>> Do you believe that the POTUS was born in the US?
It is more likely than not he was, IMO. But it is not an "open-and-shut" case as those on the Left as well as many of those on the Right have declared. If we were talking about "beyond a reasonable doubt", I would say no, you can't go that far.
I've never been in the "birther" category, i.e., I do not advocate the position that he wasn't born in the U.S.
But frankly, the bio from the literary agent was a tipping point for me. In real life these sorts of things matter. A competent attorney would have known that if you allow something like this to hang out there unchallenged for nearly 20 years, undergoing one revision after another but the premise having never been changed, there is a risk some people will believe it. Then, weeks before you begin your run for the presidency, you oddly decide now, after nearly 20 years, you have to "fix" that. This evidence does substantially increase the likelihood, in my view, that he was NOT born in Hawaii. After all, it was HIS bio, and these aren't usually just made up out of thin air. I cannot imagine ANY professional allowing someone else to write his bio -- erroneously -- and not insisting on a correction, IMMEDIATELY.
You can't later on come along and say, "Oh, that was wrong all along" and expect rational people to believe it. In a court of law it may not be absolute, but it raises doubt in the mind of an unbiased, rational observer.
I'm sure the attorneys on this thread could provide examples where this type of evidence has determined the outcome of a trial. I find it absurd that the same people who have attacked Romney's signature on various Bain documents as a mere ministerial function would turn a blind eye to something as blatant as Obama's willful decision to hold himself out as having been Kenyan born until it was "convenient" to claim otherwise. |
