White House dodges Obama’s college transcripts Evades question with comment about tax documents

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From WND:

The apparent stonewalling at the White House over vast areas of Barack Obama’s background continues.

In response to a question today at the daily news briefing that concerned Obama’s college records and transcripts, press spokesman Jay Carney said it was a good idea to have presidential candidates release their tax records.

Tax records?

Yes.

The question came from Ed Henry of Fox News.

“Now, I don’t know how many years – maybe you do – George Romney released of his college transcripts, but Republicans like to complain the president has not released his college transcripts. What is the stated reason for that?” he asked.

“I’d refer you to the campaign. I mean, I think,” Carney started.

“Is it a question you could take,” Henry said.

“Sure. I think we’ve answered this a bunch. I think that the tradition of releasing income tax records for presidential candidates, for serious potential nominees and nominees of the two parties is well established. It’s not a law, but it’s well established. And it’s one that this president abided by when he was a candidate as senator. It’s one that numerous Republicans and Democrats have abided by, and we just think it’s a good idea,” Carney said.

A video of the 50-plus minute briefing was posted on the government’s White House website.

Les Kinsolving, WND’s correspondent at the White House, previously has raised the issue of documentation for Obama several times, getting shut down each time, starting with Robert Gibbs when he was Obama’s press secretary.

The earlier questions dealt with Obama’s birth documentation because of the numerous questions that remain unanswered over his eligibility under the Constitution’s requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen.”

That’s thought to mean the offspring of two citizen parents, and possibly even the offspring born in the country of two citizen parents. That’s why some of the documentation routinely released by presidents before Obama seems pertinent to reporters.

Among the other documents not released by Obama are his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

He released a “Certification of Live Birth” during his 2008 campaign, stating it was the only document available to confirm his story of his birth in Hawaii. Then in 2011 he released an image of a Hawaii “Certificate of Live Birth” saying that confirmed his Hawaii birth.

But experts in computers, imaging, documents and text all have stated that the image released by the White House is no more or less than a fraud.

The first time Kinsolving posed a question about Obama’s eligibility, Gibbs’ response was to guffaw in unison with members of the Washington press corps about the concerns of hundreds of thousands of petitioners who demanded it.

“Are you looking for the president’s birth certificate?” he asked incredulously. “Lester, this question in many ways continues to astound me. The state of Hawaii provided a copy with the seal of the president’s birth. I know there are apparently at least 400,000 people – (laughter) – that continue to doubt the existence of and the certification by the state of Hawaii of the president’s birth there, but it’s on the Internet because we put it on the Internet for each of those 400,000 to download. I certainly hope by the fourth year of our administration that we’ll have dealt with this burgeoning birth controversy.”

Gibbs was referring to the “Certification of Live Birth,” touted at the time as the only document available. It was later supplanted by the “Certificate of Live Birth.”

Bill Press later raised the question for Gibbs about whether the “birthers” ever would fade.

“I almost hate to indulge in such an august setting as the White House – and I mean this in seriousness – the White House briefing room discussing the made-up, fictional nonsense of whether or not the president was born in this country,” Gibbs said at the time. “A year-and-a-half ago I asked that the birth certificate be put on the Internet because lord knows, you got a birth certificate and you put it on the Internet, what else could be the story?”

But again, he was referring to the “Certification of Live Birth” that later was replaced.

Even later, Gibbs stumbled over his explanation of where Obama was born.

“I can’t tell you why somebody believes, despite all preponderance of the evidence, that the president was born … uhm … in … uhh, uhh … was born here and not somewhere else. I’ve stopped trying to explain that,” he said.

In today’s briefing, Carney again declined to allow Kinsolving to ask any questions. Kinsolving had come prepared to ask about the furor created by a video purporting to show U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of apparent Taliban members in Afghanistan.

The issue was explored recently by Col. Ollie North in a commentary.

He noted, “Our so-called mainstream media have launched a new anti-military feeding frenzy. The furor is over a crude 39-second video showing four Marines apparently urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban combatants. In hysteric rhetoric akin to ‘news reports’ on the 2004 Abu Ghraib photos, hordes of print and broadcast ‘correspondents’ rushed to describe the viral video, which surfaced Jan. 11, as evidence of an ‘atrocity’ and ‘desecration’ that reflects the ‘depravity’ of our military in general and the U.S. Marines in particular. As usual, the effort to denigrate our armed forces means that the potentates of the press ignored far more important stories.”

He said that the proper procedure would be to investigate the truth, then make a determination on punishment should that be warranted.

“That’s what should happen. But that wasn’t enough for the masters of the media. Within hours of the video’s appearing on the Internet, ‘reporters’ launched a global race to interview any and all who were willing to express righteous outrage over ‘the actions of our servicemen’ and thereby disparage the reputations of the millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen, guardsmen and Marines who have served honorably and courageously in more than a decade of war,” he said.

Kinsolving had wanted to ask Carney whether the coverage levels were “overkill.”