I applaud Phil for his further investigative work. I was indeed basing my endorsement of Andy’s article on my assumption that all his facts are right, an assumption based on my high regard for Andy’s work. If some of those facts are wrong, I withdraw as much of my short endorsement as is necessitated by the inaccuracies.

But I do not find Andy’s article as a whole to be paranoid. He CLEARLY says he is not endorsing the central message of the “birthers,” i.e. that Obama somehow was born in Kenya, etc. Instead, he is making a broader relevant point that Obama has been caught in lie after lie after lie, and that he has completely blown off his pledges of transparency — and that the refusal to release the ACTUAL birth certificate, with ALL the info on it, is an indication of lack of transparency again. The point is not to show that he wasn’t born in Hawaii, but that there might be SOMETHING embarrassing on the certificate for him to so repeatedly refuse to produce it. Again, this is IF and ONLY IF Andy is right that the birth certificate contains MORE IMFORMATION than the simple certificate of live birth.

Frankly, I don’t care what is on the birth certificate. And I do think he was born in Hawaii. And I am not even sure that all private information ought to be coughed up on demand. Hell, my own birth certificate had a random typo on it that has been corrected only by a letter from the relevant government official (I THINK that is the only form of correction) — so I think if somebody dug it up, they would still see the incorrect info that is on the typo, without necessarily seeing the letter of correction. I therefore have some sympathy for not wanting the full original document released — SOME sympathy, if not entire sympathy.

Again, what I continue to endorse is the main message of Andy’s piece: “The point is that he lies elaborately about himself and plainly doesn’t believe it’s important to be straight with the American people.”

And this, from his concluding paragraph: “The point has little to do with whether Obama was born in Hawaii. I’m quite confident that he was. The issue is: What is the true personal history of the man who has been sold to us based on nothing but his personal history? On that issue, Obama has demonstrated himself to be an unreliable source and, sadly, we can’t trust the media to get to the bottom of it.”

These are relevant points to raise.