Prove it.
The certified copy is proof, okay? Such documents are normally accorded a presumption of validity, which may be overcome only by a demonstration of fraud, illegal alteration, or replacement. Is the copy that Obama made public legitimate? I don’t know. But a Hawaiian court has ruled that it is, whether you think that’s right or wrong. Proof of the certificate’s illegitimacy would need to be presented in a compelling way to overcome the legal presumption of validity. So far, all I’ve seen are 2nd and 3rd hand examinations of .jpgs and .tiff files on the Internet, which does not exactly fill me with confidence.
I have a hard time with the birth announcements in two Honolulu papers. They were not put in by the families.
When O was born, the vital records office gathered information on births, deaths, marriages and divorces from hospitals, funeral homes and courts. Then, each week, the paper printed that information. 9 days after O was born, an announcement to that effect was printed in the paper. That information had to come from a Honolulu hospital or it would not have made it into the column.