Free Republic

As the Obama chapter of American history draws to a close, it would be fitting to write a reflection on Obama’s story, but the problem is, where does it start? Since Obama first became a public figure, two competing versions of his birth have circulated: one claiming he was born in Kenya and one claiming Hawaii. The purpose of this article is to assemble some of the primary sources documenting the history of these competing narratives, as a step towards determining why there are two stories and which--if either--is true.Obama’s 1990 Birthplace Joke: “I was born in Oslo, Norway”Obama’s earliest...

The Ivy-League educated half-brother of President Obama is publishing his autobiography in which he makes the shocking claim their father dished out alcohol-fueled beatings to him and his mother and in one terrifying instance held a knife to her throat. Mark Obama Ndesandjo, 48, also uses his new book to set the U.S. president straight on inaccuracies he claims exist in his best-selling 1995 memoir Dreams From My Father and confirms they have never seen eye-to-eye because 'Barack thought I was too white and I thought he was too black.' --SNIP-- The 500-page book includes an appendix listing a number...

Its fascinating and incredible just to look at Barack Obama Sr.’s old British (Colony and Protectorate of Kenya) Passport. I have a bunch to say but, for the time being, wont bore you with an exhaustive report. I will, however, offer the following brief introduction for your review: - DOB: 18.06.1934 or June 18, 1934. 5 years later he says June 18, 1936. - Eyes: Brown Black. 5 years later he says black brown eyes. - Height: 5′ 10″. 5 years later he says 5′ 11”. - Occupation: Clerk. Did you know that he was a clerk for the Kenya...

Obama eating dog is nothing compared to what his father may have consumed during his Mau Mau "oath" ceremony.

Newly released, declassified files from the United Kingdom reveal U.S.officials' concerns that Kenyans studying in America, including President Obama's father, may have had ties to Kenyan terrorist groups that were supported by communist nations in the 1950s and early 1960s. As yet the documents exist only in physical form at the National Archives in Kew, Southwest London – but they are open to the public, a British police source told the Law Enforcement Examiner on Sunday. The declassified documents, which had been kept secret for decades, "were privately condemned by Obama administration officials," a British source told the Law Enforcement...

While the United Kingdom was violently suppressing a revolt against its rule in East Africa, the United States was in the middle of a growing civil rights movement. According to previously secret government files released in the UK today, it was during that time in 1959 when British colonial officials provided the name of President Obama’s father and other Kenyan students in America to the United States government. “If we contextualize this, it’s fair to say the US and UK were like-minded in their views on race,” said Harvard historian Caroline Elkins, whose research into the UK’s colonial practices in...

[Barack Obama's father] has been bought to life in a compelling biography by American journalist Sally H. Jacobs. And what a vile man he turns out to have been: a drunken, wife-beating, bribe-taking bigamist of extreme arrogance, who spent much of his life propping up bars while bemoaning his fate and running down rivals.

...But there was never anything silly, nor light-hearted, nor casual, about Barack Obama's efforts to keep the public's eyes from the basic facts of his life, from birth to his candidacy for president. On the contrary, this opacity is a deliberate policy. Why? The presumptive answer, absent testimony from those involved, is to ensure that real facts interfere as little as possible with the image and narrative that he and his associates have carefully crafted for him. Distinguishing between reality and that narrative would require above all a skeptical attitude, sure to be characterized by Democrats and the media in...

To read Sally H. Jacobs’s new biography of Barack Hussein Obama Sr. is to realize that his son, the president, spent much of his life reaching for a shadow he was lucky never to catch. Early in The Other Barack, a childhood playmate recalls how Obama Sr. would frequently snap at him and shout, “You don’t know what you are talking about.” A few chapters later, the editor of the University of Hawaii literary magazine describes Obama Sr. barreling into his office, unprovoked, to declare that a particular poem wasn’t “worth a damn.” Back in Nairobi, says one government official,...

