27th of April, 2011

    The birth certificate of Barak Obama has officially been revealed to the Public. People called "birthers" claim that President Obama was in fact born in Kenya or another location rather than in the United States, a requirement to be president of the United States. President Obama has always dismissed the idea of letting this certificate coming out because of its "silliness". He was quoted, "We've got better stuff to do. I have better stuff to do. We've got big programs to solve, and I'm confident we can solve them, but we're going to have to focus on them - not on this."
    During the 2008 campaign, President Obama made it apparent that he was in fact a natural U.S. born citizen and that he was eligible to run for the President seat. Officials in Hawaii (the place of his birth), his passport, and a computer copy were shown to the public but it still did not stop people from question the authenticity.
    Donald Trump, famous U.S. entrepreneur and possible Republican running candidate took credit upon himself for 'pushing' Obama to release the official birth certificate. "He should have done it a long time ago", Trump said.
    Despite releasing the official birth certificate, some people are still not satisfied. Joseph Farah, the chief executive of a "birther" website said that the certificate "raises as many questions as it answers".
    To me, it is unclear why so many people continue to use their energy to try and disprove President Obama's place of birth. With this much energy exerted for a cause that is unlikely to prove anything, it becomes clear that it is not about the actual authenticity of his U.S. citizenship, but rather a ploy to get him out of office. All the arguments the "birthers" use are weak and have no actual proof of Barak Obama being born anywhere outside of the U.S. Nearly all of these arguments are based off their own assumptions and his rich ethnic background including living in Indonesia when he was a young boy. If any of their arguments had a respectable basis of questioning, more people would have been concerned and not concerned now, but before he was elected president. It seems quite obvious to me that President Obama was born a U.S. citizen.

[Written with the help of BBC.]

By: Josh Palmer