Posted on 08/05/2009 10:05:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last month was not a good month for President Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the Senate would not vote on his controversial healthcare bill before the August recess, federal deficit spending has reached a record $1.8 trillion, one major poll showed his approval rating had dropped below 50 percent, and a growing group of people question his citizenship and therefore his right to be President.
“Birthers” is the label used by those who want to relegate the latter group as a fringe element of society. Many complained last year when they noticed that Senator Obama would not place his hand over his heart while the national anthem was being played, and their concerns were heightened during the election when they noticed that he didn't wear a U.S. flag pin on his lapel, until he finally put one on. When they wanted proof of his birth in Hawaii, he displayed his certificate of live birth on the Internet for all to view.
End of argument, right? Wrong. Last month the “Birther movement” (also tongue-in-cheek known as the Born Identity) gathered more momentum when it burst through the conservative blogosphere and back into mainstream controversy again because a federal judge in Tampa, Florida, denied Stefan Frederick Cook's request to be rehired by Simtech Corporation, an Odessa-based military contractor. Cook claimed the Department of Defense pressured Simtech to fire him.
You see, Mr. Cook is also U.S. Army Major Cook, a reserve soldier who hired an attorney and was granted a request to not deploy to Afghanistan because he believes President Obama's presidency is not legitimate because he is not a natural-born citizen of the United States. Cook believes he would be acting in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the U.S. under Obama's command, which would subject him to possible prosecution as a war criminal.
Cook was represented by attorney Orly Taitz, who states that he is not refusing to go to Afghanistan because he is afraid to fight. In fact, Taitz says that Cook is ready to go today if it can be proved that President Obama is a legitimate commander in chief. She has dozens of other members of the military waiting for her to represent them in similar cases.
Because of the recent surge in the number of inquiries about the birthplace of Obama, Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino recently reissued a statement that he was born in Hawaii, and his certificate of live birth can be seen on the Internet. However, that's not good enough for the Birthers who want to see the long form of the birth certificate that states the hospital and other details, because no hospital in Honolulu has any record of his birth.
I had not put much thought or time into the Birthers' argument, but decided to do some research after it became a public issue again. Instead of finding more answers, my research only raised more questions. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas in 1942, which makes her a U.S. citizen. She married Barrack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan native who was a British subject, whose citizenship status was governed by the British Nationality Act of 1948, which would have allowed Obama Jr. to have dual citizenship.
After Obama's parents divorced, his mother later married an Indonesian businessman, Lolo Soetoro, and she moved with her son to Indonesia in 1966 or 1967. She became an Indonesian citizen and Obama was allegedly adopted by Soetoro, took on the name of his stepfather, and was registered in school documents as Barry Soetoro. His mother divorced for the second time and Obama moved back to Hawaii with his mother and half-sister at the age of 10. By the way, his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, but some claim she also possesses a certificate of live birth from Hawaii.
The smoking gun in this whole scenario is not whether he was born in Hawaii or Kenya, but it may boil down to a trip Obama took to Indonesia and Pakistan in the summer of 1981 with a Pakistani friend, Wahid Hamid, who attended Occidental College with him. Obama fails to mention the trip in either of his books, but he did discuss the trip to Pakistan during a speech in San Francisco on April 6, 2008. Obama's campaign press secretary, Bill Burton, confirmed the visit to Pakistan in 1981 on his return from Indonesia, so it is well established that he made the trip.
What makes this so interesting is that the U.S. State Department had Pakistan on a “no travel” list in 1981. Pakistan was under martial law at the time and Americans were prohibited from entering the country. A U.S. passport would not have allowed him to enter Pakistan, but the country accepted an Indonesian or British passport at that time. So the question is: If he could not use a U.S. passport, what passport was Obama offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration on his trip as a young college student?
There are only two possibilities: 1) If he used a British passport it would provide proof that he was either born in Kenya, as the Birther's claim, or he accepted the citizenship of his Kenyan father; or 2) if he was traveling with an Indonesian passport, that would tend to prove that he was adopted by his Indonesian stepfather in 1967, and he relinquished whatever citizenship he held, American or British.
This bizarre supposition and its implications would be excellent fodder for a future Tom Clancy or Dan Brown novel. The President could summarily dismiss all of these accusations by simply showing his long form birth certificate, passports, visas, and college records (some believe he received aid as a foreign student). However, President Obama has refused to share the documents and he has purportedly spent over a million dollars with three law firms in an effort to thwart court attempts to reveal the documents. If he has nothing to hide, I hope for his benefit and the sake of the country that he shows the documents so the whole ordeal can be put to rest. Until he does, the Born Identity movement will not only grow larger, but it could threaten to derail his credibility with many of the American people.
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Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is a partner with BizResults, LLC (www.bizresults.org). They can be contacted at biz_results@yahoo.com.
Very well written and to the point on all issues....
Obviously not the usual liberal or faux-con bashing....
Kinda cool name “The Born Identity”
Good article
And as such have done a way better job presenting the facts than the “pros”. Nice find.
Excellent, concise summation.
Thanks for posting.
Bump
This article will grow the legs of the story. The President will have to settle this soon enough. If not, if we can’t get this person to do his duty to prove himself then we have no hope to think we are a free nation by way of “Consent of the governed” as we will have no power to reign in the leader.
It will be interesting to see if any US media outlets publish this.
I must be mistaken but I was under the impression natural born required both parents to be citizens.
Very good article. So we are now called The Born Identity....nice...........
Well done, great write up!
I like the Born Identity.
No, you're correct, but "curiosity," whom I'm starting to think is Justice Kennedy, as he's quite the constitutional scholar/expert, disagrees with us.
wonder if he’s persuing the frank marshal davis as father thing
I am still waiting for that.
This “it’s coming... it’s coming...” is starting to get annoying.
I agree. A well written assessment.
However, I have yet to see proof, one way or the other, that this statement is valid.
“U.S. State Department had Pakistan on a “no travel” list in 1981. Pakistan was under martial law at the time and Americans were prohibited from entering the country. A U.S. passport would not have allowed him to enter Pakistan, but the country accepted an Indonesian or British passport at that time.”
I know I have seen some reporter visited Pakistan during that time. But, could a college kid get approval if he was a US citizen?
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