Kudos to Diane as that was the same question I was going to submit. The President has been far from transparent when it comes to this subject matter. Where are those college transcripts and where is the original, notarized birth certificate?

The President showed his (not my) correct birth certificate. You can see it, along with explanation, here:
http://www.factcheck.org/2011/04/indeed-born-in-the-u-s-a/

Name one other president who released his college transcripts.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/obamas-sealed-records/

Should we ask Gov. Romney for his birth certificate? After all, his father was born in Mexico.

And when his father ran for president, he showed his tax information. What is Gov. Romney trying to hide?

Every recent president has released their college records. That is how we found out GW Bush got better grades than both Al Gore and John Kerry.

And that Hillary Clinton flunked the bar exam on her first try.

Debbie Roeder and Diane Creel, the birth certificate has been shown, sorry you live in some alternative reality where it hasn't. How exactly will this help the real problems of this country? Where exactly do you THINK he was born? What exactly would satisfy you?

I'm not sure why I'm asking, I know the answer, NOTHING will ever satisfy extremists like yourselves.

"Every recent president has released their college records. That is how we found out GW Bush"

Wrong.

"George W. Bush’s grades at Yale eventually became public, but only because somebody leaked them to the New Yorker magazine. Bush himself refused to release them, according to a 1999 profile in the Washington Post."

Again:
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/07/obamas-sealed-records/

So, I guess Kerry's and the Ozone Man's grades were leaked, too? How did that happen and how has it not happened with Obama's? I am less concerned about his grades. If, in fact he did as well as you want us to believe, they should be great. Knowing his narcissistic personality, if they were great, he would be the first one to leak them. I believe he was born in Hawaii. I suspect, but do not know, based on a brochure put out by a literary agent shopping a book for him while he was in law school, that he led people to believe he was born in Kenya. The brochure (that was only pulled when he decided to run), said clearly he was born in Kenya. Certainly, he must have seen it. Why wouldn't he have corrected it? Is the reason he wants to keep it under wraps that he was actually born here, but wanted people to think he was born overseas when it suited him? I would like to know whether he received any special consideration when applying for admission to these exclusive schools as a foreign student. This could all be cleared up by releasing the records. It won't matter much longer. It is looking like he's toast.

People, the whole birther movement is as ridiculous as Donald Trump's wig and any attempt to frame it as a serious debate question just makes you look ridiculous. Seriously, can we stick to the issues? The whole birther movement does absolutely nothing to address this country's many problems.

Earl, his grades and college admissions records are not a "birthed" thing. It is a separate issue. Also, with all the dough Trump has, I seriously doubt that is a wig. It may be a desperate attempt at a creative comb-over, but it isn't a wig.

Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University...I think that pretty much tells you what his transcripts would say.

No, it really doesn't answer the questions I noted above, but nice try.

Why are you asking for these things from Obama and not from Romney? Do you have any idea how blatantly hypocritical and partisan that makes you look? I would be all for full disclosure on BOTH candidates, there, I said it. Why won't you all?

Again, these are not debate questions. These are idiotic distractions from the very real problems that this country faces.

Earl, Mitt Romney has released his. He attended the Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School (AT THE SAME TIME) and graduated in the top five percent of each. Name calling does not make you look smarter or your facts any truer.

Please provide a link to the college transcripts you claim Romney released.

Also, where did I call anyone names?

And again, how on earth does this a debate question? Does it really help you choose who to vote for? November 6 isn't that far away.

"Why wouldn't he have corrected it?"

I believe that this President, and any President, has better things to do than correcting the constant stream of lies being told about him or her.

Your comments show what a waste of time that would be. For example, you asked about Kerry and Gore. I had said "Name one other president who released his college transcripts.". You responded "Every recent president has released their college records." Kerry and Gore have never been presidents.

And you didn't read the link I posted before continuing with your baseless drivel.

"he led people to believe he was born in Kenya." Hogwash. Prove me wrong, if you can, by showing me where Obama did that. Not someone else. You said "he", as in Obama. Show me.

