‘Where’s the birth certificate?’
Posted: May 22, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009
I have a feeling the question above will be on the lips of more and more Americans in the coming months.
Mere days ago, I took a chance.
I launched a campaign asking WND viewers to join me in an effort to erect billboards all over America that ask that simple question: “Where’s the birth certificate?”
To my surprise and delight, more than 1,000 people responded in the first 48 hours with donations exceeding $25,000 to support the campaign. Not only that, but a few precious businessmen even offered free signage or space at greatly discounted rates to help out.
I have every reason to expect this campaign will be long lasting and hugely successful – allowing us to post this billboard in all 50 states in the coming months, along every highway and byway in this once great country.
Why would people get behind a campaign to ask this question?
Simple. Despite the fact that no other news agency in America has investigated or covered the controversy of Barack Obama’s birth, millions and millions of my fellow citizens are deeply skeptical about his constitutional eligibility to serve in the White House.
Because Obama has steadfastly refused to show the public or any controlling legal authorities his birth certificate, he has cast this suspicion upon himself. No one else can be blamed for it. There are many other reasons to doubt Obama is constitutionally eligible to serve, but I like to focus on the simple. It all starts with the birth certificate.
People ask me: “Well, Farah, isn’t it enough that his mother was a citizen? Are you nitpicking?”
Actually, no, I’m not.
Birth certificate question being raised in Ball, La.
In fact, I don’t even know who Obama’s real parents are or were. Without a birth certificate, we’re simply taking Obama’s word for it. Not one person alive today has come forward to say they were present at Obama’s birth in Hawaii in 1961.
I could go on and on for my own motivation in pursuing this matter of eligibility. But the point is this – I am pursuing it, and lots of Americans seem very eager to go along with me despite the near blackout on any other media attention to this subject.
I am now persuaded the only way we can resolve this matter is to get millions of Americans screaming about it. Otherwise, we’re certain to have another question of eligibility confront us in November 2012, when Obama seeks re-election.
My goal is to have the whole country talking about it well before then.
How to do that?
Billboards.
It’s working. By 2012, if necessary, I’m certain we’ll be placing billboards in Times Square.
I call it my “truth and transparency” campaign. Obama promised the most open and transparent administration in history. What we got instead was a guy who hides his birth certificate, his student records, who fails to explain his foreign travels to countries prohibited to American citizens and how he regained his citizenship after living abroad with his stepfather. As usual, Obama is saying one thing and doing another.
But some people want to know why I chose this simple slogan to raise this issue. Why not include Obama’s name on the billboard?
(Column continues below)
There are several reasons I chose the message: “Where’s the birth certificate?” There is only one birth certificate controversy in this country today – despite the near-total absence of this issue from coverage in the non-WND media. This is a grass-roots issue that resonates around the country, as our own online petition with nearly 400,000 signers suggests.
In addition, I like the simplicity of the message. I like the fact that the message will cause some people to ask themselves or others about the meaning of the message. It will stir curiosity. It will create a buzz. I’m assuming when these billboards are springing up all over the country, it might even make some in the news media curious.
Remember the old commercial slogan? “Where’s the beef?” Remember how that phrase was on the tip of everyone’s tongue?
And there’s one more factor that persuaded me this was the way to go. Come 2012, campaign laws will pose restrictions on political advertising mentioning the names of presidential candidates. This one clearly doesn’t. I would like to see the federal government make the case that this is somehow a political ad.
Is it unusual for a news agency to launch such a campaign? Yes it is. But we live in very unusual times. The Founding Fathers built special protections into the First Amendment for the free press. The reason they did that is because they understood a vibrant “Fourth Estate” was necessary as an independent watchdog on government. It is in that tradition that WND assumes this role – since nobody else in the press will do it.
I wish such a campaign were not absolutely necessary. I wish there were checks and balances in our political and electoral systems to ensure that constitutional eligibility of presidential candidates was established before politicians could assume the highest office in the land. I wish my colleagues in the news media believed the Constitution really means what it says and pressed this issue as hard as we have pressed it at WND. I wish radio talk-show hosts were bold enough to ask this question. But wishing is not enough. It’s time to raise the visibility of this issue vital to the rule of law in America. I ask everyone to pitch in and help WND make a simple yet profound statement: The Constitution still matters.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. His book “Taking America Back: A Radical Plan to Revive Freedom, Morality and Justice” has gained newfound popularity in the wake of November’s election. Farah also edits the online intelligence newsletter Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, in which he utilizes his sources developed over 30 years in the news business.
Most, if not all of the attempts to post that prior article as its own topic were removed. The reason cited was “solicitation”.
Now that certifigate is getting out into the main stream, hopefully our mods will lighten up.
Dobbs’ radio show
During his radio program, Dobbs stated: “[S]hould he
produce his birth certificate — the long form, the real
deal? Should he be a little more forthcoming? ... What is the
deal here? I’m starting to think we have a — we have a
document issue. Do you suppose he’s un — no, I won’t even
use the word undocumented. It wouldn’t be right.”
Dobbs later stated that when examining the birth certificate
issue, at first he “thought, ‘Here we go with the
lunatic fringe. This is a bunch of quackeroos going after
him.’ “ However, Dobbs said he now believes that there
are “some issues here that should be really
resolved” with Obama’s birth certificate.
During his program, Dobbs repeatedly faulted Obama for what
he said was Obama’s failure to definitively answer questions
raised about his birth certificate:
* Dobbs stated: “The first thing is to determine
whether or not his birth certificate is valid. And what I
don’t understand is why that has not been released and given
over to the public record.”
