This story needs a little bit of prelude. Last year, as the bloggers at ObamaConspiracy remember, Philip Berg included an obviously forged birth certificate with his lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee. (The certificate was Canadian and signed by “Dudley Do-Right.”) Foreign birth certificates, unlike, say, American passports, are prime targets for forgery — few people stateside know what the real ones look like, and the penalties for forging them are basically non-existent.

So here it is: the “certified copy of registration of birth” that Orly Taitz obtained and is submitting as evidence in her lawsuit on behalf of Alan Keyes. The most obvious problems:

- It records Barack Obama Sr’s age as “26.” Obama Sr was born in 1936; his son was born in 1961.

- Its publication date is February 17, 1964, but it purports be a document of the “Republic of Kenya.” Kenya did not become a Republic until December 12, 1964, a year after it won independence from Great Britain.

- It’s signed by “registrar E.F. Lavender.” Earth Friendly Lavender is a kind of detergent, and government officials who use vanity initials on official documents are, to put it mildly, rare.

- The kicker? The image is part of the extremely ill-informed conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Mombasa—conveniently, one of the more Muslim parts of the country.

This has always been a red flag for conspiracy theorists, so it deserves some explanation. Barack Obama Sr. was born and educated in Nyanza Province, in southwestern Kenya, on Lake Victoria. This is the area where Obama’s family lived and continues to live; Sarah Obama, the step-grandmother of the president, lives in Nyang’oma Kogelo, a small town in the province. But Mombasa is a city on the Indian Ocean, a thousand miles to the east. It didn’t even have an international airport until 1979. And the city wasn’t even part of Kenya when the future president was born. Mombasa was a part of Zanzibar until December 12, 1963, when it became part of the newly independent Kenya.

The new forgery? Why, it claims that the president was born in Coast General Hospital in Mombasa.

- As some FreeRepublic posters have pointed out, the document contains a number that’s either a humorous coincidence or a wink by the forger. It’s number 47,044. Barack Obama, 47 years old, is the 44th president of the United States.

So what’s the likeliest story here? One popular theory right now is that the document was faked to discredit the “birther” movement. That wouldn’t be surprising: another document that circulated over the weekend was a “certificate of birth” from “Kenya colony,” and its creator tipped his hand, telling readers that it was a “work of parody.”

Hawaiian statute 338 allows foreign born children of Hawaiian residents to obtain Hawaiian birth certificates, that those birth certificates can be obtained based on a statement of one relative only without any corroborating evidence from the hospital; that “late birth certificates” (i.e. non-contemporaneously, post-facto, in two words “potentially fabricated”) can lawfully, under this statute, be obtained at any time later in life.

This is, unsurprisingly, totally wrong. Here’s the relevant section of Hawaiian law.

[§338-17.8]  Certificates for children born out of State. (a)  Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.

(b)  Proof of legal residency shall be submitted to the director of health in any manner that the director shall deem appropriate.  The director of health may also adopt any rules pursuant to chapter 91 that he or she may deem necessary or proper to prevent fraudulent applications for birth certificates and to require any further information or proof of events necessary for completion of a birth certificate.

(c)  The fee for each application for registration shall be established by rule adopted pursuant to chapter 91. [L 1982, c 182, §1]

First, who applies for a birth certificate? “An adult or the legal parents of a minor child.” Taitz, who doesn’t understand the most basic legalese, thinks that would allow “one relative” to apply for a child’s birth certificate. In fact, only the legal parents of a child—in this case, Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham—can apply for a birth certificate. The “adult” in this statute is a grown man or woman applying for a birth certificate, who must provide his or her own proof that his parents were legal residents of Hawaii.

Second, there’s an enumeration of the state’s process for verifying this; the director of health can “require any further information or proof of events” to weed out fraud.

Keep in mind, because Obama was born in Hawaii, this rule didn’t even apply to him. But a popular Birther theory is that Obama’s grandparents covered up for Obama’s parents by applying for a birth certificate and sneaking it past the authorities. As Okubo said yesterday, these people will say anything, no matter how implausible.