Sensible. I said, I wanted to know if he did. If you read my comment, you would have seen I attributed to statement to Obama's literary agent who was shopping a book (that was never sold). Here is the brochure, which was not changed until 2007. My question is why Obama allowed this error to go uncorrected for so many years? By the way there are dozens of links you can access on this many from the left wing media.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii

The agent changed it when Obama decided to run. I am a trained journalist. I was trained that when something doesn't smell right, it deserves scrutiny. When someone will not release something as benign as grades, I ask, why not.

And Earl, if you read you last post you accuse me of living in an alternate universe. How do you suppose that can be taken any way other than an insult or attack? How does that make you look more intelligent?

I have a daughter going to college soon. The application process is brutal. I want to know if the president of the United States cut any corners? We've all heard Bush got in because his daddy went there. Guess what? So did Obama's daddy. They were both legacies. If checking a box that says you are foreign born gives you a preference, how many people would check it? Probably a lot. Obama just fans the flames by stonewalling. If we had an objective press, this matter would not be ignored.

I did read your original comment. Here it is:

"I suspect, but do not know, based on a brochure put out by a literary agent shopping a book for him while he was in law school, that he led people to believe he was born in Kenya."

which says that YOU suspect "that he led people to believe he was born in Kenya." I wonder why a trained journalist wouldn't have suspected that someone else might have led people to believe that he was born in Kenya. Especially if that someone else was a literary agent with a motive to sell a story.

It is clear you have no understanding of the client relationship an author has with a literary agent. The agent "represents" the client. Collateral materials used in such representation would be approved by the client in the normal course of the relationship, especially a client who is a Harvard Lawyer. The error (and I said I believe it was an error and that he was not actually born in Kenya...I do not know whether it was purposeful), was so glaring that the client (Obama) would have had to see it and realize his legal representative was presenting inaccurate information. If someone did a brochure on you and said you were born in Sweden when you were actually born at St. John's Hospital, do you think you wouldn't mention it? A trained journalist would hear alarm bells ringing. Why did the agent present it this way and why did the client not correct it for over a decade? It is a fair question. If this happened to be Romney, (or any GOP candidate), the liberal mainstream press would not rest until they knew everything. The world would stop until it was settled. The fact that they don't seem to care about it, speaks volumes about the press. This begs the question about why you don't care? It also circumstantially supports a theory that he may have applied to schools as a foreign student. Again, I don't know, but I think we are owed an answer.

I don't know what the relationship was between that agent and the client. It sure looks like it wasn't close, given Goderich's statement: "This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me -- an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii." And Obama obviously didn't feel bound to complete his book for them.

That doesn't mitigate that it happened and that we deserve an answer.

According to Wikipedia (original is well sourced, for those of you who always rant about Wikipedia): "Expressed belief in such theories has persisted despite Obama's pre-election release of his official Hawaiian birth certificate in 2008;[1] confirmation, based on the original documents, by the Hawaii Department of Health;[6] and the April 2011 release of a certified copy of Obama's original Certificate of Live Birth (or long-form birth certificate); and contemporaneous birth announcements published in two Hawaii newspapers."

Time to dispell more incorrect hearsay. Here's how the math works:

If you buy a house for $150,000, and you sell it for anything less than $400,000, you owe no tax, as an individual. If you and a spouse buy a $150,000 house and sell it for anything less than $650,000, you owe no tax. If you, however, sell it for say, $750,000, you pay 3.8% on the $100,000 gain, or a grand total of $3800. And only then if their regular income exceeds $250,000. That is it. It will not affect the middle class. Would it kill you tea partiers to do a little math once in a while? Seriously?

"a little math once in a while?"

Please no, we've seen enough of that from Revere!

http://www.factcheck.org/2010/04/a-38-percent-sales-tax-on-your-home/

Good question!

Taxes Taxes Taxes
That's why some of you will never figure this out. I'll say it again, NEVER has an economy gotten any better by pushing more money to the Federal government. That isn't what drives an economy as all of you have obviously been conditioned to think. You & I, and everybody you think doesn't sacrifice enough to your diety, are what makes an economy prosper, not how much the government can spend. Constantly whining about everyone else's taxes will never change that reality. If you suggest a flat-tax, those same people will complain everyone paying the same percentage isn't fair. With that, they actually support the loopholes that allow the rich, who can afford tax lawyers, to pay the percentages they complain about.

