Obama's father did come from Kenya, but he deserted the family when Barack was 2. The candidate grew up never knowing him and has had only brief contact with any of his father's relatives, who still live there. His mother came from Kansas, and Barack was raised by her parents in Hawaii, where he was born.
As for "relatives over there," do they expect an attack on the United States from Kenya or Hawaii? And besides, the last we heard, Hawaii was part of the United States.
When rumors spread that Obama refused to release his birth certificate, his campaign responded by actually posting a copy of it on his Web page. Of course, that provoked the charge that it was a forgery, and Jerome Corsi, author of a book critical of Obama, repeated it on a recent television interview.
FactCheck.org, an indispensable source of accurate information in the presidential campaign, actually took the extreme step of sending representatives to examine the certificate at Obama's campaign headquarters in Chicago. The investigators said, they have "seen, touched, examined and photograhed" it and "we can attest to the fact that it is real."
For those who still can't accept that, there is an even more conclusive piece of evidence. Someone trying to dig up dirt, presumably on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, found Obama's birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961, and is reproduced on the FactCheck Web site. It reports a son born to Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, Aug. 4, and gives their street address.
We suspect, though, even that won't convince the hard-core skeptics. Tongue in cheek, FactCheck says, "Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson need to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday."
We realize that conspiracy theorists can talk themselves into believing anything. But there isn't the slightest evidence that Obama is not a U.S. citizen any more than that he is a Muslim or a socialist. John McCain isn't a space alien, either.