Opaque administration

They have a name now, the conspiracy theorists who hold that Obama was born abroad and told Occidental College he was Indonesian when he applied for entry. “Birthers,” they’re termed. I’ve written from the beginning that I’ve doubted any falsified birth certificate. The collective evidence to date doesn’t hold water.

I still doubt the theory, and some legal scholars question whether it’s unconstitutional even if Obama was foreign-born to an American mother, but his curious refusal to order Hawaii and Occidental to open all records on him for independent review raises a question that is far more important than where Obama was born.

I want to know by what right any sitting president, in any “transparent” administration, is allowed to keep any official records whatever of his past sealed from the American public who elected him? Since when does our highest elected leader have any legal right, let alone moral one, to hide anything about his past from public scrutiny?

Imagine the rabid froth and hue from the media and the Democratic Party had George Bush ordered any of his personal official records sealed, while in office.

Where are all the stalwart reporters waving Freedom of Information Act demands?

William Slusher

Okanogan