A REFRESHER...FROM DOUG ROSS@JOURNAL...

Barack Obama's biographical brief edited repeatedly over 17 years, but Kenyan birthplace changed just weeks after his presidential run announced

The biography provided by Barack Obama to his literary agent specified his birthplace as "Kenya". And, over the course of 17 years, despite multiple revisions by Obama, the Kenyan birthplace remained a fundamental part of the bio on the agent's website.

I've used the Wayback Archive to explore the exact transformations of Obama's biography on his agent's site (click on any of the thumbnails to zoom to a readable size).

On June 27, 1998, the website read: "BARACK OBAMA was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book is DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE."

The Obama entry remained unmodified (e.g., June 6, 2002) until sometime around December 9, 2004, when it was modified to read: "BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, is a New York Times bestseller."

On February 10, 2007, Senator Barack Obama formally announced his candidacy for the Presidency.

On April 3, 2007, the website read: "BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller."

Sometime between April 3rd and April 21st, a member of the Obama campaign staff (or Obama himself) noticed the discrepancy in birthplace that would presumably disqualify the Senator from office.

On April 21, 2007, the website read: "BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller."

On June 14, 2007, the website read: "BARACK OBAMA, the junior Democratic senator from Illinois, is currently campaigning to become the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee. He was born in Hawaii to a father who was raised in a small village in Kenya and a mother who grew up in small-town Kansas. Barack's father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University before moving to Chicago, where he became a community organizer. He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long-time New York Times bestseller."

Old media's feeble handling of this issue -- parroting the laughable assertion that clerical errors caused Obama's birthplace to be incorrectly listed, when former clients and the agency's policy itself states that authors provide the biographical briefs -- is pathetic.

As I've demonstrated here, Obama's bio was carefully edited over the course of 17 years to reflect his various accomplishments.

It was only a few months after his presidential candidacy was announced that his Kenyan "birthplace" became Hawaiian to confirm his eligibility for office. Obama remains a client to this day, which helps explain the literary agent's willingness to instantly offer an explanation for the discrepancy.

Only a Kool-aid-swilling hack or a Democrat-media drone -- but I repeat myself -- would buy into the literary agent's lame excuse.