Israel Insider ^ | 3 July 2008 | Reuven Koret
Posted on Thursday, July 03, 2008 7:35:19 PM by SE Mom
Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears.
The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos, an extreme left blog site, and the Obama campaign, in misleading the public with official-looking but manipulated document images of doubtful provenance.
The perceived unreliability of the image has provoked petitions and widespread demands for Obama to submit for objective inspection the paper versions of the "birth certificate" he claimed in his book Dreams from My Father was in his possession, as well as the paper version of the Certificate of Live Birth for which the image on the Daily Kos and the Obama "Fight the Smears" website was supposedly generated.
Without a valid birth certificate, Obama cannot prove he fulfills the "natural born citizen" requirement of the Constitution, throwing into doubt his eligibility to run for President.
McKinnon, who says he is 25-30 years old, operates a website called OpenDNA.com and uses the OpenDNA screen name on various web sites and blogs, including his comments and diary on The Daily Kos. In recent years he has divided his time between Long Beach, California and Vancouver, British Columbia. He is a Democratic political activist, frequent contributor to the left wing Daily Kos blog, and a fervent Barack Obama supporter.
(Excerpt) Read more at web.israelinsider.com ...
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
While Jay McKinnon was on an American road trip, opendna was "outed" (sic)
and falsely accused of counterfeiting a birth certificate for a United
States Senator Barack Obama. This diary is dedicated to Jeniffer, an
enthusiastic and hopeful voice and the first person to ask me to explain
the very weird things being said about Jay McKinnon.
"I believe that there is overwhelming evidence, which establishes beyond a reasonable doubt, that Senator Obama is a natural born US Citizen, and that he has acted in good faith to establish this fact. I have no evidence to contradict that belief, have not seen any, and do not believe any exists. I have been libeled by humorless fools trying to look clever on the internet." - Jay McKinnonThe following is the transcript of an interview conducted on July 4th 2008.
INTRODUCTION: After the 2008 Democratic Primary season, Anti-Obama/Pro-Clinton bloggers (PUMAs) latched onto the idea that if Senator Obama was found ineligible to be President, then Hillary Clinton would take the Democratic Nomination. In late-June, relying upon the "natural born citizen" requirement for the Presidency, some PUMAs set out to establish that Obama was not born in the United States.Opendna: What took you so long? Where've you been?
When faced with a scanned copy of Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth", they set about to prove an elaborate conspiracy theory that the images were digital fakes and not true copies of a real or valid document. In order to support their fantasy, they decided that opendna had counterfeited Senator Obama's birth certificate and set about inventing evidence to establish this "truth" (read: bizarre fiction). Updates are listed chronologically after the interview. [15JUL2008]
Jay McKinnon: I've been away. A few things came together at once. I read a little Cicero and Socrates, which caused me to meditate on my use (or abuse) of language. I realized that it was incredibly unlikely that anything would occur or be said before November which would change my vote, and that I probably wouldn’t have anything meaningful to contribute in any event. I felt that I'd said much more than I'd done, that summer was fleeting and that I'd better get sun burned while the sun’s shining. It's basically been a loss of faith in technology. Ultimately, I guess I just felt I had better things to do than argue with people on the internet.
Opendna: Do you think this will end the bad noise?
Jay McKinnon: I am very, very doubtful. In More Than Cool Reason, George Lakoff suggested that, when people are confronted with facts which conflict with pre-existing "frames" or deeply-held metaphors, it is more likely to be the facts which are discarded than the frame. I expect my statements will be "debunked" by people who desperately need to believe (or profess to believe) something other than the truth.
But at least my side of the story will be told in my own words at the place of my choosing.
Opendna: Is this going to be funny?
Jay McKinnon: I will attempt to avoid satire or irony because my accusers have not shown themselves to understand either. Regrettably, every non-blogger, non-partisan and non-American who has heard this story has found it absolutely hilarious.
Opendna: Is Senator Barack H. Obama a natural born US Citizen?
