Obama releases his long form birth certificate

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Seeking to put an end to a controversy over his birthplace, Barack Obama on Wednesday released his birth certificate, which showed that he was born in the American state of Hawaii, making him constitutionally eligible to hold the office of US president.

With the release of his long-form birth certificate, Obama and his team hopes to put an end to the conspiracy theorists who claimed he wasn't born in the United States. Presidents and vice presidents, according to the US Constitution, must be natural born citizens of America.

The White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer displayed the green certificate at an off-camera briefing, and provided a copy of it to the reporters.

Signed by the attendant, local registrar and Obama's mother, the birth certificate says that Obama was born at the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital at Honolulu in the island of Oahu in Hawaii at 7.24 pm on August 4, 1961.

"The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn't good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country," Pfeiffer said.

"Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate," he said. They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting, he added.

"At a time of great consequence for this country – when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue. The President's hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country," Pfeiffer said.

Obama has announced his candidacy for a second term in the White House in 2012. Donald Trump, a potential Republican presidential candidate, had recently questioned why Obama hadn't released his long form. The long-form birth certificate is different from the birth-certificate which has been publicly available so far and the one that was released by Obama during his 2008 presidential election campaign.

Obama in a letter dated April 22 to the Hawaii State Department requested for a special waiver to release his original certificate of live birth. On April 24, Loretta J. Fuddy, Director of Health, Hawaii, made an exception to the Hawaiian policy to issue the certificate of Obama's live birth, instead of the policy of issuing a computer-generated certified copy.

"We hope that issuing you these copies of your original Certificate of Live Birth will end the numerous inquiries received by the Hawaii Department of Health to produce this document. Such inquiries have been disruptive to staff operations and have strained State resources," Fuddy said.