Media Matters Joins The Birther Ranks
Shocking headline, right? So how did I fall into this discovery? Well, a friend of mine, Bill Johnson, made a post to his facebook wall about the Obama Birth Certificate, and two discrepancies on it. I, not subscribing to the birther notion, set out to prove it wrong. The first problem, the name of the hospital, was easily resolved. The second problem, however, was a little more difficult. Here it is, as laid out in Bill's post. "If you check a map of Africa from 1961, you will notice that the country of Kenya is not on it. In fact, the country of Kenya did not exist until 1963. It was known as British East Africa until 1963." So I set out to get the scoop on this, when I found this article from Media Matters.
DailyKos' David Waldman has identified what appears to be an even more glaring problem with WND's latest smoking gun. The document posted by WND purports to have been produced by the "Republic of Kenya" on February 17, 1964. But Kenya didn't even become a republic until December 12, 1964.
Well, thanks for clearing that up, Media Matters. So what is the real story of Kenya? From Wikipedia...
The British Empire established the East Africa Protectorate in 1895, from 1920 known as the Kenya Colony. The independent Republic of Kenya was formed in December 1963.
It is interesting to note the story line here. In 1920, the East Africa Protectorate was transformed into the British Crown Colony called the Colony of Kenya. And if this change took place in 1920, then it would be proper to call the Country of Origin from President Obama's father "Kenya", correct? Well... not so fast.
The colony came to an end in 1963 when independence was agreed with the British. After independence the former colony became known as Kenya.
Now, to be sure we would have to look at official Government documents to see what the Colony was officially listed as. Kenyan documents from that period reflected the full name of "Protectorate and Colony of Kenya". It wasn't until 1963 that they dropped the full name for the shorter "Kenya". Furthermore, P&C of Kenya was comprised of two separately named areas, the Protectorate of Kenya and the Colony of Kenya. During the time of East Germany and West Germany, did we specify on official documents which one was the point of origin? Or did we opt for the shorter "Germany".
I don't have the time to dig that deeply right now. Furthermore, I would assume that this is likely the correct explanation for the problem. It did make for some interesting research, however, and I would like to take this moment to personally thank the birthers over at Media Matters for reminding me to always search for the correct term when dealing with the Obama Birth Certificate issue. (They're gonna love me for that.)
