Posted on 07/21/2009 3:42:26 PM PDT by real_patriotic_american
In a quest that is seen as wacky, way out there and as bitter partisan politics by some,the issue of Obama not showing his birth certificate to prove he is a naturalized American citizen continues. Is this really just some conspiracy theory along the lines of 9/11 truthers and alien cover ups? At first glance it seems like it. But surprisingly many American’s seem to actually believe there is some possibility of truth in this claim that Obama is not a citizen. WND continues to run stories on it but most recently a congressman’s town hall meeting became overwhelmed with the issue.
Many people will immediately jump up and say “Obama produced a birth certificate, what more do you want?” Apparently Obama provided a certificate of live birth (COLB) which is not the same as a long form birth certificate. The long form birth certificate should provide evidence that can be corroborated. The COLB provided on factcheck.org does not show a hospital, doctor’s name or anything else that can be checked, just a time and city. This COLB can also be obtained by non citizens.
Obama could easily release his long form birth certificate but hasn’t. Just to stop people from talking about it and to show that he has the most transparent administration, you think he would.
Many liberals, moderates and even some conservatives will probably read this and just say “get over it already.” There is a time to let things go and personally I already have. Not because I don’t think it’s important but because I think Obama will never release this information and even if it is true that he is not a natural citizen, that nothing will change. But should people just get over this? If it is true, it is the biggest scam in history. People never got over Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq, should everyone just forget about this issue?
The argument could easily be made that if Obama does not qualify to be president than all of the bills he signed and executive orders he issued would have to be undone. This is very important but would cause huge upheaval. I don’t know if the American people would be able to handle this kind of event and the ramifications of the loss in trust of the government. It doesn’t mean the truth shouldn’t be fully investigated though but I sincerely doubt it ever will be
-Evidence to the contrary of predetermined conclusions must be false.
-Those that disagree with him must be doing so for malevolent reasons.
-Those that reach different conclusion based on evidence he rejects are stupid and ignorant.
That's a very plausible story. In fact, I would say it is probably the most likely scenario, given the facts we know.
Yet you still find it odd she traveled to Seattle. Why?
A disingenuous, intellectually dishonest point. Name a major party candidate in any US presidential election in the modern era other than McCain and Obama where being a natural born citizen was raised as a campaign issue and prompted the filing of lawsuits.
A presidential candidate is not obligated to respond to every absurd allegation raised by fringe elements on the other side. Nor is any candidate obligated to take seriously frivolous lawsuits filed against him.
Except for the babysitting problem. The babysitter said she sat for him at night while Ann attended night classes. See the article I cited in my previous post.
And, of course, it's impossible that someone else sat for him while she worked during the day./sarcasm
Based on incomplete evidence. The key piece of evidence on which one could base a conclusion, the information set forth on the long-form birth certificate, has been withheld.
The Hawaiian COLB suffices to prove birth in Hawaii. It's good enough for the State Department to get a passport, provided it is filed within a year of birth and lists Hawaii as the birth place, which Obama's was. There is nothing additional in the long form necessary to prove his natural born status.
Perhaps we would be in a position to dismiss the other possibilities if we could see the information on the long-form birth certificate, such as in which hospital he was born and who was the doctor who delivered him.
And how exactly are the hospital and doctor relevant to establishing Hawaiian birth?
Except that all we have are purported images of a COLB on a friendly website.
Hard copies were also provided to a website funded by a foundation whose founders were life-long Republicans and McCain supporters.
And what was the basis for the place of birth? Did Barry's grandmother go in and claim that he was born at home?
Are you seriously alleging that the state of Hawaii would issue a birth certificate for a home birth based on such flimsy evidence? Gee, isn't it strange that the state department doesn't have the same concerns as you?
The possibility that at that time a Hawaii resident could register a child born outside Hawaii or purportedly born at home has already been discussed at length. Google it.
I've researched this in past months and found that it is nonsense.
The eyebrow-raising part is that someone would transport a newborn infant from Honolulu to Seattle.
Given that she had friends in Seattle, and it is very plausible that she was having problems in her marriage, I don't see why this should raise anyone's eyebrows.
Perhaps you find it strange that she would take an infant on a six hour flight. I don't. People take infants on commercial flights all the time. I've seen people with newborns on transatlantic flights, which are far more greuling than the relatively short Honolulu-Seattle route.
