Warning: This column contains news of evidence of possible forgery and fraud in the long-form birth certificate of the president of the United States and – bonus – his Selective Service registration card.

I figure the warning is necessary to prevent Americans, particularly Americans who work in news media and politics, from hurting themselves on any hard, sharp facts that might poke through my discussion of what is surely the biggest scandal to emerge around the seemingly dodgy docs Barack Obama is using to verify his identity.

I refer to the logic- and history-defying news and political blackout of the March 1 press conference called in Maricopa County, Ariz., by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse.

I ask you: Have you read in your local paper about the technical evidence that led the posse’s three retired criminal investigators and two attorneys to conclude that the birth certificate image White House officials uploaded at the White House website on April 27, 2011, did not originate in a paper format, but rather was created (forged) as an electronic file on a computer?

Have you seen on network or cable news the video clip (one of six posse videos at YouTube) re-creating exactly how an additional fraud might have been committed to forge the president’s Selective Service registration card? Heard even conservative talk radio discussing the posse’s discovery that immigration files in the National Archives recording overseas arrivals into Hawaii are missing from the week of Obama’s 1961 birthday? Or about the retired mailman’s affidavit attesting that the mother of ex-Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers enthusiastically told him that she helped with “foreign student” Barack Obama’s education?

I know my ears pricked up when, watching the posse’s press conference online, I heard lead investigator Michael Zullo explain that the 1961 Hawaiian newspaper listings of Barack Obama’s birth confirm nothing because the posse “can prove beyond a doubt” that these newspapers announced arrivals of foreign babies as well as native-born. Zullo also announced the posse had “documented evidence of two adopted individuals who were breathing three years prior” and were similarly listed as newborn infants. Heard anything about that?

I know the answer. You have read, seen and heard nothing – and certainly not a peep from any representatives in Congress. The unique exception seems to be poor Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, whose mere mentions (better than nothing) of “examining the evidence” get him insta-hammered by the media and White House alike. Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, one of the presenters of the birth certificate at the White House last spring, actually had the gall to call into question via tweet Stearns’ fitness to conduct congressional investigations into the Obama administration’s decision to funnel $535 million into Solyndra, the bankrupt solar company. Why? Because Stearns dared to express interest in evidence amassed by veteran law enforcement professionals under Arpaio, himself a 30-year federal law-enforcement official and five-time-elected sheriff.

“1984″-style, we mustn’t question. We mustn’t look. We certainly mustn’t look at questions that cross the narrative of authority. What are we, free people?

Apparently not. One editor told me the problem is the evidence of fraud might prove to be true! A very famous conservative figure told me that if the president were proved to be an identity thief, “that would alienate too many people” from the Republican Party!

I am reminded of Groucho Marx’s answer to the question, Are we mice or men? “Throw some cheese on the floor and we’ll find out.”

Recently, Breitbart.com’s new editor at large, Ben Shapiro, was on Mark Gillar’s radio show, “Tea Party Power Hour,” promoting his conservative media organization’s “vetting Obama” campaign. Gillar asked Shapiro if “vetting” Obama would include investigating Obama’s birth and/or Selective Service documents. Absolutely not, Shapiro replied, explaining that he didn’t believe this was an issue. “I am discouraging people from spending time on this,” Shapiro said, emphasizing once again that he himself did not believe there were irregularities in the documents since, as he put it, he knew Media Matters would be listening to the interview.

The walls have ears? Shapiro’s concern almost makes Media Matters sound like a secret police outfit with a gulag for journalists who ask too many questions. In reality, it’s an ideologically driven, left-wing attack group funded by ideologically driven, left-wing George Soros.

Shapiro continued, quite candidly: “It’s an issue on which people are being marginalized very easily and very quickly at this point.”

Marginalized by whom? The Soros-funded attack machine? The liberal- dominated “mainstream media”? Fox News-dominated conservative media? The Obama White House?

Clearly, something has us all on lockdown. That’s much, much scarier than even the amazing possibility that some con artist might be pulling off the biggest scam in history. (© 2012 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 03/23/12)