb publicly with no way back. Contrary to critics of her statement, she is leaving no room in the wording for Clintonesque distinctions. It means under any rational test that she is including the original birth certificate as part of the original vital records. It means that she will look foolish even venal, if the contrary is ultimately proved.
I recite all of this about her state of mind because the language of her statement has been used to discredit her credibility. The argument is she is parsing her words, that she should have been more explicit, that she should have provided more detail from the original birth certificate, if in fact there was one. There is a perfectly plausible and honorable explanation for her use of language. Doctor Fukino was aware that the law of Hawaii forbids her from revealing the contents of the vital records. The law of Hawaii does not prohibit her from expressing a conviction. Hence she was free to opine that he is a Natural Born Citizen because that does not disclose a fact protected by the privacy law but only a legal conclusion. She was free to recite that he was born in Hawaii because that was a fact already set out in the public record in the Certification of Live Birth. That also explains why she concluded her second statement by saying that is all she had to say. She did not want to open herself to a trespass of the law by engaging in a give-and-take. Not sinister, but quite sensible.
To conclude otherwise than above is to say that the Director of Health for the State of Hawaii, together with the Registrar of Vital Statistics of the state of Hawaii, are either incompetent at their jobs or they are lying. In order for these two officials to be lying one literally has to believe a conspiracy. One has to believe that these two officials were motivated enough to jeopardize their jobs, their careers, their reputations. At this point, we have abandoned reason for conspiracy and our Confederate dollars. It is a proposition I do not find to be defensible enough to challenge.
I have seen the article posted some time ago here on Free Republic: Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2303258/posts) which makes it clear that his mother, or even his grandparents, could have secured a birth certificate merely on the filing of an affidavit or perhaps even only an application. Evidently, his mother could have presented a drivers license which she evidently had or even as little as a telephone bill to show proof of residency, simply averring that her son was born there in Hawaii, and she would have received a Hawaiian birth certificate. The article cited goes on to describe three other methods by which a fraudulent certificate for Barack Obama could have been obtained in 1961 in Hawaii.
More, the author continues to the effect that Stanley Ann Obama would have been motivated to do so because her son was not entitled to citizenship under the existing statute if he were born abroad with only one parent a citizen who had not lived five years after the age of 14 in America.
Therefore, it is possible that when Doctor Fukino examined the "vital records" she saw an application or affidavit that said that the baby was born in Hawaii and she saw the Birth Certificate that was issued as a result which would also show birth in Hawaii. She saw nothing indicating a foreign birth in the file and therefore she could quite properly say that the vital records show birth in Hawaii. Indeed, to say anything else would be to venture a fact which appeared nowhere in the record.
While I take issue with your well reasoned and articulate perspective on the motivations of Doctor Fukino-I come to exactly the opposite conclusions-I am compelled to agree that there is still plenty of room to maintain that, in the absence of the original birth certificate and supporting documents, if any, the matter remains open. That is not to say that the probabilities are for a foreign birth, merely that it is not illogical to maintain that a foreign birth is quite consistent with the facts as we know them, the Certification of Live Birth, the procedures and regulations in place in Hawaii in 1961, and two statements of Doctor Fukino.
I think we probably both can agree that we will find nothing in the file which shows foreign birth. We might also find nothing in the file apart from the Obama family's self serving declarations which show a domestic birth-and perhaps not even such declarations. That would leave the ball where it is but that is a defeat for us. We have the burden to move it across the goal line. Even if the original birth certificate were released and it was revealed that it was based on family affidavits, we lose. We need extrinsic evidence of foreign birth.