Newly released immigration documents indicate Obama Sr. was 2 years older Overshadowed by reaction to the release of Barack Obama's long-form birth certificate was the unearthing of half-century-old files that cast doubt on whether the age of the president's father indicated on the Hawaii document is accurate. The applications, memos and other documents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service acquired in a Freedom of Information Act request by Heather Smathers of the Arizona Independent – which indicate Barack Obama Sr. would have been 27 at the time of his son's birth, not 25 – also suggest that the president's father...

I have created a summary (posted below) of Barack Obama Senior's immigration files, which were recently released. The summary is tabular, hopefully allowing a more systematic analysis. I have highlighted in yellow the more interesting portions. This summary is useful as an introductory research tool or a concise summation for semi-interested readers. Details are excluded except where particularly interesting or unobvious. When posting comments about a particular document, please include the page # (first column of table). I welcome questions, too.

BOSTON — President Barack Obama’s father was forced to leave Harvard University before completing his Ph.D. in economics because the school was concerned about his personal life and finances, according to newly public immigration records. Harvard had asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service to delay a request by Barack Hussein Obama Sr. to extend his stay in the U.S., “until they decided what action they could take in order to get rid of him,” immigration official M.F. McKeon wrote in a June 1964 memo. Harvard administrators, the memo stated, “were having difficulty with his financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to...

BOSTON (AP) -- Newly obtained federal immigration records indicate that President Barack Obama's father was forced to leave Harvard University in 1964 before finishing his doctorate in economics because the school was concerned about his personal life and finances. According to immigration memos, Barack Obama Sr.'s request to extend his stay in the U.S. was denied and he returned to his native Kenya.

– LAKE HAVASU CITY, Ariz. – Harvard University officials are speaking out on the release of the immigration file on Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. Documents uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, show that Harvard University officials worked with the INS to deny Obama’s student visa extension. An INS investigator, M.F. McKeon, wrote on June 8, 1964: “They (Harvard officials) weren’t very impressed with him and asked us to hold up action on his application until they decided what action they could take...

The long form birth certificate says obama sr. is 25. His alien registration card at the external link (& shown below) gives his date of birth as 6-18-34. If true, he would have been 27 not 25 when obama jr. was born. Wikipedia lists 1936 as obama sr.'s birth year. If obama sr. falsified his alien registration card, he might have been an illegal alien when obama jr. was conceived and born. On the other hand, the birth certificate might be inaccurate. In any case, one of the two documents contains false information.

I personally knew Obama Sr during his days as a middle level economist in Kenyatta’s Government. Always smartly dressed, Barrack Sr. was the embodiment of success. He came from a poor family near Lake Victoria. Africa’s largest water mass, went to a tin-roofed school with no running water, but still managed to reach the pinnacle of intellectual life at Harvard University in the US, where he received his advanced degree. At the university of Miami at Minoa, he was the first African student to be enrolled there for undergraduate studies, and therefore, became the centre of attraction. Tall and...

At the National Prayer Breakfast on February 3, President Obama threw a knuckleball down the middle, and the media whiffed. Most simply took Obama at his word that as a young man in Chicago, he "came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my lord and savior" and that as president, he asks "the Lord" every day to make him "an instrument of his will." In a moment, I will address the sheer gamesmanship of this theological flutter to the center, but first, a word on the most revealing part of the sermonette. This revelation was missed...

. . . . . Jack Cashill holds the clue.. . . . .

While Republican Congressman Frank Pallone read the "natural born Citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor last Thursday, a spirited female in the audience shouted out, "Except Obama! Except Obama! Help us, Jesus!" Later that day, NBC's Brian Williams improbably chose to assign blame for the woman's outburst on newly elected House speaker John Boehner. "How much responsibility do you feel?" Williams asked pointedly. "The state of Hawaii has said Obama was born there," said Boehner, who is no more intimate with the "Birther" movement than Williams himself. "That was good enough for me." The person Williams...