Something to think about.

[Tymian]

Just watch vid and leave a comment. / No flame wars in here/

[Grif]

My scanning software tries to separate everything into layers if the scanner is set to scan something with text. I think this guy is full of crap, just another conspiracy theorist.

[Eltu]

Well, this is my opinion in the matter:

The PDF is composed of multiple images. That’s correct. Using a photo editor or PDF viewer of your choice, you can extract this image data, view it, hide it, etc. But these layers, as they’re being called, aren’t layers in the traditional photo-editing sense of the word. They are, quite literally, pieces of image data that have been positioned in a PDF container. They appear as text but also contain glyphs, dots, lines, boxes, squiggles, and random garbage. They’re not combined or merged in any way. Quite simply, they look like they were created programmatically, not by a human.

What’s plausible is that somewhere along the way — from the scanning device to the PDF-creation software, both of which can perform OCR (optical character recognition) — these partial/pseudo-text images were created and saved. What’s not plausible is that the government spent all this time manufacturing Obama’s birth certificate only to commit the laughably rookie mistake of exporting the layers from Photoshop, or whatever photo editing software they are meant to have used. It’s likely that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner. Let’s leave it at that.

[James of terra]

Well, if you do not like him, in the next election vote him out. Demaracy, use your personal power. Thats all.

[Kä'eng]

I don't understand why people care about this so much. Yeah, I know the constitution says you have to be a "natural born citizen". I assume it's to avoid getting a president who is more loyal to his non-US home country than to the US, but the place you're born doesn't contribute to your identity like the place you're raised does. I lived in a different city from birth to about 2 years, and I don't remember a thing about that time. Why are we so obsessed with birthplace? And does it really make sense to downgrade people to second-class citizens for something they have no control over?

Incidentally, early presidents were not "natural born citizens": they were born in Virginia and Massachusetts and so on, but the "United States" didn't exist at the time Because of this, the constitution actually has a clause that allows a plain ol' citizen to become President, provided he was already a citizen in 1789 when it was adopted. In computer science, we call this kind of thing a kludge - you know you've screwed up, but you don't have time to fix it properly, so you just patch the symptoms rather than work out the correct general fix. Wish the framers of the Constitution had taken that extra time.

No, I'm not an Obama supporter, but of all the reasons to oppose him this has got to be the weakest.

[Isard]

And technically, "Natural born citizen" isn't simply being born in the US, but of US parents. He's both a US citizen and UK (due to his fathers nationality) no matter where on earth he was born. Simple fact of the matter is, he can be president, he is president, and unless the Republicans pull their heads out of their asses, he will be president a second term.

[Advent]

I wouldn't be so quick believe such a theory. I mean, come on. A country wouldn't be that stupid as to leave valuable information like that lying around for someone to reveal.

Of course, if this theory IS true, it sure says a lot about the security of U.S politics.

[Sonoran Na'vi]

I always thought people made too much of a big deal out of this birth certificate thing with Obama.

[Fosus]

I had never heard of his birth certificate. Still don't care much

[Banefull]

This conspiracy theory is quite ridiculous.

FactCheck.org: Born in the U.S.A.

[caveman]

I don't ever remember there being such a controversy over a president's birth certificate.