Posted by Shipwreckedcrew:

Lets put this issue to rest once and for all.  Lou Dobbs please pay attention.

The State of Hawaii maintains a DATABASE of vital records concering births.  Currently, that DATABASE if populated with information provided on a form completed by the parents at the time the baby is born.  

The hospital issues a “Notice of Live Birth”, which is a TEMPORARY substitute for a official state record.

Upon written request — and payment of a fee — the State Department of Health will GENERATE a “Certificate of Live Birth” from the information in it’s database.

So, there is no “BIRTH CERTIFICATE” sitting in a file somewhere in Hawaii.  There is data regarding births in a computer database which is used to create such a document when one is requested.

Prior to 2001, Hawaii had paper files of birth records.  At that time, the information in those files was converted to electronic form, and those paper files were discarded.

If you want to know why they would have done that, all you need to do is go to the main office of the Hawaii DMV Division for Drivers’ licenses and look at the gigantic filing cabinets they still maintain with hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of paper copies of old license applications they keep in alphabetical order.  It’s a joke watching the workers go look for some old record by pulling out a stack of documents and then hand searching them one by one.

Never been banned before, it’s kind of fun. If I were to do it again I would have been a bit more forceful and comprehensive with my critique, I was trying to stick to the point. Read it while it remains up.

Here’s the post. I thought I was more than reasonable, but the author seems to have a penchant for fabricating sex scandals and other baseless accusations.

At the L.A. Times, Jonathan Zimmerman adds an international perspective to the Gates arrest. In “The Gates cop, in perspective”, Zimmerman writes,

Should police Sgt. James Crowley have arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on July 16, after Crowley responded to a 911 report of a possible break-in at Gates’ Cambridge, Mass., house? And to what degree was the arrest related to the fact that Gates is black and Crowley is white?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and neither do you. But here’s what I do know: We’re lucky that we can ask them, lucky that possible police misbehavior demands an official response, lucky that the alleged outrage isn’t worse. And if you think otherwise, take a look at how police behave in many other parts of the world.

Zimmerman then goes on to describe the bribe taking, suspect beating, human rights abusing practices of much of the world’s police.  Surely our police aren’t perfect (who is?), but we should count ourselves lucky that the discussion we’re having is taking place in the most rarified atmosphere of freedom in the world.