Jay McKinnon: Beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Senator’s travels as a child and young man required a passport. For over a century, US passports have included a field for place of birth. (Fact) To the best of my recollection, every passport I have ever seen (and they are legion) has included a field for place of birth. In order to enter Indonesia in 1967, young Barack Obama would have required a passport. We know from his kindergarten "essay" that young Barack was aware of his US citizenship while living in Indonesia.
In order to return to the United States in 1971 young Barack would have required a passport. At his entry he would have either been a US Citizen or an Alien. If he was an Alien, he had a State Department-issued visa; if he didn’t have a visa, he was American. Again, we know prior to that date that he believed himself to be an American. Since 1971 Senator Obama has traveled many times on US passports and he now – as a US Senator – travels on an Official passport which carries greater diplomatic weight (and requires greater background scrutiny) than what most American travelers use. By virtue of holding an Official US passport, Senator Obama has better proof of his identify, citizenship and place of birth than upwards of 90% of Americans.
In order to believe that Barack Obama was born anywhere but the United States, we must believe that there is [1] a successful conspiracy (including people now dead for decades) – dating back to the 1960s – to hide his place of birth and defraud the State Department with the sole goal that Senator Obama be allowed to run for president in 2008; or [2] an on-going conspiracy within Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s Department to allow a foreign-born person to run for president. I regard both of these options as rather silly.
In March of 2008, the State Department revealed that employees had been caught looking at Senator Obama’s passport records. In order to believe that Senator Obama is not a natural born US Citizen, we must believe that (1) those caught would rather go to jail than blow the whistle on the State Department’s cover-up; and (2) there are federal ethics investigators who have examined Senator Obama’s records and are now party to the conspiracy. I regard both of these options as very silly.
While it is conceivably possible that Barack Obama is not a natural born US Citizen, I regard the odds as so infinitesimally small as to put the fact of his US-birth beyond a reasonable doubt. I regard the hope that credible evidence establishing foreign birth will be discovered on the internet to be profoundly silly.
Opendna: When did you first hear about Barack Obama's birth certificate?
Jay McKinnon: Around June 12th 2008.
Opendna: How did you first hear about it?
Jay McKinnon: As I recall, someone sent me an email containing two images. One of the Decosta birth certificate and the other from Fight The Smears. The subject line was 'Birth Certificate Appears to be "Invalid."'.
Opendna: What did you think?
Jay McKinnon: I thought two things. First, that it should be self-evident that a JPEG of a scanned official document cannot be valid. Second, that I was being asked to perform some kind of forensic analysis to compare the two digital images.
Opendna: What did you think about doing analysis on those images?
Jay McKinnon: I thought it was about the silliest thing I had been asked to do in... well... Ever. It was a kin comparing two photocopies of dollar bills to determine if one of them was counterfeit.
Opendna: Did you do it?
Jay McKinnon: Sure. I spent a few minutes comparing the JPEGs under magnification.
Opendna: What did you determine?
Jay McKinnon: From the images I examined, I concluded that the state of Hawaii has probably implemented a number of relatively sophisticated document security features. I concluded that they should be commended for the quality of their birth certificates and should be held up as the standard to which other states aspire or exceed.
I also concluded that I wasn’t interested in doing or saying anything more on the matter unless specifically asked. There are other people much more skilled at digital image forensics, and they would say more intelligent things about the JPEGs than I would (or so I thought).
Opendna: You have said some pretty disparaging things about birth certificates.
Jay McKinnon: Yep. Generally speaking, they are extremely insecure documents and poor forms of identification. They are very susceptible to counterfeiting and provide wonderful information for identify thieves. This is an opinion shared by US Senate, the House of Representatives, the White House, the US State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. For this reason the Real ID Act was signed into law on May 11 2005, and birth certificates will no longer be acceptable documents for entering the US (as of June 1, 2009).
I encourage all Americans to get passports from the US passport office, to seriously consider whether their birth certificate might be discovered by a burglar and to take theft-prevention measures appropriate to the risk of losing control of their financial identity.
