Breaking: Obama releases long form birth certificate

Multiple news outlets, including CNN and the Associated Press, are reporting that President Obama has released a copy of his long form birth certificate, and will make a statement on the “birther issue” at around 9:45 Eastern Time this morning. The USA Today has a brief story on the release:

President Obama released copies of his birth certificate today, hoping to silence questions about his Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Obama himself plans to make a statement about the so-called “birther issue” at 9:45 a.m.

The release is a response to Donald Trump and other critics who have questioned whether Obama was born in the United States, and is therefore eligible for the presidency.

The White House also released letters from this month in which Obama requested copies of his birth certificate.

“The president believed it was becoming a major distraction from the issues we are having in this country,” said communications director Dan Pfeiffer, calling it a “fake controversy” and “a sideshow.”

Obama faxed a letter to the Hawaii Department of Health on April 22, requesting two copies “of my original certificate of live birth.”

The health department replied that it would make an exception for Obama and make two certified copies from their bound volume of birth records; normally the department would generate computer copies.

I haven’t seen what was released today – don’t care to as I’ve never believed that he wasn’t born in the US. As I’ve said before, the issue fascinated me only from the standpoint of an armchair investigator who loves to dig for overlooked details and missed clues/facts. Like my co-blogger, I believe the President has used the issue in order to try and denigrate conservatives as out of step with the mainstream and I’m genuinely surprised that he is trying to “end” the controversy surrounding his birth certificate well before Campaign 2012 kicks into high gear. It’s interesting, though, that he’s only releasing it after Donald Trump made such a fuss about it. Average citizens doing so apparently didn’t matter to our celebrity Prez. This was about political one-upmanship, and nothing more.

In any event, I hope this resolves the issue, though I doubt it will.

Update – 10:22 AM: Here’s the computerized version of the BC and the long form version.

Phineas butts in, 11:48 AM: ST beat me to it (the curse of being a PST blogger), but, for anyone interested, here’s my take.

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