Yes, this is another in the venerable tradition of jokingly accusing mainstream pundits far more famous than I of plagiarism of my little Townhall posts. But in this case there is a point, and one more important than saying "See, other, more famous writers think I'm right." The Slate article by Reason editor David Weigel does something more than restate the arguments I have made so far.

Several times my readers, having been exposed to Obama conspiracy theories from the every beginning, have asked the question "Why doesn't he just release the proof?" This article does a very good job of illustrating my response, that in the eyes of everyone not caught up in the initial arguments, Obama DID prove he is a citizen.

Let us revisit this one more time.

As this article reminded me, Obama's birth certificate was posted first, even before there was an allegation of his not being a citizen. Now, let us think about this for a moment. If you or I were to prove we were a citizen, how would we do it? We would present our birth certificate. If it wasn't required to be a certified copy, we might even present a photocopy. That would satisfy us that we had proved we were a citizen. And, to Obama, I am sure it was enough to prove he was a citizen, born in Hawaii.

There then arose some very spurious allegations. And, despite all the hype, let us not forget how spurious they were. Polarik, along with some rather involved counting of pixels, made many allegations about the form number and other matters that proved completely false. Likewise, Techdude's analysis was filled with many technical analyses that are far from conclusive, which are much more suitable for wowing incredulous audiences (and perhaps juries) than actually proving forgeries.

And, despite the fact that these analyses were pretty dubious on their face, the Obama campaign and others still provided some evidence, and evidence that courts consider conclusive, more so than document analysis. They provided the testimony of a Hawaiian official that the document was valid. And others provided supporting document to prove the validity, in the form of a 1961 birth announcement. Now, in any court of law those two pieces of evidence would make moot any documentary analysis.Supporting documents always trump forensics, as it would be quite unlikely that a forger could not only forge a document but also place a false birth announcement AND corrupt a state official.

So, as far as Obama, and most of the world is concern, if there was ever any question about Obama's place of birth, he provided far more than the evidence required. The question is closed. The matter is settled. He went above and beyond the requirements, but the proof is there.

And that is why I say he really has no obligation to "present the proof", a she already did. He provided a copy of the document, a Hawaiian official confirmed it, and supplementary evidence also supports it. True, we have not each felt the document in our hands, touched the seal and so one, but it is never going to be feasible to send a copy to each citizen. And, as far as the request eh send it to some third party that everyone would consider valid, there is no such beast. No matter what third party examined the document, someone would consider them a "sellout' or "traitor" and reject the confirmation. Short of putting the document into the hands of everyone raising charges, there is no way he could do enough to satisfy those making allegations. So, rather than just add another layer of proof to already adequate proof, I think Obama is doing the sensible thing and saying, in effect, "I proved it, everyone reasonable knows that. I can't waste time responding to every crazy theory." It is one of the few really presidential things Obama has done, not lowering himself to fight every bogus charge. (A far better idea than his rather silly "Fight the Smears" site.)

And it is the only realistic position, as the evidence shows, even had he sent out  a sealed copy of the document to everyone in America, the controversy would not die down. For example, we have those who question why he is using a "Certification of Live Birth" instead of the 1961 "Certificate of Live Birth", and allege that the modern form's use of terms not in vogue in 1961 show it is clearly altered. However, as one who has lost this original birth certificate, I can attest that many of us in the real world have nothing but one of those modern reprints of their original birth certificate. And, while Hawaiian law may prefer the original, or an official copy, there is no law saying the modern form is invalid. And, in Maryland at least,t he state no longer regularly provides a photocopy of the original certificate, almost everyone uses the modern form.

Nor does the word "African" mean there is something funny going on. Some have alleged the original would have said "Negro". I don't know the racial designation situation in Hawaii at the time, but I do know computers. Unless there was a very important reason to keep the original wording intact, a developer would probably take the modern system and tailor it to store old records. So, rather than a long text field int he database to reproduce "Negro" from 1960's certificates, "black" from those from the 1970's, "person of color" from the 1980's, and "African" or "African American" from modern ones, they probably have a numeric field where 1 is Caucasian, 2 is black, in all its variants, and so on. So when the form is printed, it takes that value and prints "African"* on the form. Of course, that is a total guess, but it makes sense, and much more so than allegations that someone forged the form, but did such a bad job they entered a nonsensical value in this field.

