Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii governor drops mission to dispel birthers, prove Obama was born in state
BY Aliyah Shahid
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, January 22nd 2011, 3:39 PM
nydailynews.com
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie is giving up on efforts to squash claims that President Barack Obama wasn't born in his state -- but it's not for lack of trying.
State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that it's against state law to release private documents, including an individual's birth documentation without the person's consent
"There is nothing more that Gov. Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document," Abercrombie's spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday. "Unfortunately, there are conspirators who will continue to question the citizenship of our president."
Abercrombie, a fellow Democrat and a friend of the President, launched an effort in December to squash conspiracy theories that President Obama was born elsewhere.
Some right-wing activists have long insisted that President Obama is ineligible to serve as President, claiming he wasn't born in the United States. Some argue he was born in Kenya, while others claim he was really a citizen of the United Kingdom or Indonesia.
This "birther movement" has persisted despite ample evidence proving that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii in 1961.
in 2008, the Obama Administration released a "certification of live birth," a shorter document that carries the same legal weight as the long one. The Administration has been reluctant to be seen as bowing to politically-motivated extremists.
"A year and a half ago, I asked that the birth certificate be put on the Internet because, Lord knows, if you have a birth certificate and put it on the Internet, what else could be the story?" Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in July 2009. "Nothing will assuage them. ... But there are 10,000 more important issues for people in this country to discuss."
The state's health director said in 2008 and 2009 that she had viewed and verified Obama's original vital records and said birth notices appeared in two Honolulu newspapers within days of the President's birth at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital.
Abercrombie has previously told CNN that even if there is ample evidence that proves he's a U.S. citizen, conspiracy theories will still exist.
"You're not going to convince those people because they have a political agenda, or they have minds that go in that kind of direction," the governor said. "Conspiratorial theorists are never going to be satisfied." |
