So, he finally released his birth certificate.

I find it humorous that he tries to downplay it and make everyone who wanted to see it look childish. People were asking for proof of him being legal to be president, and it shouldn't be that big of a deal to just show it and shut people up, unless he has/had something to hide.

If a cop pulls me over, I have to show them my license to prove I'm legally driving. I can't just tell them to pound salt and trust that I'm legal.

I was wondering when little BAF was going to bring this up. I assumed you would just call this a CIA forgery.

Please educate me on this... Do the so called birthers think that if, say, an American citizen gives birth to a child in Germany because her husband is stationed at a US base, that the child cannot ever become President? For example, wasn't John McCain born in Panama?

Or does it only apply when one of the parents is African?

Oh, and by the way, it's more like this:

You show the cop your legal state issued driver's license, but he refuses to accept it, asking for your passport instead.

I thought a birth certificate had the baby's footprints, etc.

So I did some reading up on McCain, and sure enough he was born in Panama. He later gained guaranteed citizenship through statutes / laws specific to the Panama Canal Zone, but these could not possibly trump the Constitution's requirement to be natural born.

So if you think that somebody is disqualified for not being born on American land, then McCain is also disqualified. You cannot cherry pick which candidates it applies to.

For instance, FDR Jr. was born in Canada. I'm not sure if he ever ran for President, but it's kind of funny to think that somebody whose natural father was President for 12 years would be not eligible due to not being a "natural born" citizen.

What? Are you thinking of the non-legal hospital's birth certificate found in your mother's scrapbook?

It is not. It's just something the hospital prints out for the fun of it. (If it is stamped with the county's seal and signed by the county clerk, then it would be considered a legal document... but as far as I know, they never are.)

I just got my "certificate of live birth" out, and I was born in the USA.

I am now the age my dad was when I was born. I cannot imagine having six children at my age.

The certificate has been out for a long time. Some time ago, they passed legislation in Hawaii allowing them to ignore requests for the birth certificate, because they had become overburdened from complying and sending out copies to all the nut-jobs who were asking for it.

My favorite part of today's headline is Donald Trump's reaction:

"Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish. Our president has finally released a birth certificate."

lawlz!

I don't know where my birth certificate is, but I can assure you I'm born.

The first time I heard about this I checked wikipedia, and snopes and was satisfied. Did you know that the long form they kept asking for is actually less legal than the short form he already provided years ago?

And it wasn't like he could just go and get it like they keep saying. He had to have his lawyers FOIA it; they don't just give those out to you, and there's no reason to ever need it anyway, since they're not useful, the short form is legally accepted in any court of law.

This whole thing was a big ridiculous joke meant to distract us from the real issues, because we all have the attention spans of goldfish. And now Trump has the gal to clown around and pretend like he actually contributed something to society when all he did was waste everyone's time.

"finally"?

I once read a site where an alleged "expert" looked over his birth certificate (this was long before he released it) and found evidence of forgery. How true this is is anyone's guess.

Someone needs to either change the law or crack down on all abusers (MCCain, Obama etc...). It should probably be changed so the need to be natural born is removed and that only one of your parents need be US Citizens.

Either way, we have no such problems here in Canada and while I am not a fan of Obama and the democrats, it does feel like nitpicking to me as well.

The term "natural born" doesn't even have a definition. So even if Obama were born in Africa (but he wasn't), it's possible that the courts would still consider that to be "natural born" given his mother was a US citizen.

If McCain had become President, then we'd probably have a definition by now. Surely somebody would have challenged his eligibility, and the courts would have had to listen to arguments since he clearly wasn't born in the USA.

But I agree with you regardless. The concept as commonly understood is dumb. Better alternatives:

• remove it completely

• require one parent being a citizen at the time of your birth

• require X years of continuous residency in the USA

As it is now, a Mexican women can illegally enter the USA, give birth to a baby, and return back to Mexico... and that child is somehow a natural born US citizen that can be President when he is old enough.

LMAO!!! Watching american news is like watching "reality tv".

Sounds like it was scanned with OCR enabled to me.

And the Hawaiian officials would be the ones responsible for a fake, not Obama. How would Obama even know where he was born?