THIS IS NOT BIRTHERISM – AT 8:46 A.M. ET:  Readers may be aware of growing buzz in political circles over a piece written just days ago by the libertarian Wayne Allyn Root.  The key point here is that Root was a classmate of Barack Obama's at Columbia.  He is raising serious, thoughtful questions about Obama's refusal to release his Columbia records, and other academic records.  He responsibly refuses to make direct charges, but stresses he is raising reasonable points that require answers.  We agree.

Indeed, some conservatives are already suggesting that Mitt Romney agree to release all his tax returns, which Democrats are demanding he do, only if Obama releases his academic records.  Investor's Business Daily (IBD) reports the story, which is being ignored by the mainstream media:

A former classmate has added a tantalizing question to the mysteries surrounding Barack Obama's college years. Perhaps the GOP nominee, whose tax records are demanded, should call the president's bluff.

Not many students whose grades supposedly were good enough to get into Harvard Law School can say that 400 of their classmates taken randomly don't remember a single thing about him or his even being there. But Barack Obama, Columbia University class of '83, can.

Student Obama spent two years at Columbia after transferring there from Occidental College in Los Angeles. And for all the impression he made on his classmates, he might as well have been in the witness protection program.

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News called that random group of 400 Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama.

In October 2007, the New York Times ran a piece titled "Obama's Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say," which would have won the Pulitzer Prize for understatements if there was one.

The article noted that Obama, when asked, "declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."

And...

One of those fellow students is Wayne Allen Root, former Libertarian vice presidential nominee. He wonders, as we do, what's in Obama's Columbia file that warrants standards of secrecy higher than, say, the details of the Osama bin Laden raid or our efforts to derail Iran's nuclear program with a computer virus.

The theory Root raises is that Obama may have been accepted to Columbia, and to Harvard Law, as a foreign student, which raises profound questions.  Root claims – I cannot verify this – that people at Occidental College in California, where Obama spent his first two undergraduate years, describe him as a poor student.  How did a poor student get into an elite Ivy League school?  Root notes that applying as a foreign student would give him a huge advantage that might negate his grades.

And students who get into Harvard Law usually are stars, who glitter on their campuses.  But no one at Columbia even remembers Obama.  It's interesting that no faculty member ever stepped forward to say that he or she taught him.

IBD ends its piece:

Suggestion to Mitt Romney: Agree to release all your tax returns if President Obama releases all the records pertaining to his college years.

I second the motion.  Tom Brokaw, following the 2008 election, expressed his dismay that America had just elected a president about whom we knew so little.  That, of course, was largely caused by the collusion of the media, one of the most disgraceful episodes in American journalistic history.

It's four years later.  We still don't know much, do we?

I heard Root interviewed on radio by Geraldo Rivera, who tends toward the liberal side.  Rivera is no birther or conspiracy theorist.  But he was impressed by the questions raised by Root.

The mainstream media will not ask these questions.  But bloggers can, and the Romney campaign, not known up to this moment for high levels of imagination, can propose the deal that IBD suggests.

August 10, 2012