Still looking for that birth certificate

[Brucelee]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348916/Hawaii-governor-says-Obamas-birth-record-exists-produce-it.html#ixzz1BakJm5SA

[jcb986]

Sure, sure...he's waiting for someone in Mexico to send it to him...

[mikefocke]

that matches the time and place on the birth certificate? How would someone be so foresighted as to go to all that trouble for some possible benefit 40+ years later?

I used to work for the Bureau of Vital Statistics in a different state and the newspaper announcements were culled from the hospital lists the hospitals sold to the papers. It was a simple world back then with no worries about privacy.

A birth certificate paper form was filled out by the hospital (or midwife or doctor or witness) (hand written in certain eras) and submitted to the bureau and was in two parts, one with medical info that was separated and used for statistical studies. The other contained the personal data. The original was filed in a book and a hand written entry in a huge ledger book was made as the index into which book and what page the certificate was filed under. It was filed under the last name. Lots of fun trying to figure out from the handwriting of the person recording the name in the ledger what the name was. Then if you were lucky the original was still readable and the ink had not faded. Some in quill pen dipped in ink.

A copy of the certificate was made by holding the original certificate and typing the critical info into a fancy looking form. Today, all computerized.

Curiously there were different public access rules for a birth certificate and a death certificate.

So there could be several things that all match...the original certificate, the ledger/index (the Hawaii equivalent...whatever it is) and the newspaper announcement. The later is public. The former aren't which is why the governor is a reasonable person to answer the question of do they exist and match and look contemporaneous to the event claimed. Of the three, the ledger would be the hardest to fake in my state because the data was entered in the order received indexed only by last name's first few letters. No computer nicely sorted things back in the olden days folks.

[Johnny Danger]

Word has it, that Michael Vick's dog ate it ......

[Brucelee]

This issue had pretty much gone away and then the Gov felt the need to open his mouth.

Never a good idea.

[Brucelee]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/21/hawaii-wont-release-obamas-birth-info/

[mikefocke]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/21/hawaii-wont-release-obamas-birth-info/

To protect privacy, birth certificates are shown or copies given only to listed parties. Was that way in DC when I worked there. Not unusual.

The governor brought it up because he keeps getting requests whipped up by articles like this. And he'd like the whole issue to go away...finally just not replying to the requests because of the staff/supplies expense.

Still haven't explained the newspaper announcement of the birth. What conspiracy theory explains that in multiple hard copies and microfilm done long ago?

[Brucelee]

Why doesn't Obama simply authorize the release of this document?

I had to show a BC to get my passport. What is the problem here?

[mikefocke]

Originally Posted by Brucelee

Why doesn't Obama simply authorize the release of this document?

I had to show a BC to get my passport. What is the problem here?

show the birth certificate, you showed a certified copy of the certificate. The copy is meaningless for the sake of this argument, too easy to forge. And the unbelievers aren't going to believe if they saw it anyway.

But go back to my question...how does the newspaper announcement not convince you?

[Brucelee]

I don't need convincing. Obama is a toad wherever he was born.

However, I can tell you that I was once offered by job by the FBI. Ah, I don't think they would have taken a "copy" of my BC or a newspaper announcement.

That's just me.

[70Sixter]

Both the Marine Corps and FBI accepted my copy with the embossed seal of the county I was born in.

A background investigation follows up on the veracity of all claims. I had a Special BI (SBI) for my sky high clearance/access. It looked into every crevice and orrifice of my life and was redone every five years.

I'm sure the FBI did one on BamBam. Yeah, that's the ticket, I'm sure they did.

J. Edgar would have!

[Jaxonalden]

Obama doesn't get a background check. He is an elected official and if the American public thinks hes good enough to run the country a background check is not required.

Think about it, he's elected President and doesn't pass the background check...what do you do, have another election? He can admit he's the head of Al Qaeda and we would have to live with it until the next election or impeach him.

P.S. 70Sixter, you mean SSBI? If you had a SCI, I know you wouldn't be talking about that. Good way to have bad people asking you questions.

[Brucelee]

Impeachment sounds about right.

