Why Obama had no choice in birth certificate skirmish

Jim Kuhnhenn reports on the reasons behind making the president’s birth certificate public

CONFRONTING doubters who harbour questions about his place of birth, President Barack Obama chose to defy one of his White House’s own rules: Don’t get dragged into the news skirmish of the day.

This time, he decided he had to. In an extraordinary step, the White House produced a copy of his detailed Hawaii birth certificate on Wednesday after obtaining a special waiver from the state to make it public.