Maggie's Farm

I don't know all the ins and outs of the issue; it never gained traction with me. What I know is the controversy wasn't settled by the release of the birth certificate. I examined the PDF containing the Long Form Birth Certificate. It wasn't a straight scan of the document. It was composed of multiple layers, which isn't a product of straight scanning. Also, its issues weren't the result of optical character recognition as some have asserted; if it was processed by OCR, any character sets were converted back to graphics and manually applied to the document on separate layers. That was deliberate. What does it mean? Who knows. Maybe it was some lower echelon joker wanting to feed the conspiracy theory. The trouble is, even though this knowledge got out into the mainstream there was no effort by the administration to squelch the rumors or remedy the issues with the PDF. It was ignorant to release the document in that condition. Regardless, leaving the matter unresolved was arrogant and dismissively contemptuous of a lot of Americans.

More recently, the revelation of a literary agent's having advertised Obama as a native born Kenyan hasn't helped put the issue to bed. As far as I know, Mr. Obama never corrected that assertion at the time of its publication. A sin of omission as it were, but still bright and shiny in the light of day.

The matter of the president's citizenship won't sway committed Democrats, but there are many Americans who rightfully have questions and as you know in politics perception is reality. The release of the birth certificate was a fiasco and an insult. It fed people's skepticism. The published and unchallenged claim of Kenyan citizenship is gas on the fire. It's no wonder articles are still being written on the subject. The administration has dealt hamfistedly with the matter and subsequently the optics are bad for those Americans whose questions were never really answered.