Yes, President Obama came forward with a long-form birth certificate from Hawaii. And ever since, it has been taboo to even consider that something might be wrong, even among the most right-leaning journalists.  You could be accused of being . . . the “B” word.

Here’s my problem. I don’t care where President Obama was born. He may have been born in Kenya, or Hawaii, or maybe he is an alien from a distant nebula – it really doesn’t matter to me. His policies worry me to death, but where he was born? Who cares?

Here is what does matter to me: why did the president of the United States need to have his birth certificate forged?

Oh, it’s definitely forged. I have used Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator pretty much since they were first created. I know how pdf files work. I looked at the layers and layers of phony stuff cobbled together into an amateur pdf file and planted on the White House website. Anybody who has an even modest understanding of Adobe software can know in minutes that this is a forged document. There is no doubt about it.  The original scan might be part of the document, but a lot of the stuff that is there now is not original.  How arrogant of his staff to think that such an amateur attempt would not be detected by thousands of tech-savvy Adobe users.  And how easy it is for people who don’t understand the technology to just dismiss the smoking gun evidence because they don’t “get it”.

Today Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Arizona announced that the birth certificate is “definitely forged”.   Aside from the obvious Adobe chicanery, Arpaio’s chief investigator, Mike Zullo, said that they learned from a retired state employee about birth certificate numeric codes which identify the status of certain fields of information.  Codes on the document indicate that some fields, such as the father’s race and occupation, were not filled out, but in the adulterated version – surprise!  There they are!

There are so many rumors about his social security number, his draft card, his college transcripts, his scholarships, the loss of his license to practice law. These concerns may or may not be legit – President Obama doesn’t seem inclined to put them to rest, and maybe that in itself is cause for concern.

Maybe the many mysteries that surround Barack Obama matter, and maybe not.  But when a guy has to forge his own birth certificate, it makes me fear that something is dreadfully wrong.

Does that make me a “birther?”