Barry Soetoro

Indonesian school registration for "Barry Soetoro" (AP photo)

JERUSALEM – Was Sen. Barack Obama a citizen of Indonesia at any point in his life?

Does that question represent a vicious slur, or the legitimate investigation of curious Americans, eager to know more about a man who hasn't been through the normal presidential vetting process?

That question has been circulating on the blogosphere with increased fury the past few days, ever since a photograph emerged of Obama's school registration papers as a child in Indonesia – the world's most populous Muslim nation – showing the presidential candidate listed as a "Muslim" with "Indonesian" citizenship.

What if it's true that Barack once had Indonesian citizenship? It doesn't concern me, in particular. What does concern me is the Democratic attack machine's determination to portray those who are curious as hate mongers.

An investigation into Indonesian citizenship law and a review of Obama's biography and travels suggest the Illinois senator at one point may have been a citizen of Indonesia. That would not necessarily disqualify Obama to run for president, but it could raise loyalty concerns.

Let's get an accurate picture of the newcomer to the national scene, and let Americans make their own decisions about what's important and what isn't.

A 2007 Associated Press photograph taken by Tatan Syuflana, an Indonesian AP reporter and photographer, surfaced last week on the Daylife.com photographic website showing an image of Obama's registration card at Indonesia's Fransiskus Assisi school, a Catholic institution.

In the picture, Obama is registered under the name Barry Soetoro by his step-father, Lolo Soetoro. The school card lists Barry Soetoro as a Indonesian citizen born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His religion is listed as Muslim.

Obama zealots are obviously concerned about Barack's background being known, as they foam at the mouth over attempts to reveal it.

After attending the Assisi Primary School, Obama was later enrolled at SDN Menteng 1, an Indonesian public school.

Obama's campaign did not return repeated WND phone calls and e-mail queries the past week asking for a clarification regarding the school documentation listing the presidential candidate's citizenship as Indonesian.

As Hillary's chief strategist advised her in memos that became public last week, Barack's foreignness is not all good news for his campaign.

"It also exposes a very strong weakness for him -- his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited. I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values," Penn wrote.

The quicker all this stuff is on the table, which the Obama campaign could expedite, the sooner the conversation can move to issues, where Democrats claim to want it to be.

Obama spokesmen have in the past stated the candidate is a natural-born citizen amid rumors he may have been born in his father's home country of Kenya, but the campaign has not addressed whether Obama became a citizen of Indonesia at any point.

Penn Knew

Why management skills matter.

Mark Penn, the top campaign strategist for Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, advised her to portray Barack Obama as having a “limited” connection “to basic American values and culture,” according to a forthcoming article in The Atlantic.

I often wondered why, despite the obvious need to proceed with caution, Hillary didn't go after Barack harder then she did.

The magazine reports Penn suggested getting much rougher with Obama in a memo on March 30, after her crucial wins in Texas and Ohio: “Does anyone believe that it is possible to win the nomination without, over these next two months, raising all these issues on him? ... Won’t a single tape of [the Reverend Jeremiah] Wright going off on America with Obama sitting there be a game ender?”

She had the gameplan she needed, but she didn't pull the trigger.

Atlantic Senior Editor Joshua Green writes that major decisions during her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination would be put off for weeks until suddenly Clinton “would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.”

It's like John Kerry all over again.

Penn, the presidential campaign’s chief strategist, wrote in a memo to Clinton excerpted in the article: “I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”

Which Barack is not. And the video is there to prove it.

A key take-away from the article is that Clinton received a lot of accurate advice, including from Penn. He wrote a remarkably prescient memo in March 2007 about the importance of appealing to what he called “the Invisible Americans,” specifically “WOMEN, LOWER AND MIDDLE CLASS VOTERS” — exactly the groups that helped Clinton beat Obama in key states nearly a year later.

Which is why Barack cannot be elected.

“What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make.”

While Hillary didn't know how to get the job done, McCain has already proven that he won't behave with progressive incompetence.