A story I would have never noticed had I not been in Hawaii and picked up the Honolulu Advertiser all week. Conversely, the fringe right has already gotten a hold of this article. When I travel, I love to get a sense of what is going on politically and culturally. Being on vacation, I tried to recharge my batteries and stay away from politics and scouring for news. However, I'm always curious and hence the update.
There were a lot of stories about the cutting of government services something unfortunately all too common on the mainland. Of course when you have to deal with idiotic requests like these discussed you might have a problem.
More than a year after his historic election, requests for President Obama's birth certificate continue to pour into the state's understaffed Health Department from people on the Mainland who refuse to believe he was born in Honolulu in 1961.
cross posted at Progressive Electorate
In an attempt to stem the flow of requests, the agency recently set up a special page on its Web site devoted to the issue of Obama's birth certificate and who is eligible to get the records.
But the requests for the president's birth certificate keeping coming at a rate of 40 to 50 a month, according to Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo, who has been handling the requests since Obama became a serious presidential candidate in 2008.
"They're spurred on by these 'birther' blogs who direct them to bombard the Health Department even though they have no legitimate right to the information," Okubo said.
"They've been misled to believe that the state of Hawai'i gives out birth information to anyone who requests it, but really our law protects birth information. We're entrusted with protecting people's vital records. To open them up would mean opening them up to identity theft and other types of concerns."
State law allows birth certificates to be issued to family members, legal guard- ians, representatives of a person's estate, or by court order or other legal purposes.
The best part of the story was the ludicrous attempt by one of the birthers claiming his kinship with our legitimate President.
When Okubo told one writer they did not have a right to Obama's birth certificate because they were not related to the president, the person wrote back saying they, indeed, had a common ancestor.
"They said they have a tangible right to his birth certificate because they're descended from Adam," Okubo said, referring to the biblical figure. "We told them they need to provide some type of legal documentation."
You might want to make sure you are sitting down while reading some of the online comments to this article. The right winger birthers infiltrated the thread without shame. Unfortunately, I think that this article will only encourage more of the birthers and fringe lunatics to ask for information as related to the birth certificate. This story will get hits on the right wing blogs and As Okubo says, "none of the requests are from people from Hawaii"