Opendna: Let’s talk about the Ahphorgerie and Blank4McCain JPEGs.
Jay McKinnon: Ok.
Opendna: Why did you do it?
Jay McKinnon: I was making lame jokes at the expense of people who think that looking at JPEGs will prove that a US Senator is not an American Citizen. I didn’t think the jokes were funny, so I gave up and did something else.
Opendna: Where did you get the images?
Jay McKinnon: I copied the birth certificate from the front page of DailyKos and edited them in Microsoft Paint.
Opendna: How did you edit them?
Jay McKinnon: I copied part of the background from one section of the image and pasted it over the text. In the case of Ahphorgerie, I used MS Paint’s "Text" tool to apply a name.
Opendna: Why isn’t the background messed up?
Jay McKinnon: It’s a repeating pattern so I lined them up. I did the best I could with Microsoft Paint. Given all the effort put in, I would have thought someone would have figured that out by now.
Opendna: Can you explain the Aphorgeri joke?
Jay McKinnon: The original inspiration was a comment saying "I'm sure that every forgery includes a note that essentially says "Hey! I'm a forgery!"" I offered up a digital manipulation in which the text from the name did not match the place or time of birth, the name literally read ‘Hey! I’m a forgery!’, and most of the text was blank. I don’t think it could have more obviously been a fake, which was the joke. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would be so silly as to claim that it really was a forgery.
Opendna: Can you explain the Blank4McCain joke?
Jay McKinnon: Someone wrote that they wanted to see Senator McCain’s birth certificate (and why not?). I made another joke about people making allegations of fraud: If people are allegedly faking birth certificates for Obama why shouldn’t they fake one for McCain? In fact, why shouldn’t both Senators be born in the same place at the same time? I would have left the date of birth in but it was too late to UNDO. Again, I thought it was self-evident what I’d done, how I’d done it and that the motivation was satire.
But like I said, they weren’t very funny jokes.
Opendna: What about the other "offensive images" in your photobucket?
Jay McKinnon: If you don’t find something mildly amusing about a propaganda poster of Chairman Mao with the text "RTFM", then I really can’t help.
Opendna: Why don't any of your images show up in a search?
Jay McKinnon: I'm too lazy to tag every picture.
Opendna: What about the absence of time stamps?
Jay McKinnon: Ask Photobucket. I'm not the CEO. [7/9: a reader emails that the publication date is visible in the RSS feed for the photobucket album. True dat. -ed]
Opendna: Some people have written very convincing technical analysis of your images and concluded that you are the original source of Obama’s birth certificate. They even say that you used sophisticated techniques to obscure your work.
Jay McKinnon: I used Microsoft Paint to edit the image posted by Kos. I do not believe the US State Department accepts JPEGs of birth certificates for any purpose. I did not travel back in time to help Obama’s parents obtain a US passport with fraudulent documents, nor to provide images to the Obama Campaign or Kos. I have never counterfeited a document and I do not intend to start. I do not believe that document counterfeiters use Microsoft Paint or upload their work to Photobucket.
Given that I made my images almost three hours after they were posted on DailyKos, I would be very surprised if I offered the first photoshopped (sic) Obama birth certificate on the internet. Without even looking, I’d give that credit to someone at Fark.
Opendna: Weren’t you worried someone would download your images and make fake birth certificates?
Jay McKinnon: Not in the slightest. Anyone who tries to pass off a forgery from those JPEGs deserves the jail time they get. (Again, my respect to Hawaii’s Department of Health: they’ve done a commendable job.)
Opendna: Did you just admit to forgery?
Jay McKinnon: No. Every forgery statute I’ve ever read or heard of requires "intent to defraud". If one considers the quality of the images, their content or the context in which they were presented, I believe a reasonable person would conclude that the intent was satire, humor or virtually anything but fraud. Furthermore, I am confident in ability of 11 and a half out of 12 human beings to distinguish between an image on a computer screen and a physical, printed, stamped and sealed government document (no matter how poor the quality).
Opendna: Some people seem to be very confused about what you intended.