* After a caller said “something doesn’t smell
right” with Obama, Dobbs said that the “way to get
rid of those odors is always just open the windows and let
the sun shine in. And all we need here is a doggone document,
but for some reason the president doesn’t want to release
that.”
* Dobbs said that in contrast to efforts undertaken by
Sen. John McCain “to determine that he met the standard
of natural-born citizen,” there is “absolutely, you
know, no effort to do so on the part of Barack H. Obama. Nor,
as also our callers have pointed out, this president would
not release his medical records. And the national media
seemed to be fine with that, whereas they probably would have
eviscerated John McCain for failing to do so.”
* After a caller theorized that Obama is rushing through
programs because Obama “knows what’s coming” with
regard to the birth certificate lawsuits, Dobbs said:
“Certainly your view can’t be discounted at this point,
because this president refused to provide the documentation
that would settle all of the controversy here.”
* After a caller said she initially thought the birth
certificate controversy was “the dumbest thing
ever,” Dobbs replied:
DOBBS: Well, it is a dumb thing. I think we have to all
admit this is a dumb thing either way, because, I mean, I
can’t understand why the president wouldn’t just move to get
this stuff out of the way. Show the documents, get it done —
I mean, he — think about it.
Dobbs also claimed that a soldier questioning Obama’s
citizenship “should be taken seriously. There are real
questions here that need to be answered” and
“reasonable people should be interested” in the
birth certificate issue:
DOBBS: I mean, because I got to be honest with everybody.
When I started looking at this and the lawsuit — Orly Taitz
his attorney, for Major Cook, when he — you know, I thought
this is kind of peculiar. But I thought we should find out
what’s going on because, you know, it’s a lawsuit — a major
who is — he is, by the way, a combat veteran. Some people in
the media have called him a coward; they are fools for doing
so. But they’re fools, anyway; it isn’t this one instance
that makes them fools.
This is a man who should be taken seriously. There are
real questions here that need to be answered. And people talk
about, quote-unquote, the lunatic fringe are the only ones
interested in this, and it turns out that reasonable people
should be interested, and reasonable — excuse me —
reasonable minds have to understand what’s going on. And this
can be dismissed with one — the production of one simple
little document, and that’s a birth certificate. It’s
extraordinary.
I have never been of the opinion that this issue would just “go away”. Something that is so critical, and specifically called out in the constitution, cannot be ignored forever.
To me it is the perfect “...Emporer has no clothes” scenario.
Now that the issue of military authority has been raised you can bet that there are more higher ranking and patriotic, not necessarilly political, miltary officers that are extremely concerned about this issue.
Our military is embued with the credos of civilian control and individual responsibility. You cannot claim you were “just following orders”, especially if there is the remotest chance that the order was illegal. Therefore legal orders of the Commander in Chief are an essential requirement for any military endeavor - especially on foriegn soil.
I would suspect at present their are any number of high ranking generals and admirals to which the current situation represents a genuine nightmare. Sooner or later the situation must be clarified.
As a commander of troops I could not risk my soldiers’ lives or my nation’s reputation on the basis of a questionable order.
Something must give; and soon.
After 30 years in talk radio I am ashamed of many of the hosts that won’t get into the most important topic we have had regarding zero, whether or not he is eligible.
I’m ecstatic that Lou Dobbs is asking questions. Now we’re getting somewhere. And credit where credit is due - he’s asking because of Orly Taitz’s lawsuit. Good job, Taitz! (That’s difficult for me to say because I have some issues with Taitz.
As a side note though, WND has published some claims that are so erroneous as to damage their credibility with me. For example, Joseph Farah made reference to Pakistan (in the text you posted) by mentioning Obama’s foreign travels to countries prohibited to American citizens. Travel to Pakistan was never prohibited to American citizens. I’ve provided the text of the State Department’s travel advisory on various FR threads to demonstrate how utterly false that claim is. It was so easy to travel to Pakistan at that time that Pakistan was issuing 30-day visas to Americans at their airports. I’ve forwarded that to WND, yet they won’t retract that claim. Additionally, they claimed that Congress had passed a bill to protect the executive branch (implying Obama) from being forced to release documents to the media. The bill to which they referred protects journalists from being forced to release confidential source information to executive branch investigators and allows a court to order the release only as a last resort. Because their error was so blatant, they were flooded with calls to correct the story. Instead of issuing a retraction, the story was simply taken down from their website.
There are other examples, but it’d take too long to detail them here. I may write an article about their journalism skills or lack of such.
I’m a firm believer in Polarik’s research on the COLB forgery. So knowing that Obama has already committed forgery and has since tried to scrub the evidence, I believe he’ll do it again. He’s had nearly one year to produce a perfect forgery of his long-form BC. What’s going to happen when he “whips it out?” Will Lou Dobbs consider the issue resolved? Probably so.
That’s why I am concerned about the consequences of WND’s “where’s the birth certificate” campaign. What if Obama produces a perfect forgery? Don’t we all then look like fools? Could Dobbs be setting the stage for Obama’s “big reveal?” And is it intentional or otherwise on his part? (I don’t know.)
That’s also why it’s important for us to fight Obama’s chicanery on multiple fronts, including his British citizenship at birth and his document fraud. If the media doesn’t know or believe that the online COLB was forged, they’ll likely accept any long-form BC he produces and promptly kill NBC the movement. Notice that they’re framing the issue not as a question of whether or not he is a NBC, but rather as an issue of lack of transparency. How does one solve a transparency issue? By releasing the document requested. Game over. Thanks for playing. Buh-bye birther crazies!