I would like Obama to explain exactly how removing an unnecesary, and very highly paid, middle-man in the DOE from the process is going to put more teachers into classes than if the states & municipalities handled it instead.

By the way, what year since Obama has been in office have we increased the number of teachers? How many school districts' budgets have gotten bigger instead of smaller.

Projecting that kind of thing on the people who point this out is S.O.P. for these folks. It's the kind of deflection they always use (especially our resident poster-child for programmed-responses) to distract you from rampant policy-failures. Including the nearly 300,000 teachers we've lost in the last 4 years, resulting in larger class sizes.

You ask your questions and I will ask mine:
"Hey Mitt, why do you not work yet you pay lower tax rate than working people like me?"

Devon obviously does not know much about the history of taxation in relation to the economy in this nation. Taxes are only one part of the equation in an economy. Nobody likes taxes - however to reduce deficit you have to cut spending and raise taxes from viable sources. Sorry buddy, that's just the way it is - unless you prefer tax free small government Utopias ...like Somalia.
part 2 below.

Devon -RE Dept of Education: My understanding is that local control of education has been happening in Education reform.

However, with regard to your No Federal Govt Utopian viewpoints- Do you not realize that we have one constitution governing all of the United States? So we will need at least some level of Federal oversight over most important matters that affect citizens.

And Education is an important part of a democracy. I think we can all agree on that. (Though after reading the mindnumbing and sometimes hilarious DevonRevere commentaries I wonder if there is agreement.) To give an extreme comparision for the extremists here -a public education system is better alternative than relying on Madrassahs.

The Fed had to force Mississippi public schools to desegregate. Time and again states rights have been a tool to usurp the Constitution in the way of Mississippi.

Thus, we need some federal oversight over education in this nation, rather than leaving it all to the nuthouses -err I mean Statehouses, and/or to the religious organizations.

DoE is a miniscule portion of the budget. If you want to cut waste and spending, you'll get more bang for your buck elsewhere. DoD for one.

Nope, again it's you who does not understand how an economy works, no matter how many times I explain it.
You've never heard me call for "tax-free utopia" as you are trained (partially by the DOE) to label anyone who can see that the Federal government is too thinly stretched as it is. The way you fix the deficit is by bringing down expenditures, by getting the government OUT of more programs, not inserting them further into more areas, creating more deficit. By adding tax-PAYERS, not taxes. Adding providers, not dependents. Allowing people to provide for themselves, not by forcing the people who could hire them & sell them products, or goods & services, to pay for those dependents & of course by passing a budget.
You are trained to talk about "where you have to raise taxes to pay for those cuts", except in reality, you don't have to add new taxes anywhere, when you add new tax-payers. Reducing the number of tax-payers doesn't work, because you then have to raise taxes again to pay for them, resulting in more added to the number of people you have to take care of. That's how you got here, not the answer.
By your logic, why even have states? The country only has one Constitution, why not desegregate the states all into the same entity, like Somalia?
Education IS an important part of a democracy, that's exactly why it should be entrusted to the people, not an inept Federal Government.
Even you had to go back to MS 30 years ago to find any good that's been done by the DOE.

Your right Devon, I don't understand how the economy works - at least as it does on your planet. Lol.

Now explain why the little ole DoE is a ginormous burden on society, while the elephant in the room is Dept of Defense spending (more than double of what Russia and China spend combined) is crippling our economy.

"You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel." -Jesus of Nazareth

Now I'm off to read some stonekettle warnings about trying to reason with the unreasonable.

Mitt never said that class size doesn't matter. In fact, we have 1 teacher for every 15 students in the US, down from 1 for 22 over a decade ago. But our test scores are lower, because teacher's unions have made teachers worse.

Also, the average person pays an average of less than 13% in taxes due to deductions, etc.; Romney has never paid less than 13.6% - and that low rate is due to the millions he gives in charity.