Jay McKinnon: It is not my fault if people wish to deceive themselves. Many people enjoy showing how clever they are on the internet, and one of the most spectacular ways to do this is to prove a truth untrue, or an untruth true. If someone is so clever that they can hoax themselves, that is not my problem.
Opendna: Do you think they’re "morons" or "idiots"?
Jay McKinnon: Not at all. Many have demonstrated skills at their crafts that I respect and admire. They have generally proven to be very, very clever.
Opendna: Are you angry about what they’ve said about you?
Jay McKinnon: I am annoyed that they have written libel about m-
Opendna: Now hold on. It’s not libel.
Jay McKinnon: You know, I’ve consulted an attorney and I believe it is. Forgery is a crime of moral turpitude, and falsely accusing someone of a crime of moral turpitude is defamation. In print it’s libel. I figure the statements that I’m a professional document counterfeiter who is so incompetent at his job that he uploads his work to public websites are irrelevant, because I’m not a document counterfeiter.
Can I continue with the last question?
Opendna: Yeah, sorry. Are you angry?
Jay McKinnon: I am annoyed that they have written libel about me, but I am more concerned that this "story" first appeared on NoQuarterUSA.net, the website of a man who should know better. He is a professional, has spent a career in national security and has a security consulting business. It is deeply disturbing to consider that he may have read the original article before it appeared on the front page under his masthead and under his name. For the time being, I choose to believe it was an irresponsible editor who allowed it to be published. The unlikely alternative suggests raises some very disturbing questions about our nations' national security experts. I expect when it comes to his attention that he will take appropriate corrective actions.
Opendna: Reuven Koret, publisher of Isreal Insider, has written that you admitted to forgery.
Jay McKinnon: Reuven Koret wrote me a number of emails before he published his article. Using a kind of Good Cop/Bad Cop style he alternatively offered to keep my statements off the record, and threatened to report me to DHS and CSIS and reveal my identity before an audience larger than DailyKos. When I asked for his questions, he sent me five which required that I both admit to a crime and suggested I implicate other innocent people (including Markos Moulitsas and unidentified members of the Obama Campaign staff) in a conspiracy. I regarded his overtures as a form of journalistic blackmail, in which I either told him what he wanted to hear or he would libel me on his website.
I informed him that I believed his article was based on libel and provided him with this statement: "I believe there is overwhelming evidence that Senator Obama is a natural born US Citizen, and I have no evidence to contradict that belief."
Evidently that wasn’t what he wanted to hear because a few days he published his article omitting that quote.
Opendna: What do you think of Reuven Koret?
Jay McKinnon: He appears to write under his own name and is skillful at his craft: smearing his ideological opponents. I would not call him a journalist, investigative or otherwise. An internet pundit, maybe. Probably just a blogger who thinks writing scurrilous things about Senator Obama is good for site traffic.
Opendna: You said you have an attorney. Are you going to sue?
Jay McKinnon: I have exchanged emails with TexasDarlin from NoQuarter, one of the authors driving this "story" at its source, and various other individuals. I generally request that they retract their articles, apologize publicly and identify themselves to me via email, among other things. The extent to which they make a good faith effort to honor my request will determine whether they are individuals of integrity, or just anonymous cowards on the internet. If you see that block quote the top of the diary in an apology, they are probably individuals of some integrity.
The extent to which I feel vindictive next week will determine whether I pursue the legal action required to strip them of their anonymity. That’s not a decision I feel like making at the moment and the California Statute of Limitations of libel is one year.
Opendna: So, what are you going to do to help Senator Obama, you Obama activist you?
Jay McKinnon: I just got a $100 tax rebate with an appeal from the government that the money be used to help fight global climate change. I’m going to donate it to the Obama Campaign.
It’s about time I made a contribution. It ain’t much, but that donation and this article are about all I can do right now.
Opendna: You’re not much of an activist, are you?
Jay McKinnon: No. Not really. I’m sure someone will say that an American Citizen can’t spend his tax rebates however he likes, but they are just being silly. Or possibly clever. I don’t care. Democrats Abroad, bitches.
