Via John Cole's Balloon Juice, I have tragic news for our PUMA fans here at My DD.

The state's Department of Health director on Friday released a statement verifying the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama birth certificate.

The state has received multiple requests for a copy of Obama's birth certificate. State law does not allow officials to release the birth certificate of a person to someone outside of the family.

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"Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai`i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai`i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures," Fukino said.

From Ben Smith's blog on Poltico comes an amusing story.
It seems that the McCain campaign, which has been seen scowling suspiciously at Barack Obama's untold millions in donations, has been caught in an amusing fauz pas:

Early news this morning reports that Jerome Corsi, of Swiftboat fame and lately the author of the smear book "Obama Nation" has been detained in Kenya.
According the the Times Online, Jerome Corsi has been detained to answer questions about why he is in Kenya.

It seems that someone went on to the Wikipedia site and heavily edited the Sarah Palin
entry the night before McCain announced her candidacy as his VP.
From the London Times:

The Wikipedia entry for Sarah Palin was overhauled substantially for the better in the 24 hours before the surprise announcement of her selection as Republican vice-presidential nominee.

A mystery Wikipedia user -- under the name Young Trigg -- put in about 30 edits to the biographical article on the website.

Eric Boehlert, over at Media Matters talks about the coverage of the Democratic convention in some frank terms.
Titling his article: "Hillary Clinton speaks at convention. The press concocts a story", Eric introduces us to some history:

At the Democratic National Convention in 1992, Jerry Brown, who finished a very distant second to the party's nominee, had his name placed into nomination and addressed the assembled convention. After seconding his own nomination (true story), Brown delivered a fiery speech that thrilled his unruly supporters inside Madison Square Garden. Brown's ill will toward nominee Bill Clinton was so legendary that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution considered it newsworthy that Brown's convention address "avoided a direct attack" on the nominee, while the Los Angeles Times noted Brown "did not specifically endorse presidential nominee Bill Clinton."

Indeed, for weeks leading up to the convention, Brown refused to back his party's nominee, complaining to The New York Times in June that supporting Clinton was like buying a ticket for the Titanic.

Four years earlier, the Democratic convention in Atlanta witnessed even more tumult from the second-place finisher when Jesse Jackson, furious at being passed over for the vice-presidential slot by the party's nominee, Michael Dukakis (who failed to call Jackson and tell him the VP news), threatened to withhold his delegates' support from the party's nominee. In fact, just hours before the convention began, Jackson's supporters threatened to place the candidate's name into nomination for the vice presidency, which would have created a massive floor fight between Jackson and Dukakis' pick, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas.

As has been said multiple times about Republicans- you just can't make this stuff up:

Evidently, this threatening five foot tall librarian was too much of a security risk to allow her to attend the McCain town hall meeting in Denver.
Her crime?
A sign that said "McCain=Bush".
As the librarian says at the end of the video, why would a sign that says "McCain=Bush" be offensive to Republicans that voted for Bush?

Do what you gotta do to get us out of here.

That comes from an unidentified Marine (in Afghanistan) that was just interviewed on NPR. It made me stop and think how important it is to get Obama in the White House and a solid majority in the House and Senate. Not just to us, but to the thousands of soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The soldiers interviewed were stationed in Afghanistan and feel detached from the presidential election:

"It really is almost irrelevant, too," he says. "When we get here, you know, you know that war, all it is is old men talking and young men dying. That's all we see. So, it calms down politics a lot of when you're out here."

Like many of the Marines in Garmsir, Cpl. Cody Bazanech was in eighth grade when the Sept. 11 terror attacks took place.

Digby has a great analysis of the latest war of words between Barack Obama and John McCain. It seems Obama made a statement about John McCain failing to appear in the Senate to vote on the GI bill:

I respect Sen. John McCain's service to our country. He is one of those heroes of which I speak. But I can't understand why he would line up behind the president in his opposition to this GI bill. I can't believe why he believes it is too generous to our veterans. I could not disagree with him and the president more on this issue. There are many issues that lend themselves to partisan posturing, but giving our veterans the chance to go to college should not be one of them.

Now this is a brilliant move by Obama, he's hitting McCain on veteran's issues, one of McCain's talking points.