"It's a valid Hawaii state birth certificate," spokesman Janice Okubo said June 13, 2008, after we e-mailed her our copy.
Poor, Janice. She, too, was suckered by the forgery. She should have said that it
appeared to be a valid Hawaii state birth certificate. It was later demonstrated not to have been.
Does this mean Obama was born in Hawaii?
"Yes," said Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo, in both email and telephone interviews with the Tribune. "That's what Dr. Fukino is saying."
But that is
not what Dr. Fukino
said. She was careful
not to say that because revealing the presence or lack of information on the birth certificate other than the fact that it is on record would have been a violation of law. Furthermore, the fact that "the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures" doesn't mean that he was born in Hawaii.
Look at it as a Venn diagram. If the circle of "only people born in Hawaii" contained the circle of those having "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures"" and Obama had an "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures" and it wasn't faked, then you could say that it was a logical necessity that Obama was born in Hawaii. However, at the time of his birth, this wasn't the case. The circle of people born in Hawaii and the circle of people born outside Hawaii, though themselves not overlapping, were both overlapped by the circle of those having a "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures" in Hawaii.
So determining the location of his birth depends on other things than the presence of an "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures." One of those things is the eyewitness testimony of Obama's grandmother (and half-brother and half-sister) who claimed to have been present at his birth in Kenya (at least until they were made to realize the trouble they were causing and clammed up). Also, should they surface again, his birth records from Kenya would be another. That problem, though, may have been "cleaned up" in the wake of the president elect's Chief of Staff "Dead Fish" Rahm Emanuel's "long-planned"
vacation in Kenya around the beginning of January.
Nobody has demonstrated that anyone born outside of Hawaii could get a COLB. That has been a popular claim, but in each case that someone provided a cite to back it up the claim depended on misreading and misunderstanding the law.
Having the original record on file, which was confirmed after the officials saw the internet document, is confirmation of birth in Hawaii. That one of the officials explicitly said so is gravy.
Either that or you believe the officials are in on it. But when you start accusing officials of lying and documents of forgery you are removing any foundation for knowing anything. Then you restrict yourself to weak stories that anyone can make up. It'll be JFK conspiracies all over again.