It’s the question and/or controversy that will not go away. Where was President Barack Hussein Obama born and why won’t he produce a birth certificate?

Sometime ago I received an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, by Philip J. Berg, an attorney who briefly gained media attention when he asserted that President Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States and, under the U.S. Constitution, was disqualified from running for or holding the position of President.

The problem Berg presents is that he reportedly was a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democrat nomination and thus had a very political reason to challenge Obama’s citizenship. The courts, however, appear to have been extraordinarily reluctant to address the question.

Among the Berg documents I have seen is an affidavit attesting to a transcribed conversation between Bishop Kwele Shuhudra, Bishop of the Anabaptists Churches of North America, and Sarah Obama, the President’s grandmother or aunt, who confirmed that she was present when he was born in Kenya. Could she be mistaken? There also appears to be some confusion over which hospital in Hawaii Obama was born; if he was born there. No attending physician has ever stepped forth to confirm it.

Democrat spin doctors are, of course, circling the wagons around Obama who is alleged to have spent nearly a million dollars on lawyers to keep his birth and other public records secret.

The obvious question is why.

The problem for his defenders is that no birth certificate has been made available to the public and the Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth that was briefly shown on an Obama website has raised more questions than answers about its authenticity and has been challenged as a forgery.

Obama’s birth father met his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, when they were students at the University of Hawaii. It is entirely possible that she gave birth to Obama in Hawaii though there is some question whether a ceremony occurred generating a marriage certificate. Obama senior was already married to an African wife at the time. What is known is that Obama’s mother later married an Indonesian in 1965 and Obama spent his early years in Jakarta, starting in 1967.

The reason I am a “birther”, i.e., someone who remains skeptical, is fairly simple. I began my career as a journalist. I was trained to be skeptical and to expect to see documentation and proof that whatever is asserted is true.

This means that I am suspicious when a candidate for president has virtually no paper trail of documents. No journalist has seen Obama’s alleged birth certificate because it is “under seal” in Hawaii at the order of its Governor. Why?

Here’s a list of documentation that, as of 2008, was “unavailable”:

1. Occidental College records -- Not released
2. Columbia College records -- Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper -- "Not available"
4. Harvard College records -- Not released
5. Selective Service Registration -- Not released
6. Medical records -- Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule -- "Not available"
8. Law practice client list -- Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate -- Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth -- Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published -- None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None

What does anyone REALLY know about Obama? They “know” the life story he put forth in two memoirs, one of which was published before he ever ran for a public office. Even here, his authorship of the books has been challenged because the text to an astonishing extent resembles books and articles written by Bill Ayers, a close friend and best known as having been a domestic terrorist, a member of the Weatherman in the 1960s.

Does it matter? The answer is yes. It matters in the most serious way possible. We cannot have someone holding the power of the presidency that does not qualify under the provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

It should be a cause for genuine concern that he continues to stonewall all attempts to determine his place of birth, his citizenship, or any of the other major parts of his life leading up to having first served in the Illinois legislature and then as a U.S. Senator.

The mainstream media have been extraordinarily disinterested in any credible documentation of Obama’s life story. Something is very wrong about that.

Something is bizarre that Time Magazine is putting Obama’s picture on the cover for a twelfth time in twelve months!

Obama’s rise to power has been meteoric. His path there remains shrouded in deliberate obscurity.

Obama’s popularity and approval ratings by both the Gallup and Rasmussen polling organizations have been dropping precipitously. All the spin in the world will not reverse this, but one step in the right direction would be to produce his birth certificate.

Caruba blogs daily at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

UPDATE: Read the Politico article "Birther Coverage hits fever pitch."