Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice went on record over the weekend citing Barack Obama's 'incredible accomplishment' in becoming the nation's first black major-party presidential nominee.

"I think it's great, and I think it's great for our country," Rice said of Obama's candidacy.

Secretary Rice noted that Colin Powell was the first black person to be America's top diplomat. She is the second -- and a woman. Both were appointed by George Bush.

"It just shows that our country has been doing this for a while and it's great that this last barrier perhaps, has also come down," she said in a broadcast interview that aired Sunday.

When asked, Rice said she's already decided which candidate she'll vote for, but she's playing it coy, not saying which candidate it will be. (But leaving the media to speculate that she'll cross party lines to vote for the racial candidate.)

From the beginning of his candidacy, Barack Obama has made a point of saying his candidacy 'transcends race' -- unless being black works to his advantage.

Then everything is race -- racial code words, racial hand signals ... "I'm black, so vote for me or you're a racist!" is buried somewhere in every speech.

Type 'racial candidate' into Google News Search. I got 6,290,000 hits. I scrolled through the first dozen pages and every story was about Obama, the 'post-racial' candidate.

But what if it's a con? What if it turns out that Barack Hussein Obama isn't black after all?

Assessment:

There is something terribly strange about Barack Hussein Obama. We can all feel it.

Either that sense of strangeness is so repellant one cannot countenance him in the White House, or it is so compelling one cannot help but vote for him.

And in either case, nobody can quite explain why. What is there that is strange about Obama that is repellant? I'm not sure -- but there is a creepiness there that can't be denied.

Too many people feel it. And it isn't political -- a good portion of them are members of his own party. The mistakes he's already made would be more than enough to sink an ordinary, mortal candidate, but not Barack Hussein Obama.

One would have expected the fact that Obama was a member of a kind of black KKK for twenty years would be a candidacy-killer. The mere fact that George Bush addressed Bob Jones University was almost enough to tar him a 'racist' -- even after he had appointed the first black and first black woman, successively, to represent the US abroad.

One would have expected Obama's elitism to hurt him with working-class voters. During the Iowa campaign, he tried to connect with working class voters by commiserating about the runaway price of arugula at his local gourmet supermarket.

His speech in which he characterized Middle America as Bible thumping, gun toting, xenophobic rednecks didn't hurt him in Middle America. Neither did his criticism of Americans as unilingual ignoramuses because they can't speak French or German. (Neither can he).

Last week, he tried to get permission to give a campaign speech from Berlin's Brandenburg Gate -- the place where John Kennedy uttered his immortal "Ich bin ein berliner" which JFK intended to mean, "I am a Berliner."

(Thanks to his New England accent, what JFK really said was "I am a jelly doughnut.")

It was the site of Ronald Reagan's famous, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" No doubt Obama had some equally memorable line prepared.

But Germany wouldn't let him speak at the symbol of the Cold War. As an alternate, Obama chose Berlin's Tiergarten Park where he'll speak before the "Victory Monument" --which was moved to that park from its original location by Adolf Hitler.

With all of this, Barack Obama gets a pass. More than just a pass -- it seemed somehow to have enhanced his credentials. What I find most amazing is that Obama's campaign has decided to characterize anything that doesn't portray him as some kind of political messiah as being 'a smear'. The campaign even created a website called "Fight the Smears" to address the allegations head-on.

And THAT could be Obama's Waterloo.

On that website, the campaign has posted what appears to be a copy of Barack Obama's Hawaii birth certificate. The campaign posted it there to prove that the Illinois senator was actually born within the United States and therefore eligible to run.

There had been rumors that Obama was really born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to run for the White House. If one goes to the Stop the Smears website one can see where Obama's campaign has posted a copy of his birth certificate.

The website, Israel Insider hired a forensics expert to examine the purported copy of the birth certificates online after readers began to question some inconsistencies. The photocopy didn't have fold marks -- it should have.

There was no embossed state seal. If there was a seal on the original, it would be on the copy. There was no signed certification from a state official, as required by law.

And in block letters at the bottom, it says. "ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE."

The conclusion reached by the expert, after carefully examining the copy, is that the birth certificate on the website is a "horrible forgery."

Not a single member of the mainstream media has questioned the posted birth certificate. Not one. That is, in and of itself, both curious and somewhat damning.

There is little doubt that Obama has mesmerized the mainstream media. (All THREE network anchors are traveling with Obama on his European Tour. NOT ONE went with McCain).

So, if the birth certificate were genuine, one would expect the mainstream media to prove it, if for no other reason except to clear their candidate. But none of them have even tried. What are they afraid of?

There aren't a lot of logical reasons for forging a birth certificate. One would be to disguise one's place of birth. If Obama were born outside the country, then the only kind of birth certificate he could produce would be a complete forgery.

I don't buy that. Obama may be audacious, but that kind of audacity borders on the clinically deranged.If Obama were born abroad and it were proved, he'd jump from presidential candidate to convicted felon pretty quickly.

I believe that there is a valid Hawaiian birth certificate issued for Barack Obama. I just don't believe that it is displayed on his website.

If concealing one's place of birth isn't the purpose for forging a birth certificate, there are two other reasons that come to mind.

The first might be to conceal the circumstances of one's birth: was he born Barack Obama? Or Barry Dunham? Were his parents married? The birth certificate would reveal that potentially embarrassment.

A third reason would be to conceal the fact that Barack Obama Sr. was listed as a black African, but rather as an Arab. Barack's entire candidacy, as we've already noted, is rooted in his being the first black American major party nominee.

If his father is really an Arab, and his mother is white, then Barack Obama is not America's first black candidate after all. It's not supposed to be about race. But it is. That's the reality.

The rest is smoke and mirrors.