The Sleuth (WaPo): A Birth Certificate By Any Other Name [View All]

By Mary Ann Akers | July 31, 2009; 4:15 PM ET

It seems nothing will deter the conspiracy theorists known as birthers, who have become the bane of the Republican Party's existence with their (dare we say wacky) claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, therefore, is not a natural born citizen.

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They're also fixated on the type of birth document issued by the Hawaiian government, which is called a "certification of live birth." They refuse for some reason to believe that a certification is the same as a birth certificate.

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But still, the birthers ask, why won't President Obama release his original birth certificate and possibly bury the issue once and for all?

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent answer to this question: "Why should he? The demand has no basis in principle and would have no practical benefit."

James Taranto writes in his "Best of the Web" column, "Obama has already provided a legal birth certificate demonstrating that he was born in Hawaii. No one has produced any serious evidence to the contrary. Absent such evidence, it is unreasonable to deny that Obama has met the burden of proof. We know that he was born in Honolulu as surely as we know that Bill Clinton was born in Hope, Ark., or George W. Bush in New Haven, Conn.

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