McCain's birth certificate was in fact submitted in evidence,
No it has not. McCain privately showed it to a single reporter. He never made either it or photographs of it publicly available.
and you can see it here at an anti-McCain website:
That image is a fake. It was not posted by McCain or made available to the website by him. It was never presented as evidence in any legal proceeding. It was fabricated by his opponents in an attempt to claim he is not eligible for the presidency. This has been exposed long ago. You are really behind the curve.
Your argument is a false choice. It's not either-or. Yes, we need the law clarified at the state levels to require reasonable evidence of eligibility prior to having a candidate's name placed on a ballot. But that has nothing to do with whether the American people should reasonably expect our highest public servant to demonstrate candor and openness on such a point.
Perhaps they should, but they haven't. The American people were obviously satisfied with the COLB images on Factcheck. They elected him anyway. That train has left the station, my friend.
Trying to pass off constitutional questions of presidential eligibility, and the related questions of standing to raise a particular constitutional issue, as some kind of "routine brief" is nonsense and again, intellectually dishonest.
Motions to dismiss based on lack of standing are pretty rountine.
Anyone who thinks that Obama and the DNC have not engaged leading constitutional lawyers to provide advice on this, and is not centrally managing all of these local counsel through lead counsel, and that lead counsel does not vet every single document that goes out in every one of these proceedings in every jurisdiction against Obama and the DNC, is fooling themselves.
Anyone who thinks that there are no high-power leftist lawyers willing to work for free for their Messiah is fooling himself.
Litigating constitutional issues with high quality counsel is expensive. The idea that this is all "pro bono" or covered by routine "retainers" is laughable.
Okay, so show me the evidence that either Obama or the DNC has spent a dime on any of these proceedings.
His legal name was never Barry Soetoro.
Nope. In Honolulu, the practice is to get the information directly from the Department of Public Health.
First of all, most of the lawsuits filed against him don't have anything to do with the birth certificate. There are the lawsuits claiming he's ineligible because he was a dual citizen at birth. There are other lawsuits claiming he in ineligible because a natural born citizen needs two citizen parents, and his father wasn't a citizen. Finally, there are the lawsuits claiming he lost his citizenship while in Indonesia.
Even the lawsuits related to the birth certificate wouldn't go away. Suppose he presented a judge with a birth certificate. The lunatics would come back with another lawsuit claiming the certificate is a forgery. Or they'd claim it's not sufficient to prove his natural born status because Hawaii's handed out BC's without sufficient proof. Barring that, they'd find another excuse to sue.
The idea that everything would just "go away" if he only provided a $15 copy of a BC to a court is no less laughable than any other birther claim.
One would expect there to be a very strong reason for taking a newborn infant on such a trip. For example, one possibility raised by those questioning the concealment of the long-form birth certificate by Obama is that Obama Sr. and Ann had gone to Kenya that summer and the baby was premature, or they were somehow delayed in their departure, such that the baby was born in Kenya, and immediately after the birth they returned to Honolulu. In that case, being stuck in a third world country with a newborn, one could understand the desire to undergo the inconvenience and take the risks associated with immediate travel back to Honolulu in order to quickly be in the support system provided by her parents and available medical care. On the other hand, why someone with a newborn infant would leave the support provided by her mother and doctor in Hawaii to take the newborn alone to Seattle is not as understandable. But, maybe that happened.
You say President Obama is not “obligated” to respond to questions raised about where he was born, such as in which hospital. Well, he is obligated if a court requires him to respond.
And the idea that a president should exhibit openness and candor before the American people about the place where he was born apparently is risible to you.
You know, it is customary in this country for places of a president’s birth to be honored by a marker or a museum. Will Obama be the first president whose birthplace is a state secret? Perhaps there will be a secret museum in Area 51.
You say we should all be satisfied with the purported COLB images, that we have no reason to want to know in which hospital he was born or which doctor delivered him.
The point is that those details, if they exist and are genuine, would put to rest the set of concerns based on the possibility that he was born elsewhere than Hawaii, provided that his birth certificate was based on information provided by a Hawaiian doctor or other medical professional. On the other hand, if the long form birth certificate reveals that his Hawaiian birth was based solely on the claim of a family member, such as in the case of a claimed home birth without corroboration of a doctor, midwife or other medical professional, that would suggest there may in fact be reason to doubt his Hawaiian birth.
