Barack Obama releases his long form birth certificate

Seeking to put an end to a controversy over his birthplace, Barack Obama today released his birth certificate, which showed that he was born in the American state of Hawaii, making him constitutionally eligible to hold the office of US President.

With the release of his long-form birth certificate, Obama and his team hopes to silence the conspiracy theorists who claimed he wasn't born in the United States.

Presidents and vice presidents, according to the US Constitution, must be natural born citizens of America.

The White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer displayed the green certificate at an off-camera briefing, and provided a copy of it to the reporters.

Soon after the White House released his birth certificate, Obama said, "We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii August 4th, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

"We've posted the certification that is given by the state of Hawaii on the Internet for everybody to see. People have provided affidavits that they, in fact, have seen this birth certificate. And yet this thing just keeps on going."

"Now, normally, I would not comment on something like this, because, obviously, there's a lot of stuff swirling in the press at any given day and, you know, I've got other things to do," Obama said.

Signed by the attendant, local registrar and Obama's mother, the birth certificate says that Obama was born at the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital at Honolulu in the island of Oahu in Hawaii at 7.24pm on August 4, 1961.

"The President believed the distraction over his birth certificate wasn't good for the country. It may have been good politics and good TV, but it was bad for the American people and distracting from the many challenges we face as a country," Pfeiffer said.

"Therefore, the President directed his counsel to review the legal authority for seeking access to the long form certificate and to request on that basis that the Hawaii State Department of Health make an exception to release a copy of his long form birth certificate," he said.

They granted that exception in part because of the tremendous volume of requests they had been getting, he added.

"At a time of great consequence for this country ?" when we should be debating how we win the future, reduce our deficit, deal with high gas prices, and bring stability to the Middle East, Washington, DC, was once again distracted by a fake issue.

The President's hope is that with this step, we can move on to debating the bigger issues that matter to the American people and the future of the country," Pfeiffer said.

Obama has announced his candidacy for a second term in the White House in 2012. Donald Trump, a potential Republican presidential candidate, had recently questioned why Obama hadn't released his long form.

The long-form birth certificate is different from the birth-certificate which has been publicly available so far and the one that was released by Obama during his 2008 presidential election campaign.

Obama in a letter dated April 22 to the Hawaii State Department requested for a special waiver to release his original certificate of live birth.

On April 245, Loretta J Fuddy, director of health, Hawaii, made an exception to the Hawaiian policy to issue the certificate of Obama's live birth, instead of the policy of issuing a computer-generated certified copy.

"We hope that issuing you these copies of your original certificate of live birth will end the numerous inquiries received by the Hawaii Department of Health to produce this document. Such inquiries have been disruptive to staff operations and have strained State resources," Fuddy said.

In a short-notice appearance before the White House Press Corps, Obama said, "We're not gonna be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We're not gonna be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers."

"We live in a serious time right now, and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud.

"I have every confidence that America in the 21st century is going to be able to come out on top just like we always have. But we're gonna have to get serious to do it," said the US President.

"Now, I know that there's gonna be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I'm speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press," Obama said.

"We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do. We got big problems to solve, and I'm confident we can solve them, but we're gonna have to focus on them, not on this," he said.

Referring to the ongoing debate about his birth for the past several years  which gained momentum recently and affected his poll numbers, Obama said over the last two and a half years he has watched with bemusement, he has been puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going.

Two weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when he gave a speech about the budget, during that entire week, the dominant news story wasn't about these huge, Obama said.

"It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here," he said.

"We've got some enormous challenges out there. There are a lot of folks out there who are still looking for work. Everybody is still suffering under high gas prices.

We're gonna have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future, but also get a hold of our deficit and our debt - how do we do that in a balanced way," he said.