Topic: WorldNetDaily
As the purported Kenyan birth certificate it released increasingly appears to be a forgery -- heck, even "Ron Polarik" said so -- WorldNetDaily is still of two minds on the authenticity of the birth certificate released by Barack Obama's campaign.
Even though WND declared it to be authentic a year ago, Jerome Corsi spends a August 2 WND article trying to discredit it.
Corsi begins by asserting that "the Hawaii Department of Health refused to authenticate either of the two versions of President Obama's short-form Certificate of Live Birth, or COLB, posted online – neither the image produced by the Obama campaign nor the images released by FactCheck.org." But he provides no evidence that this, in fact, occurred -- Corsi states that it came 'in response to a direct question from WND," but Corsi does not provide that "direct question" nor directly quote what any official said in response to it.
Corsi then attempts to discredit the certificate released by the Obama campaign by repeating old conspiracy theories, claiming it was "displaying no signs of having been folded or of carrying an official State of Hawaii embossed seal." He also claims of a date apparently stamped on the back of the certificate: "When magnified and reversed, the date 'JUN 8 2007' appears to be legible."
In fact, the "8" actually looks like a "6" -- which is indeed the date stamped on the back of the certificate presented by FactCheck.org. Yet Corsi concedes that this "suggests the FactCheck.org document could be the source of the image released earlier by the Obama campaign."
Corsi also falsely plays guilt-by-association with FactCheck.org, calling it "an organization funded by the same left-leaning Annenberg Foundation that also employed Barack Obama and former Weatherman radical bomber Bill Ayers." In fact, Obama and Ayers were not "employed" by the "Annenberg Foundation"; rather, they worked for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was funded in part by an Annenberg Foundation grant that was contingent on being matched by private donations and public money. Annenberg provided only one-third of the funding for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.
Other than having also received money from the Annenberg Foundation, FactCheck.org has no links to Obama, Ayers or the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. But Corsi doesn't want you to know that. Oh, andas we've previously noted, Walter Annenberg, whose money this is, was a Republican.
Corsi delves into irrelevant assertions, such as noting that "The printing on the document clearly appeared done by a laser printer, not by any printing device available in 1961," and that it "suggests the document was not generated by a 1961 computer." But nobody has ever claimed that it was a 1961-vintage certificate.
Corsi's pedantry does not disprove that this is a document issued by the state of Hawaii. Further, the way Corsi phrased his claim that Hawaii "refused to authenticate" the document raises questions about what exactly was asked and how exactly it was answered. Consider that yet another thing WND is hiding.
Further, curiously absent from Corsi's report is any acknowledgment of WND's original reporting that the certificate released by Obama's campaign is "authentic."
