Dave Weigel misleads about Obama certificate issue, again (Janice Okubo)

As part of his long-running campaign to mislead people about the Obama citizenship issue, Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent offers "'Birther' Movement Dogs Republicans" [1]. I just got off the phone with one of his sources for the article, and she refused to verify the impression that Weigel's article is trying to make. Weigel is trying to mislead people into believing that the state of Hawaii has verified that the certification of live birth ("COLB") shown on Barack Obama's site and others. Yet, his quote source (Janice Okubo of the state of Hawaii's Department of Health) repeatedly refused to confirm that she had verified that they match and several times indicated that she wasn't qualified to verify that they match.

Here's that section of Weigel's article:

“It’s crazy,” said Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health. “I don’t think anything is ever going to satisfy them.”

Okubo, who said that she gets weekly questions from Obama ‘Birthers’ that are “more like threats,” explained that the certificate of live birth reproduced by Obama’s campaign should have debunked the conspiracy theories. “If you were born in Bali, for example,” Okubo explained, “you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate. But it’s become very clear that it doesn’t matter what I say. The people who are questioning this bring up all these implausible scenarios. What if the physician lied? What if the state lied? It’s just become an urban legend at this point.”

I repeatedly asked Okubo to confirm that she had verified that what's on file matches what's shown on Obama's sites and others. She repeatedly refused to confirm that, saying that she will leave the interpretation of her remarks (which I read to her) to those reading her remarks. I repeatedly asked her to respond with a "yes" or a "no" as to whether she had verified that there's a match, and she repeatedly responded by noting that she is not the registrar, and that she does not have the authority to verify certificates. Weigel is simply using her quote in order to mislead people into thinking that Hawaii has verified that what's shown on Obama's site matches what Hawaii has on file, when that's not true.

And, obviously, Okubo isn't helping with this matter by giving statements that can be misconstrued and that can be used to mislead people.

UPDATE: In response to the claims that Obama has publicly released his certificate, see thisUPDATE 2: Also, what Weigel refers to above is a "Certification of Live Birth", not a "certificate" as he states.

[1] washingtonindependent.com/51489/birther-movement-picks-up-steam

Fri, 07/17/2009 - 12:36 · · Importance: 6