[70Sixter]

Originally Posted by Jaxonalden

P.S. 70Sixter, you mean SSBI? If you had a SCI, I know you wouldn't be talking about that. Good way to have bad people asking you questions.

We called it Special Background Investigation in my day. Administered by the SSO (Special Security Office).

I did not mention the clearances and accesses, but they were a matter of record in my unclassified jacket. Not linked with what I had access to, of course.

I'm so outdated not even Nigerian secret agents would want to talk to me!

Some of Clinton's key staff never passed their BIs. Not sure about Obama's staffers.

[Jaxonalden]

Originally Posted by 70Sixter

We called it Special Background Investigation in my day. Administered by the SSO (Special Security Office).

I did not mention the clearances and accesses, but they were a matter of record in my unclassified jacket. Not linked with what I had access to, of course.

I'm so outdated not even Nigerian secret agents would want to talk to me!

Some of Clinton's key staff never passed their BIs. Not sure about Obama's staffers.

Ture, I wouldn't be to sure on the whole "outdated" thing though. Some national secrets make for good reading.

[mikefocke]

AZ law that says supply an original birth certificate or don't be on the ballot. It kinda doesn't define original does it. Since the original certificate is in the state archives and never leaves there no one will be able to comply. Everything else is a copy or a certified copy (which is what the certificate of Obama is that they are showing on TV). Sometimes in some states a certificate (often issued by the state's Dept of Health) is a photocopy, sometimes a typed certificate, sometimes a handwritten certificate, now most often computer generated. For my kids born in VA I think I've seen all 3 kinds.

It is almost as if the lawmakers have a hospital certificate in mind which is nothing but a souvenir, it isn't a birth certificate in the legal sense.

I'm trying to remember all the blanks on our DC forms and if they met all the criteria for witnesses signatures that the proposed AZ law is said to require. I don't think so. I do remember that the forms changed over the years with the older 1890s certificates having little info and being filled out by the midwife, doctor or mother while the 1960s forms were in two parts and the second part about the health aspects of the mother and birth were separated from the birth certificate and used for public health statistical studies. You weren't allowed to reassemble the two parts into one document for privacy/legal reasons. And those certificates were mostly typed but occasionally we'd get a back seat of a taxicab certificate and I'm sure those would lack the required number of witness signatures. I'm presuming these forms by the '60s were pretty uniform state to state.

Please lawmakers do some homework before offering silly legislative proposals. Base them on facts and the law, not emotion.

[tonycarreon]

can we shut up about this now? - no of course not. for some people, it doesn't matter what evidence is provided, or it would have been settled 2 1/2 years ago.

Originally Posted by Brucelee

Watch you tone. You can question things like this w/o being "nuts!"

*the full image:

[mikefocke]

a scan of the top of the 1960's forms that most health departments were using around that time. (I worked in the DC Dept of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics during that time period during the summers).

Even this is only a picture of the original, not the original itself. And only the top part of the form as the bottom part was removed and used for statistical analysis and only contained health data relating to the parents in any case.

A typical procedure would be for the birth to occur, a hospital worker to interview the mother and then type up the certificate, then the typed certificate to be brought to the mother for signature, then routed to the doctor for signature, then sent to the Dept of Public Health where the number in the top right would be assigned via a rubber stamp. Then an entry would be made in an index to allow a search to reveal the file number that would allow retrieval of the certificate. The dates in this picture seem to show that that process flow was followed.

Recall that in those days we didn't use computers so everything was done by hand. In our office, even the index was a hand written ledger book about 30 by 30 inches alphabetized by the last name so you'd go to the Smith page and then look by the dates and then look up the certificates in paper books where they were filed in the order they were received by the year and certificate number.

All of that information has been extracted and computerized now and I have no idea if they retained the original paper after digitizing everything. I would hope they did as I know the handwritten ones were a devil to decipher and sometimes we would huddle around with a magnifying glass debating the spelling of a word. Sometimes we had to use the applicants guidance to help us interpret the writing.

I say all this to provide some background for those not familiar with the processes back then and to say that it does look consistent with practices at the time.

[Stroked & Blown]

It was modified: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eOfYwYyS_c

[Johnny Danger]

I thought that he was born in Switzerland . Isn't that him on the far left ?