[Political Junkie Too]

Obama knew when it had started. He knew very well that Bauer and other attorneys had been fighting off legal challenges since Philip Berg first filed suit in August 2008.

It actually started sooner, in April of 2008.

In a piece from Politifact titled "His true name is Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama", Politifact attempted to debunk a chain email alleging that Obama's middle name was Muhammed. In that investigation (reported in the linked story, Politifact documents this:

But since the rumor persists, we decided to dig deeper.

We have now searched every public record we can access and find nothing to support the notion that Obama has a second middle name of "Muhammed" or "Mohammed..."

We have a copy of Obama's marriage certificate from the Cook County Bureau of Vital Statistics in Illinois...

We looked at Obama’s driver’s license record in the state of Illinois...

We searched property records for Obama and found listings...

We also found Obama’s registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois.

We tried to obtain a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.

The question of Obama's birth certificate began in April 2008 when the Obama campaign first refused to release it to Politifact. The refusal seemed odd given the innocuous nature of a birth certificate. It's been alleged that the Clinton campaign (or an arms-length support group) was circulating the chain email in the first place.

-PJ

[Elsie]

We tried to obtain a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.

Why not, since it is a PUBLIC record?