Barack Obama's Birth Certificate - See For Yourself

The GOP allegation that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. will not go away, thanks to Fox News, Republicans who can't tolerate not running the country, and of all people, Lou Dobbs. Those groups like to pick apart a copy of Obama's Hawaii birth certificate that Obama had scanned and posted online last June when he was running for President. The two main charges are that there is no official seal of the state of Hawaii, and the certificate number has been blacked out.

You can see the scanned version below, and those complaints are valid points: (click on any photo for a larger view)

For comparison, the birth certificate from another person born in Hawaii below, and it has the official seal and the certificate number:

However, on November 1st of last year, the Obama campaign met with Factcheck.org and made his Hawaii birth certificate available for the press to see, inspect, and even touch. The photographs posted below are from that day, and show the certificate number, the official seal of the state of Hawaii, and was photographed front and back.

In the first photo the embossed state seal is almost impossible to see, just as it is not viewable in the earlier scanned photo:

The embossed state seal is viewable at the bottom center of the document:
A closeup view of the embossed state seal:
The stamp from the Hawaii state registrar's office on the reverse of the document:

The problem could have been put to rest initially if the Obama camp had released better photos and not blacked out the certificate number. Why someone blacked out certificate number we can only guess. Perhaps they thought they were protecting his privacy, which is ridiculous, he was a candidate for president, there is no such thing as privacy in that situation. Many Americans are quick to jump to conclusions when they see censored documents. We're used to highly censored government documents with black lines through complete sections that are deemed not for public release. It's completely understandable some people reacted the way they did about Obama's initial release of his birth certificate.

However, the second press conference should have put an end to this nonsense. And to those who demand Obama release his birth certificate and address the issue publicly? He's already released the birth certificate twice.

Fox News and the GOP do not show the second set of photo's when claiming Obama was not born in the U.S. because it destroys their argument. And if we learned one thing from 8 years of GOP rule under George W. Bush: Republicans are not interested in the truth, only perception.