From Ben Smith:
Donald Trump used his New Hampshire press conference this morning to announce how "proud" he was to have made the fringe issue of Obama's birth certificate a central one, then to have forced the White House's hand in releasing another birth document.
Then he pivoted, in a tour de force performance, to a tone that his 2012 rivals will have to reckon with: Raw, unadulterated anger, which began with calling Obama stupid and demanding his college transcripts.....

This is a really dumb situation for Obama to be in - he's released the legally valid document, and now there's going to be a continuing standard of having to go above and beyond legal requirements if you don't "feel" American to people. This is made worse because he would have been "natural born" even if he had been born in Kenya, due to jus sanguinis. My question for WSO is a different one, though: should presidential candidates have to release their college transcripts, as this op-ed suggests?

The standards of privacy have obviously changed - the press corps that covered up Kennedy's affairs is no longer above tabloid fare, but I can't shake the feeling that candidates shouldn't have to be held responsible for what happened when they were 18-22: people change, right?

Do you think college transcripts are relevant to your future career, and public scrutiny?

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