Romney was indicating class sizes don't matter -you can parse what he said, but you read like Bill Clinton when you do. And there is an overwhelming amount of data that disagrees with whatever study Romney cites. I can provide it if you wish. I am wondering if Mittens would send his kids to such a school.

Blaming union teachers is politics at its worse. The GOP making of public education into another pet wedge issue is despicable. They view public education as liberalism and it must be stopped. Read idiotRevere's many comments to this effect. Union teachers are the only thing holding things together in school districts. School board and politicians are often clueless on education. And parents are dumping their messed-up kids into school and expect teachers to make them into civilized intelligent people for them, while having all these tests that are supposed to prove it all.

And Dean, Mitten's tax rate on investment is a joke. I have a much higher rate of tax than him...because I work and he doesn't. The rationale for continued tax breaks on capital gains and dividend income (inflation and surplus) are not meaningful anymore. David Stockman, Reagan's economic guru and deficit hawk, will attest to this.

This is important to our fiscal crisis, our foreign crisis and divided society crisis how?

Monica, Romney has admitted using its parents money to pay for college. Obama had scholarships. Happy now? Seriously, is that all you got?

Says the guy that brings up Romney's dead father. Can we please focus and ask questions that truly pertain to our country and its current condition and stop partisan mud slinging and talking points for one whole blog thread? Please?

do you know where these scholarships come from? foreign exchange student for Barry not Barack,Romney got a loan from his dad (which he paid back).Foreigners are not eligable to be president! kool-aid drinker,always with the assinine comments when anyone speaks out against your beloved lier and not chief,why don't you really do your own research and homework.and stop being so defensive to those whom do! start with the Illinois bar association records on Obama

If all of what you say is true then WHY haven't we seen his college transcripts, finacial aid applications,actual birth cetificate (with) the officail water mark seal,college grades,scholarship request form,Harvard Law transcripts,ANYTHING! for actual proof of his stories.no instead he's got hate mongers like you to distort and twist the REAL truth,and when the majority of Americans reject you and your kind on election day I (hope) you don't choke on the crow you'll be eating!

Monica, you are new here. I get that. You obviously missed the last train out of Crazy Town. Sorry about that. None of what you say makes any sense to the sane living in the real world trying to move society forward in a fair and just manner. Please, stop; it's not doing you any favors.

Elizabeth, good point. I accept your criticism that my previous post strayed from the topic.

Welcome to the Patch commentaries Monica. You fit right in with the Patriots like you've been here all along.

Don't patronize. You aren't actually superior to anyone on this thread.

You are free to agree with monica.

How's that crazy conspiracy talk working out for you now Monica? Heh heh.

Great question! Ask the US Armed Forces personnel who they would prefer - if they had ready access to voting.

Close Elizabeth,
But don't fall into the trap they've set for you, Congress HAS passed a budget. As a matter of fact, they've passed quite a few. Problem is: those bills, along with more than 250 others, are simply sitting dormant on the floor of the Senate - yes, those same people who purposely repeat the word "Gridlock" as many times as they can in a debate, when the proof of intentional "Gridlock" is actively exercised in the Senate.

Wrong JP, but you remain true to form as a typical republican/tea partier -where the the narrowminded believe there are only 2 ways of doing things. Right/Wrong, Black/White, With us or against, raise taxes or cut spending etc etc.

Bi-Partisan Bowles Simpson deficit reduction plan (not that I'm a full advocate of it) has a framework of spending cuts, AND increase in in tax rates(including capital gains rates) and elimination of tax deductions.

Ryan Romney and the Grover Norquist disciples have an unworkable agenda for government and the budget. And they know it -but when such agenda does not work, which will come as no surprise, they will wash their hands of responsiblity and say "see, government doesn't work".

By that time, the nation will have moved further towards full-fledged oligarchy, with little opportunity for advancement and upward mobility. The big time campaign donors to Romney and GOP, the people he was chumming with on his 47% comment would have it no other way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy

They were briefly four dollars a gallon. What's your point? He is truly a man of his word.

I can't afford to loose my disability, what canidate will help and not take away????