Obama’s Long Form Birth Certificate

President Obama's long-form birth certificate is being released, the White House announced today.

The entirety of a CNN Breaking News alert:

President Obama’s long-form birth certificate is being released, the White House announced today.

Naturally, this will lead to charges that it took them three years and all the resources of the presidency to fake a long-form birth certificate.

UPDATE: Here’s the certificate:

 

FILED UNDER: The Presidency, US Politics,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Anon says:

    This is just going to give more raw material to the conspiracy theorists.

  2. JD says:

    Conspiracy theorists can never be satisfied. Hopefully this just convinces idiots that were on the fence or didn’t care to find out the facts themselves due to laziness or indifference.

  3. PD Shaw says:

    No, the question will be why he didn’t do it earlier, was it a plan to drive his opponents crazy?

  4. Franklin says:

    No, the question will be why he didn’t do it earlier, was it a plan to drive his opponents crazy?

    Or were they already crazy? It’s so hard to tell these days.

    Anyway, this is going to change very, very few people’s minds. Most people believe what they want to believe. The wingnuts have taken their stand, they can’t go back on it now.

  5. TG Chicago says:

    My guess: he wanted to go ahead and end the Trumpmentum so that media will return their focus to the people he might actually be facing in 2012.

  6. mantis says:

    My guess: he was sick of the United States suffering the embarrassment of letting crazy idiots drive our news and attack our president with lunatic bullshit. So am I.

  7. Drew says:

    Yes, the birthers are crazy; maybe this will settle them down. Who knows?

    But Obama was irresponsible. He expresses faux concern that this issue distracts from “real” issues. If that was the case he could have released this any time in the last 3 years; there were real issues then. He obviously found political utility in it for 3 years, now he doesn’t, for whatever reason. Hence the release.

    This whole thing has been a circus, and what might be expected from someone with the experience and stature of a former community organizer. I prefer Presidents who are not circus ringmasters.

  8. PJ says:

    @Drew:

    But Obama was irresponsible. He expresses faux concern that this issue distracts from “real” issues. If that was the case he could have released this any time in the last 3 years; there were real issues then.

    What he released in 2008 was enough. The birthers are just going to start shouting for more documents and they aren’t going to believe any document the President releases. Should he also release his complete school record? When is enough enough?

  9. mantis says:

    If that was the case he could have released this any time in the last 3 years;

    He release the official birth record the State of Hawaii issues. That’s enough for the State Department and any state in the union. He had to go to special trouble to get this document, which no other Hawaii citizen would be able to get, because our nation is composed, to a disturbing degree, of lunatic morons who are embarrassing us all with their nonstop stupidity. Said lunatic morons include most of the right wing media, many elected Republican representatives, and a huge portion of the populace.

  10. john personna says:

    Drew, you decry the circus, but join the circus.

    The only way for conservatives to come out clean on this thing was to throw the birthers under the bus. The newspaper birth announcements sealed it for any sane person.

  11. Pug says:

    If that was the case he could have released this any time in the last 3 years; there were real issues then.

    He released a birth certificate four years ago.

    You are part of the circus, not Obama.

  12. anjin-san says:

    I prefer Presidents who are not circus ringmasters.

    It’s not Obama’s fault that the GOP is a freak show. Try harder.

    Still waiting for you to back up your claim that releasing long form birth certificates is SOP. Name a single President who has done it…

  13. Neo says:

    Obama ended the primary birther hysteria because, after two weeks into the “War on Ryan” campaign, he hadn’t made a noticeable dent in audience appreciation. What was worse was that his own minions in the media were working against his new campaign while they prolonged the “birther” saga with their attempts to embarrass various Republicans.
    Instead of making Ryan and his budget the primary point of the current media narrative, the “birther” saga was letting other news, like high energy prices, slip into the news.
    Meanwhile, various independents were showing there were susceptible to the “birther” doubts, while seniors were the group who now most embraced the Ryan budget. It was like Obama was invisible, a narcissistic death sentence.