Opendna: So, what are you going to do right now, right now?
Jay McKinnon: I’m going to stick around for comments, I suppose, and then go away.
Opendna: Wait is that a GBCW?
...
Opendna: Dude? Damn. I guess I’ve got to do the comments.
---
UPDATE July 7, 2008: Some of the Right's leading blogs have weighed in:
AJStrata, in a post title The Obama "Forged Birth Certificate" Myth Is Busted,
"Basically, we have a lot of people running around making mistakes and then trying to pretend revelations that destroyed their first claims are exposing other, new issues. All I see are people making wild claims, being proved wrong, and then moving onto new wild claims - to be proved wrong again...Little Green Footballs, in a post titled Obama 'Birth Certificate Forgery' Myth Destroyed, wrote
All this evidence did not stop many sites [link: IsraelInsider.com -ed] from still claiming ‘forgery’, simply because they did not know how and where to look for the evidence, or because they jumped to newer, wilder conclusions to support their preconceptions. This is completely shoddy rumor mongering, in my opinion...
The only ‘forgery’ is the clearly mocked up joke produced by Opendna. And he (Mckinnon) showed how good he is at this document analysis when he reprinted and rescanned his mock up to delete all the tell tales of his work. But Opendna is not running for President. And after being proved wrong over and over and over again, these people who have latched onto the myth the Obama certificate is forged have done just the opposite."
AJ Strata spent more time on the Barack Obama birth certificate "forgery" story than it deserved, to prove that (as I’ve been repeating ad nauseam) it’s a big nothing, and the document is genuine: The Obama "Forged Birth Certificate" Myth Is Busted.National Review's the Campaign Spot, in a post titled Yet I Know This Will Only Spur More E-Mails wrote
I concur with the assessment over at Little Green Footballs, pretty far from an Obama apologist: "Sorry, folks, but this is not going to be another Rathergate. Let’s just bury this wish-fulfillment fantasy and get on with things."UPDATE July 9, 2008: I think AJstrata has had about enough of this nonsense: Obama Birth Certificate Not Forged - All Claims Otherwise Are Fantasy
I am really, really disappointed in how fevered the rightward swamps have become... [T]he lunacy over the Obama BC images is just embarrassing - and I mean cringing, hide-your-head-in-shame embarrassing... "Experts" are being trotted out who have one common gift, how quickly and easily they demonstrate all "experts" are not equal. Just like some bargain brand scientists can’t get over their global warming fetishes, there are some "experts" out there I wouldn’t pay to wash my car, and I know I am NOT an expert in imaging. But if you can’t impress me, then your "expertise" is very substandard... Let me pick on Pam of Atlas Shrugs to demonstrate my point. She wonders who died and made [me] the one to make the final call on the BHO BC rumors. Well, no one died, it was just a bunch of brain dead efforts to create a conspiracy out of whole cloth... If conservatives think they are going to win back America by running around make wild and clearly made up claims, based on BS technical ‘experts’, they are kidding themselves. Stop inoculating Obama from future stories and real issues with this dumb fantasy. Really, it is embarrassing.Good luck, AJ.
UPDATE July 11, 2008: Techdude has promised Atlas Shrugged a report "explain[ing] more than anyone ever wanted to know about that KOS COLB image and exactly how the forgery was created" (ref: FORENSIC EXPERT: "the [birth] certificate is still a horrible forgery"). I'm skeptical that "forgery" can be proven with any credibility, but at least he has the good sense the earlier "experts" lacked:
I will also touch a little bit on the OpenDNA COLB versions but that really is a dead horse at this point as everything he has already admitted can be corroborated by looking at the images which are based on the pre-existing KOS COLB.To his credit.
As for the rest of it, I expect he'll prove the adage that when your only weapon is a Missile Defense Shield, every threat looks like an ICBM.
UPDATE July 12, 2008: AJstrata, who's been right on every count so far, explains How 9-11 Helped Cause The Obama Birth Certificate Silliness. The short version: Post-9/11 Real ID Act caused Hawaii to change the security features on the paper it uses to print birth certificates.
