Hawaii Health director now says Obama was born in Hawaii; she did *not* say that before

Dr. Chiyome Fukino of the Hawaii Department of Health has issued a press release that supposedly says (link from Dan Nakaso of the Honolulu Advertiser):

"I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai'i State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."

Confirming that he was born there is more than she said in her 10/31/08 statement which did not say he was born there. The new release adds information and doesn't simply reiterate what she said before, helping to show that all those who claimed that her earlier release proved he was born there were being misleading. For instance, Howard Kurtz said officials confirmed he was born there before that had happened. The fact that it's now happened doesn't mean that he wasn't being misleading before.

And, it's unfortunate that I didn't get any help in my attempts to use this issue to discredit the MSM; now that previously golden opportunity has largely been lost. Expect the same MSM sources that were misleading about this issue before to now use this new statement to try to show that they were telling the truth all along, when that's false: the new statement provides additional information and those who said Fukino's 10/31 statement showed he was born there were lying.

In December 2008, I asked Hawaii to clarify their 10/31 statement, and they refused. The next month I issued a challenge specifically suggesting that those who were misleading about this issue should try to get them to clarify the October statement. Both of those were because the 10/31 statement was ambiguous.

Note that whoever typed the quote misspelled Obama's name and left out one of the quotes in "Hawai'i"; this post will be updated when the release is available on Hawaii's site.

Note also that she says he's a "natural-born American citizen"; is she qualified to make that determination?

And, it would be interesting to know exactly who and what prompted her to release this new information, something that would seem to be a violation of Hawaiian law unless she were given permission by Obama. If Obama himself did not give permission, was she given permission by Linda Lingle or similar?

UPDATE: The press release is available from hawaii.gov/health/about/pr/pressdate.html, and aside from the misspellings it matches what's above. That's the entire statement, so I've removed the ellipses.

Tue, 07/28/2009 - 09:44 · · Importance: 9