Then again, not even sending every American a packet made up of Certification of Live Birth, Certificate of Live Birth, a videotape of testimony from his mother's obstetrician and a letter from the State of Hawaii attesting to his birth in their fine state would lay all allegations to rest. As with most thinking of the conspiracy theory sort, the disproof of one allegation has led to new allegations. Rather than let the facts disprove a lovely conclusion, true believers are holding on to the conclusion and then fishing about for facts to match.

The most recent is a theory which is somewhat creative, a little clever, and completely wrong. This is predicated on a 1961 treaty between the UK and the US, stating that should any citizen of the UK give birth in the US, the child will be a citizen of the UK first and only a nationalized US citizen."How could that relate?," you may ask. Well, Kenya is part of the Commonwealth, and, as such, this theory argues, Obama Sr. was a UK citizen. Thus, his offspring, Obama Jr, our president-elect, is only a naturalized citizen.

There are several shortcomings to this theory, such as the question whether citizenship in a Commonwealth nation is the same as citizenship in the UK itself, a proposition which would surprise most Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and people in a few dozen nations, as well as many officials in the UK. Bu t ignoring that question there is one other massive oversight int the whole theory.

That is that Obama Jr's mother WAS AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. The law itself was meant to cover the nationality of children born to non-citizen parents in the US, where the mother was form the UK. It has no bearing on the child of a citizen. The way this law is being interpreted in this theory, any citizen who has a child with a parent form the UK, the child will no longer be eligible to be president. In fact, by the logic of this argument, the non-citizen parent's citizenship is controlling, so any child born to a citizen and a non-citizen outside oft he US is not even a naturalized US citizen, but would have to apply for citizenship.

You can see how far off base this argument is. However, it also goes to show that nothing Obama could do would satisfy the conspiracy theorists, sot here is simply no sense in arguing that he should "just provide the proof", as no matter what he did some of these theories would still continue to circulate. He is far better off simply allowing these concerns to continue in the small circles they do, while not lending them any additional credence by responding.

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* Why "African"? Well, because space is limited, and honestly, isn't it evident that anyone born in Hawaii is "American" thanks to the 13th Amendment? Until someone comes forward with a Hawaiian birth certificate issued in the past two years showing a different designation for a black individual, I am convinced this is the case. I may be wrong, but there is simply no evidence that "African" is an unusual value to put in this field. Making all other allegations no less speculative than mine.

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POSTSCRIPT

In preparing this essay I looked over some old essays and noticed that my links to Polarik's blog were no longer valid. I believe my text does a fair job of representing his arguments, but I am disappointed that the links no longer provide the user a means to check that. I suppose they were up long enough that the Internet Archive probably has a copy if you want to confirm what I said. Perhaps I will go back and correct them to point to that copy if I find I have too much time on my hands. But given what I know about my schedule, I would not anticipate that happening any time soon.

POSTSCRIPT II

I found a link to this final report from Polarik, and, despite all the material contained therein, I find nothing to change my previous analyses. As usual he goes to great lengths to explain his theories, but I still do not find them convincing. I give credit that he does admit to his previous mistakes, as many others would gloss over them instead. Hwoever, I just am not convinced that any anomalies are anything more than artifacts of compression or, at worst, relic sof legitimate image manipulation.

Yes, there is legitimate image manipulation. If the scan was dark or misolored, or maybe a little blurry, running it through "sharpening" filters or color correction does nto render it illegitimate. No more than removing red eyes from a photo makes the phot a forgery. In fact, there is even unintentional image manipulation, as many have discovered when saving a file from another format into the JPEG format, or when converting from a more to a less detailed version of JPEG. There are countless ways an image can be altered through legitimate processes, all without the intent to deceive.

I am still reading through it another time to see if there is anything in there I have not addressed in prior posts, but I have to say, I doubt it. In fact, those who think Obama is not a legitimate candidate provide me with the best argument against this document, they no longer reference it. As they have moved on to allegations which do not require forgery, I think even they have come to realize charges of forgery are unpersuasive. So, if they have let go of charge sof forgery, I doubt there is any smoking gun in the Polarik report I am reading. Still, I feel I owwe it to the author to give it a thorough reading and to rebut any new points he rasies.

So, should I find anything of interest, I will be surte ot let everyone know.