UPDATE July 14, 2008: Techdude at Atlas Shrugged hasn't released his report yet, but has been goaded into responding to AJstrata: "AJ is correct on several of his assumptions such as the OpenDNA images came after the KOS image and that there was a change in the COLB certificates between the Decosta and the KOS versions."
UPDATE July 15, 2008: Dr. Neal Krawetz of Hacker Factor has weighed in with a technical post entitled The Birth of a Conspiracy:
I am always fascinated by new conspiracies. Even when shown the truth, some people hold tightly to their beliefs that something must be wrong. This is the same mentality that forms "guilt before proving innocent".Dr. Krawetz references two technical posts by Chris 'Xenon' Hanson: Barack Obama Birth Certificate Image Tampering Analysis and Barack Obama Birth Certificate Image Tampering Analysis, Redux. The first article uses the 'born in Antarctica' 'forgery' for comparison while Redux deals with the 'OpenDNA' conspiracy theory:
While some conspiracies are short lived, others seem to take a life of their own. One such conspiracy that just will not die concerns presidential hopeful Barack Obama's birth certificate.
The thread that would not die. Apparently "OpenDNA" has now made a template birth certificate you can download and make your own Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth for fun and profit. It's somewhat fashionable now to question the ancestry of all of the images -- is the Obama certificate a fake made from the OpenDNA one?In other news, JimJ and TexasDarlin (proud purveyors of idiotic libel) have authored a piece arguing that I am a "political activist with several political blogs to his credit" and "thus clearly" a public figure. I would disagree that I am "a personage of great public interest or familiarity like a government official, politician, celebrity, business leader, movie star, or sports hero". (cite) JimJ further argues that publishing a satirical image online is equivalent to defrauding a store owner with counterfeit dollar bills, and asks questions about hidden comments at DailyKos that could be answered if he would RTFM.
Well, I don't think anyone really believes that, or if they do, they're watching too much Fox News. But here's an easy, step by step way to reveal to yourself the family tree of the documents.
UPDATE July 18, 2008: AJstrata seems to enjoy bashing the conspiracy zombie each time it pops back up. Two more posts, Birth Certificate Madness(07/16/2008) and More Proof Obama Birth Certificate Is Not A Forgery (07/17/2008), deal with Hawaii changing document formats. The later has five images of document borders and the former contains these choice words:
Well, since I dove into this mess of the Obama Certificate Of Birth (COLB) I have become really disturbed at how rank amateurs can go out and make outrageous claims and be taken seriously.Elsewhere: after writing ~6000 words pimping "forgery" claims in three articles, some guy on Rantsburg has decided that maybe the maybe the scientific method should apply to the "theories". He writes "Anyone who still thinks that the image has been altered should show how the alleged alteration can be done and then can pass such tests. Otherwise this image of this birth certificate should be considered to be unaltered. There is no good reason to think that the Daily Kos, Jay McKinnon or any other organization or individual was involved in presenting an altered image to the public."
UPDATE July 20, 2008: In The End Of The COLB Cult - Myth Busted Again AJstrata responds to Techdude@AtlasShrugs, who shows how different documents scanned differently are different and therefore evidence of forgery.
UPDATE July 21, 2008: Jesse Taylor at Pandagon takes note of TechDude's analysis in Barack Obama Was Made From Clay And The Saliva Of The Gods. Filed under: "Conservatives, Batsh*t Crazy"
UPDATE July 23, 2008: AJStrata is up again with The Cult Of The COLB Took A Hit Today (07/22/2008) and Did Someone Screw Up The Data In The COLB Report? (07/23/2008). The former quotes a post by TexasDarlin stating that contemporanious newspaper reports of Obama's birth would have originated at Hawaii's Department of Vital Records (the post has since been deleted and replaced with more "questions"). The later is self-explanatory.
