If you trust the reporting of Ben Smith of the Politico, I hope to change your mind. He offers "Culture of conspiracy: The Birthers" (link), which is just the latest in his attempt to smear those who have questions about where Barack Obama was born and whether he's eligible to be president. And, this excerpt contains a blatant lie:
A quick reality check, before we dive in: The challenges to Obama's eligibility have no grounding in evidence. Courts across the country have summarily rejected the movement's theory - that Obama can't be a citizen because his father wasn't - as a misreading of U.S. law; and Hawaii officials, along with contemporary birth announcements, affirm that Obama was in fact born in Honolulu in 1961.
The last bit is completely false:
1. Those "contemporary birth announcements" do not list where Obama was born or in which hospital (see the first item here). They only list the supposed address of his parents. No one has ever documented who placed the ads, and they aren't proof of anything.
2. Hawaii officials never "affirm[ed] that Obama was in fact born in Honolulu". Read their statement, which says nothing about where Obama was born. And, when I asked them to confirm Ben Smith's assumptions, they refused.
See the Obama citizenship summary for much more.
The bottom line is that Ben Smith of the Politico is a brazen liar.
3/16/09 UPDATE: Ben Smith lied again, saying (politico.com/news/stories/0309/20033.html):
Obama has actually produced a copy of his Hawaii birth certificate, and it has been certified by the state of Hawaii.
1. He only "produced" it to FactCheck, and the same page where they have pictures of the cert - pictures that they later compressed and removed EXIF data from - contains the blatant lie that Hawaii verified where Obama was born.
2. The state of Hawaii never "certified" that picture. They only said they have a cert on file. The picture and what they have on file may be different.
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