Counterfeit money was probably the first government document to be forged. Teenagers got forged IDs to go drinking. 9/11 perps got forged drivers licenses from 7/11 parking lots. Voter registrars like Acorn forge signatures, candidates (like Obama) challenged candidate application signatures as forged or unqualified to eliminate opposition.
The MSM has run altered photos, darkened photos, mis-reported photos, staged photos, Middle East fauxtography. Just a few weeks ago we had the altered photo of Iran's missile launch.
So now we have birth certificates. And now we're being asked to accept web facsimiles of parts of physical documents as if they were the real thing, with all the legal authority that comes with the real thing.
I'm concerned about the possible future precedent of reliance on web facsimiles of parts of documents, rather than the actual physical thing itself, especially for something as important as the presidency of the United States. Even with the forged Texas Air National Guard documents, CBS "experts" complained that they were only shown images of the documents, but never the actual documents themselves, and so were reluctant to authenticate them.
Have we learned nothing from the CBS fiasco? Show us the real thing already.
-PJ
That raises the question: to whom would he show "the real thing?" There's no federal law regarding documentary authentication of a presidential candidate's qualifications. The FEC (which is virtually non-existent right now, by congressional design), doesn't have this responsibility. Basically, it falls to individual states to create their own documentary requirements (if any) for a candidate to register for a federal primary, and frankly, since this issue has never been raised before in a presidential campaign, I doubt that anyone working in a state office would have scrutinized a birth certificate two years ago.
This really wasn't even an issue until the media began to question McCain's place of birth as a possible disqualification. His campaign posted a scanned image of his original Panamanian birth certificate, and no one has questioned the authenticity of it. After that, there was a significant drumbeat (accompanied by the usual wild speculation) for a copy of Obama's birth cert. The manner in which it was posted -- on KOS -- didn't help matters, nor did some early apples-to-oranges "analysis" of two COLB images issued years apart.
That brings us back to the first question: who would be trusted to verify an original COLB? The state of Hawaii is under no obligation to release it, and I can't imagine any employee wanting to put themselves in the line of fire by doing it without authorization. Normally, it's the media demanding documentation, but could anyone seriously believe the NY Times (which hounded McCain for months regarding his health records, then meekly accepted a one-page summary report of Obama's fitness from his personal physician) or any other major media outlet, busy strewing daily rose-petals in Obama's path, if they declared it authentic?