I was reading another blog which made some interesting observations about irregularities in the scan of Obama's birth certificate. And there are even more interesting observations in the comments. I myself was a bit puzzled by the halo around the letters, the missing background pattern, and fact that the letters had perfect horizontal and vertical alignment. I never get that when scanning.

However, looking at a legitimate certificate and comparing it to the Obama document, I have to say that many of the complaints raised, as to the certificate number, the wording, and so on, are just not valid. In most ways, Obama's certificate matches one known to be valid. Now the perfect alignment and the halo around the letters is a bit peculiar, and I admit that it struck me as odd, but I have to say, if that is the only strangeness, it simply isn't enough.

In fact, I may even have an explanation. Or at least a partial one. While it asserts it is a "scan" I think the document did not scan well and was cleaned up somewhat by Obama's staff. Why do I say that? Because the seal is missing. And while this would seem an argument in favor of forgery, I think it is actually something that was simply cleaned up after the scan, because they did leave some trace, in the form of numbers bleeding through from the back, just as in the Decosta birth certificate.

And that, I think, explains all of the forgery claims. The halo, the perfect alignment, the missing seal, are all not signs of any forgery, but of an overzealous staffer, who, wanting to make sure the document was legible, either used some sort of "sharpen" filter to clean up the picture, or else manually modified the image. It would explain almost everything observed.*

The funny thing is that I never heard about this rumor of Obama being ineligible due to his birth until I looked at the fight the smears site** site. And at the time I thought it was absurd. At least as absurd as the claim McCain was ineligible for being born in the canal zone. It seemed to me there was simply no way that anyone could get that close to a presidential run and not know for certain whether they were eligible or not.

And now, reading the claims of forgery, I have to say it is still just as absurd to claim that he is likely ineligible. Even with a forged birth certificate and the press on his side, there is just no way Obama could keep something like that silent. Kerry may be keeping secret his military records and the terms of his discharge (including the possibility of a modification in the Carter era), but that is possible because of privacy protections concerning military records and the fact that Kerry served on a small craft where he was the ranking officer.

Obama has no such protections. The time and place of one's birth are not legally protected, and, should he be elected, it would be impossible for him to avoid the requirement he produce a fully certified birth certificate. This is just not the sort of secret one can keep for any length of time.

And so, I have to say the same thing I said when some raised the possibility that Obama was a Moslem. Or when others speculated that because he might be seen as an apostate by Moslems we should not vote for him. In dealing with Obama we need to be fair. There is no need to sink to the level of the DailyKos, DemocraticUnderground, Huff'n'Puff post and other "Bushitler"/"Chimpy McFlyboy" sites. There are many, many substantive grounds on which to oppose Obama***. I know, I have written about them over and over again. And with so much material with which to criticize, there is just no need to raise such claims.

Let us fight him on the merits of his case, not on rumors and speculation.

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* I admit that in the comments I also mentioned my own puzzlement at seeing "African" as a race on a 1960's era birth certificate, but, as I also said in the comments, Hawaii is a strange state when it comes to race, so it is possible.

** No, your eyes aren't deceiving you, I DID link to Obama's official site. I am nothing if not fair here on Random Notes. And despite all my criticism, I believe the man deserves to defend himself from improper criticism.

*** An almost comprehensive list can be found in my blog index under the heading "Obama"

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POSTSCRIPT

Despite the fact that I think there is no real scandal there, I have to say that the analysis of the document was relatively well done. It would probably have benefited from being able to compare it to an original document at the time of writing, as some criticisms would not have been made had something like the Decosta certificate been available. But given the limited data with which he worked, it was a good analysis.

I would also add that it is possible I am wrong in some or all of my speculation. It is possible this is a forgery. However, I find that unlikely for the reasons listed above. It just seems far more likely the irregularities are part of an effort at cleaning up a bad scan rather than any forgery attempt.

Then again, someone thought he could get away with those idiotic Air National Guard forgeries, so never underestimate the idiocy of forgers. So I am withholding final judgment. I still think we should fight on the issues rather than secondary issues such as these, but I have to tip my hat to all the effort that went into the analysis.