Elsewhere, Matthew Yglesias gives an introduction to the nonsense in a post entitled The Birth Certificate Follies and a hat tip to Reason Magazine's blog (Ceci n'est pas une movement, 07/21/2008), where David Weigel writes:
In other stupid Obama news, a few bloggers revisited the issue of whether Obama forged his own birth certificate, based on a study by an expert who goes by the handle "TechDude." AJ Strata leaves them crawling around on the floor, looking for their teeth.I picked up an old post by Gavin M at Sadly, No: "People have asked why I’m so fascinated by the right wing in America. I believe this goes some way toward answering the question." (Kerners Are Go!).
UPDATE July 24 2008: Inspired by David Weigel's latest at Reason Magazine's blog (Hey, Barack Obama Exists After All), Ed Morrissey at HotAir asks Does this kill the Obama birth certificate myth? and concludes:
Undoubtedly, this will not stop the speculation among conspiracy theorists... [But] Unless someone wants to argue that the Advertiser decided to participate in a conspiracy at Obama’s birth in 1961 to provide false citizenship on the off-chance that an infant from a union of a Kenyan father and a teenage mother would run for President, then I’d say the "mystery" is over.The comment thread at Reason is truely inspired. Two of my favorites:
Sparky: Have you noticed there are no photos of Obama and Hitler in the same room?UPDATE July 25 2008: Jesus' General asks Is Obama secretly Amish? and uses TechDude-style image analysis to find "highly technical evidence suggesting that Barack Obama is actually an Amish man named Erik Gruber."
Think about it.
RobertSeattle: It just dawned on me that Obama would have been just old enough to have PULLED the trigger for Lee Harvey Oswald...
UPDATE August 23 2008: Techdude failed to prove his claims of finding residual text (evidently the promise to fly someone to Vegas if they produced images just wasn't enough of a bribe). TexasDarlin and IsraelInsider have backed away from the claim, which maintaining that the underlying charges of forgery are valid. A smearmonger named Jerome Corsi (of "Swiftboat" fame) has authored a book attacking Obama and has repeated the charges by of forgery (Factcheck).
In what should be the ultimate, final and unequivocal debunking of this ridiculous conspiracy fantasy, researchers at Factcheck.org (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania) authored a piece published on Newsweek's website titled Born in the U.S.A.: The truth about Obama's birth certificate.
Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs...Dr. Neal Krawetz at Hacker Factor published Bad Science: How Not To Do ... on August 4:
Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama's information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn't have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible "scenario" without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.
We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn't meet the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."...
In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961... Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.
Intentionally misleading research offends me. Real researchers strive to create the best work possible and are willing to have it put up to peer-reviewed scrutiny. They list their methods and provide enough information for other researchers to replicate the experiment. And good science should be able to draw the same conclusion with different analysis methods. In contrast, fake researchers intentionally doctor their data to support their theories. They do not provide their methods and their conclusions are not repeatable. While it is important to understand how real research is done, it is equally important to analyze and understand fake research.Elsewhere in the news, one Phillip Berg Esq has filed suit to block Senator Obama's nomination, based on the claims made by TexasDarlin, Atlas Shrugged, JimJ, Polarik, TechDude, et al. Ironically, this suit opens the door to forcing each of them to testify under oath during discovery.
I have previously written about the smear campaigned against Barack Obama. In this attack, alleged experts claim that Obama has doctored his Certificate of Live Birth (COLB). They support their claims with false research using image analysis. Since I work with image analysis, I feel that it is important to properly represent the field. Please be aware, while their attack is against Obama, this is not a political debate. I am only addressing the technologies used to perform the analysis. If they did a similar attack against McCain or any other public official, I would be just as offended by their work.
There are three main players in this conspiracy theory. An anonymous racist who goes by the nickname "Texas Darlin", and two anonymous "researchers" named Polarik and TechDude.
...
I have heard from the person that TechDude is impersonating... It is important to recognize that TechDude's analysis is misleading and fraudulent. Moreover, TechDude is impersonating a respected investigator. People should not harass [snip] since he is yet another victim of TechDude's deception.
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