Did you hear that presidential candidate Barack Obama wasn't really back in Hawai'i earlier this month to visit his ailing grandmother, but to cover up evidence that he doesn't have a legitimate U.S. birth certificate and is thus not a citizen?

Are you aware that Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, took the unusual step of sealing Obama's birth certificate, even though he is a Democrat?

Have you heard that Obama's Kenyan grandmother witnessed Obama's birth at the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya?

All of it is malarkey, fueled by Internet rumors that some readers are apparently buying. Of course, people also believe that John McCain is a foreigner, Sarah Palin did not give birth to her special-needs child and the U.S. government ordered the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the midst of a divisive presidential election, it's natural for conspiracy theories to pop up and get batted down, but none has maintained the staying power of whether or not Obama is a U.S. citizen.

Attorney Philip J. Berg maintains a Web site, obamacrimes .com, that claims Obama is either a citizen of Kenya, his father's homeland, or Indonesia, where he moved with his American mother after she remarried.

His lawsuit, challenging whether Obama is a U.S. citizen, was dismissed Oct. 24 by a federal judge in Philadelphia who ruled that Berg had no standing to bring the case. Berg has said he would appeal.

On Oct. 17, Internet columnist Andy Martin, who is executive director of The Stop Obama Coalition, filed a lawsuit in Hawai'i Circuit Court asking state officials, including Lingle and Department of Health director Chiyome Fukino, to provide him a copy of Obama's birth certificate.

Just five days later, the Hawai'i Supreme Court denied Martin's petition for a writ of mandamus, saying Martin did not have a "direct or tangible interest" when seeking the birth certificate. In essence, the birth certificate can only be released to Obama or a close family member. Lingle never sealed anything. And the state Registrar of Vital Statistics has verified to The Advertiser, through the governor's office, that the original, official birth certificate is on file.

FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, has done extensive research to check the accuracy of political claims, including the Obama birth certificate. Several images of the birth certificate are posted and an extensive discussion follows that refute claims that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, doesn't have a raised seal, doesn't have a signature, has a blacked-out certificate number and other accusations.

Without going into all the details — you can go to the Web site and read it for yourself — the report shows that the Obama campaign requested and received a copy of the birth certificate in 2007 and released it this year after questions were raised about its authenticity. The certificate number was blacked out by the campaign because it was concerned about whether the number could be used for identity fraud or to obtain personal information. It has since been determined that the number cannot be used in that way and it can be found in the Annenberg Political FactCheck report.

Mark Platte is senior vice president/editor of The Advertiser. Reach him at 525-8080.