Liza Mundy /WaPo lies about Obama certificate (+SPLC joins in)

Liza Mundy of the Washington Post offers "Burden of Proof on Obama's Origins" (link), a three-screen, mostly smear piece on Orly Taitz of the "Birthers" movement. Leaving aside Taitz' various claims, Mundy has a problem with the truth. (Note that she's also the author of a presumably sympathetic biography of Michelle Obama; she whines about the lack of cooperation from the Obama camp at slate.com/id/2202261).

Mundy quotes Taitz as saying of Obama's records "Nobody has seen proper documents. Period." and follows that with this:

Another breathtaking statement, or rather misstatement. After initially trying to ignore the controversy, Obama's staff has indeed provided an official record showing that the president was born in Hawaii. The document is a computer-generated official certification of live birth attesting to the fact that Barack Hussein Obama II was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. The director of Hawaii's Department of Health also has stated, rather wearily, that she has viewed the underlying vital records and that they are valid.

All Obama has provided is a picture of what looks to be an official document; he hasn't provided the document itself as Lisa Munday states. The picture has never been authenticated by any government agency, and thus there's no proof that anything on it is accurate. While Chiyome Fukino of the Hawaii Department of Health did say in 2008 "the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures" and then in July she said that she's "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", she didn't say anything about the picture on Obama's site, as Mundy is implying.

Mundy also (of course) plays the race card and the extremist card:

At a minimum, organizations who monitor extremist groups say that the fantasy of Obama's ineligibility is now a central tenet. "The birther conspiracy itself is now totally widespread among military and paramilitary [militia] groups and new, what we would call quote-unquote 'patriot' groups, which are groups that are virulently anti-government," says Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Beirich says that a popular conspiracy theory among such groups is that the government is going to round up citizens and put them in camps operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Tue, 10/06/2009 - 11:46 · · Importance: 5