For example, in the scenario raised by those who think he was born in Kenya and then immediately returned to Hawaii as I described above, perhaps Ann and her mother, not being experts on citizenship law and wanting to be certain there would be no question as to whether the baby would have the benefits of U.S. citizenship, were the ones who submitted the information upon which the birth certificate was issued, claiming the baby was born at home with no medical professional present. The state employees would likely have no reason not to credit their information and would issue a birth certificate. If that turned out to in fact be the case from the information on the long-form birth certificate, those circumstances, in my mind, would reinforce the doubts about his place of birth rather than allay them.
You can certainly scoff at such possibilities, claiming them as implausible, and perhaps they are unlikely. But there is an easy way to resolve them, simply by not concealing the long-form birth certificate.
I know you are not a lawyer, because you are having trouble grasping that the constitutional standing issues raised in challenges to presidential eligibility are not resolved by some sort of standard “motion-to-dismiss-frivolous-lawsuit” pleading, and that the legal issues also differ based on the characteristics of the plaintiff. Also, you don’t understand the work involved in litigating issues of constitutional standing or in managing multijurisdictional litigation. But, one can get a reasonable idea of the magnitude of the legal costs incurred, at least to March, by the information cited in post #283 in this thread. Apart from the birther litigation, there appears to be very little else to account for the bulk of those expenses for the time period after the legal work done in the spring and summer of 2008 to be placed on the ballots for the November election. No doubt we will continue to see high legal expenses throughout the summer of 2009 due to the continued birther lawsuits.
But looking at your profile, I see that you are an economist, so you should at least be able to grasp the concept that Obama’s position is analagous to that of a least-cost avoider. He can authorize the release of the long-form birth certificate at minimal cost. Yes, the public and the media, as you suggest, can try to investigate matters ourselves, researching newspaper announcements, interviewing neighbors and acquaintances from that period, contacting hospitals and doctors, researching Hawaii law, etc, and trying to arrive at a preponderance of the evidence conclusion based on incomplete evidence, but we are at a position of much greater cost and difficulty.
Obama, on the other hand, as the most efficient provider of information through his ability to release his long-form certificate, and as someone who has claimed the office of our highest public servant, should reasonably be expected to bear the extremely minimal burden to him of providing the information.
And authorizing the state of Hawaii to directly submit into a court proceeding a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate does not require him to relinquish his legal position as to the standing of the plaintiffs; as a matter of civil procedure, he may still contest the standing issue.
Furthermore, that Obama of all people is contesting the ability of ordinary Americans to have standing in these types of cases appears hypocritical. Obama was a lecturer in consitutional law, and has purported to champion the rights of ordinary and powerless Americans against the powerful, claiming that the Constitution should be interpreted in a manner to show empathy towards such persons.
One would think Obama would be opposed to interpretations of standing that act to bar powerless ordinary Americans from challenging powerful government officials, unless of course he is simply a hypocrite.
Why on earth SHOULDN’T these constitutional questions as to “natural born citizen” be legally determined?
Is a child of a foreign national a natural born citizen under the U.S. constitution? That is a legal question and it should be determined in a legal manner.
You seem to operate under the feeling that Obama is akin to something like a king or a noble with a higher status than other individuals in the United States, and that he should be allowed to be untroubled by constitutional questions as to his eligibility.
He is not. Legally he has no higher status than any other person, and if he is not constitutionally eligible, then too bad, regardless of how inconvenient that may be to him.
He is, or should be, as an individual, subject to the same requirements of the constitution and laws of this country as any other person.
“My birth was announced in newspapers in every state I had relatives. Of course it was announced in his grandparent’s hometown newspaper. That’s the way things were done back then.”
************************
Presumably, your parents took out paid announcements in all these newspapers. That’s not what the Honolulu announcements are. They’re listings from the Hawaii Bureau of Health Statistics. They create a big problem for the birthers.
“Well, I think it’s a reasonable request and McCain showed that he would and did respond to such requests, and volunteered his own birth certificate.”
********************
McCain has never publicly displayed his BC. WaPo reporter Michael Dobbs says a McCain aide showed him the BC, which stated he was born at the naval base hospital at Coco Solo, Canal Zone.
You said — McCain has never publicly displayed his BC. WaPo reporter Michael Dobbs says a McCain aide showed him the BC, which stated he was born at the naval base hospital at Coco Solo, Canal Zone.
