http://breakingbuzz.blogspot.com/2008/06/obama-birth-certificate.html

BARACK OBAMA

A Few Other Possibilities on Barack Obama's Birth Certificate

Already the query about Barack Obama's birth certificate is being declared ipso facto evidence of "xenophobia" by those who see a "racist America." Well, I did grow up in a small town...

Hawaii's State Department of Health explains the policy on releasing vital records here. Unless you're a relative of Obama, your request will be denied.*

A few readers and other bloggers have wondered aloud what information possibly could be on the birth certificate that would make it worth keeping from the public. Beyond yesterday's (mostly unlikely) possibilities — a foreign birth, a different middle name, or a different first name at birth — there are a few others. (I have been unable to determine precisely what information was recorded on a birth certificate in the state of Hawaii in 1961; any reader insight would be appreciated. I would note that what kind of information was on other state's certificates isn't all that helpful.)

Today's standard certificate of live birth, as issued by the CDC, includes a wide variety of information.

Some states include data on the marital status of the mother. As mentioned in the previous post, details on the marriage ceremony and legal paperwork of the marriage of Obama's mother and father are fuzzy. (It is now clear that Obama's father was not legally divorced from his first wife in Africa at the the time.) All things considered, the possibility that his parents weren't married seems like small potatoes in terms of scandals — not much of a reason to vote against Obama — but perhaps Obama's campaign doesn't want to open that door.

Some states record "religion" on the certificate. If Obama's certificate said "none," it's hard to imagine that being a major scandal; Obama has talked about being raised in a home without much influence of organized religion. I suppose if next to where the religion it says "Muslim", it would generate a predictable brouhaha, but it would reveal more about the beliefs of his father at that time than the candidate. It's not like one-day-old Obama filled the form out himself.

(Perhaps the campaign fears opening the "will the Muslim world see him as an apostate?" can of worms again. But it's hard to see how this revelation would be a bigger deal than his attendance of a Muslim school in Indonesia, that he talks about in his book.)

Then there is the strong possibility that the document asked for "race." I encountered this comment in a web site detailing a research effort at the Family Health Services Division at the Hawaii State Department of Health: