James Taranto is crowing, but I don't know why. He's the one with egg on his face. He knew all along (was it extrasensory perception?) what Barack Obama's original birth certificate said. He didn't need to see it. This is gullibility of the worst sort, folks. I'd rather be skeptical than gullible.
Addendum: I just watched a roundtable on the Fox News Channel. All three of the participants (Charles Krauthammer, A. B. Stoddard, and Fred Barnes) slammed the so-called birthers for keeping this issue alive. I don't get it. Did Krauthammer et al. know what the original birth certificate said? If so, how? If not, then how can they pronounce so confidently that it was a non-issue? Any lawyer knows that the best evidence is an original document. Facsimiles are allowed only if the original is lost. That's all many of us have wanted from the beginning: an original birth certificate. Maybe that's it: None of these three is a lawyer. Hell, Taranto doesn't even have a college degree.
Addendum 2: Here is Federal Rule of Evidence 1002.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 