Many of us have now seen the Australian Birth Certificate in question...can we all PLEDGE

to not refer to this guy by name anymore? (The Australian gent, I mean.)

Quite without thinking, I wrote a post with his full name in the title line earlier...it now appears as the second entry you see in a Google search; first is at FreeRepublic. So I'm currently trying to get that post deleted.

I forgot that lurking behind this 50-year-old document is a private citizen who is very much alive, well, and up until the last day or so, practically anonymous. He did NOTHING, however, to deserve all the unwarranted attention he is now undoubtedly receiving. Now the server of the genealogical site (where the original BC was posted) is down, and the jpeg link is gone, although a fat lot of good that does at this point, as people have already made screenshots of the document and the site it came from. In fact, it will make it even worse, as now the FReepers are claiming that this was all a nefarious red herring planted by the Obama administration from the beginning--and so the digging for info will continue,

This poor bloke is undoubtedly being harassed by all sorts of whackjobs from the other side of the globe who are trying to confirm that he is indeed real. He is. He lives in Australia, has a wife and kids. And what with the global community these days, they don't have to try very hard to find his contact info. Having his name repeated over and over again only makes it easier to find out where and how to reach him, and subsequently life will become more and more difficult for the gentleman in question.

If we can't prevent him from being bothered, let's at least not to stoop to the level of the Birthers by making his life MORE hell in the process of debunking this crazy hoax. I'm currently feeling pretty damn guilty about my role in all this. This is a real person, a real INNOCENT person, and it bothers me to see his name treated as part of a conspiracy--or a punchline.

to get the check, we are supposed to push this one in the liberal media.