—
I thought he volunteered it in some legal documents in a court case, but the judge never wanted it...
Well, three you go. Thanks for admitting that simply giving his BC to a court would do nothing to stop the lawsuits.
(Re: McCain’s birth certificate) “I thought he volunteered it in some legal documents in a court case, but the judge never wanted it...”
***************
In the Hollander nuisance lawsuit against McCain, Hollander presented a birth certificate, almost surely a forgery, that purported to show McCain being born in Colon, Panama. (The Hollander case dropped dead on the courthouse steps just like all the Obama cases have so far.) IIRC, the “birth certificate” came from some crackpot who claims he owns most of Panama.
Actually, if it contained genuine details from medical professionals demonstrating a Hawaiian birth, it would almost certainly put to rest a lot of the public speculation that is beginning to show up in the media as well that subset of the legal theories that actually do rely on a foreign birth.
If the long-form birth certificate so demonstrated a Hawaiian birth, the issue, I predict, would lose a lot of its resonance with the public. Yes, the legal issue as to the constitutional definition of "natural born citizen" would continue to be of interest to lawyers and constitutional scholars, but that issue is much more obscure than the factual possibility that Obama was not born in Hawaii and there would be much less interest in the subject generally, in my view.
Are you trying to tell me that the copies of McCain’s birth certificate that I saw on the Internet back then were “forgeries”... LOL...
And to think, I thought they were real... just goes to show you I was fooled by McCain’s “Internet birth certificate”... :-)
Perhaps not, but I know of no reason why it would be more difficult to take an newborn infant on a flight in 1961 than today. If anything, with fewer security checks and smaller crowds at the airport, I would imagine it would likely have ben easier in the past.
Was there even a direct flight then?
I don't know, but I don't think it matters much. If she couldn't fly direct to Seattle, she'd have to connect in San Francisco or LA. Big deal.
Did she even make the trip by air?
Are you kidding? Do you know of a passenger shipping line that had regular service to Hawaii at that time?
Or did she travel before the birth?
Very doubtful. Air travel during the third trimester of pregnancy is very difficult and medically unadvised. It's a completely different ballgame than travelling with an infant.
Look, it is not inconceivable that she took a newborn infant on such a trip in 1961, and perhaps that is exactly what happened. On the other hand, there may be additional circumstances of this episode of which we are unaware and which accounts for the effort to conceal the information on his long-form birth certificate.
The information on the long form would add no new information that is relevant to his eligibility. The COLB is enough to prove he was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, which is enough for him to be a natural born citizen.
Please tell me exactly what the information on the long form that's not on the short form does to shed light on this matter.
For example, one possibility raised by those questioning the concealment of the long-form birth certificate by Obama is that Obama Sr. and Ann had gone to Kenya that summer and the baby was premature, or they were somehow delayed in their departure, such that the baby was born in Kenya, and immediately after the birth they returned to Honolulu.
LOL. So now the same person who (at times) expresses his incredulity (you seem to have filp-flopped on this) about taking a newborn from Honolulu to Seattle is suddenly treating it as pluasible that a pregant American woman in her 3rd trimester would undertake a journey halfway around the world to Kenya!
Do you even stop to think about what you post?
or they were somehow delayed in their departure, such that the baby was born in Kenya, and immediately after the birth they returned to Honolulu. In that case, being stuck in a third world country with a newborn, one could understand the desire to undergo the inconvenience and take the risks associated with immediate travel back to Honolulu in order to quickly be in the support system provided by her parents and available medical care.
Uh huh. Tell me then, Mr. Plausibility, what explains her taking the vastly greater risk and inconvenience of traveling not 3000 miles, but over twice that amount while pregnant in her third trimester, to a third world country, no less?
On the other hand, why someone with a newborn infant would leave the support provided by her mother and doctor in Hawaii to take the newborn alone to Seattle is not as understandable.
I see. Let me get this straight.
To you, it's not understandable why a new teenage Mom would run away to Seattle with her newborn to get away from the embarrassment caused by a husband who disrespected her.
However, at the same time, it's totally understanable why she would fly half way around the world to a third world country, in 1961, during the third trimester of her pregnancy? Do I have that right?
You say President Obama is not “obligated” to respond to questions raised about where he was born, such as in which hospital. Well, he is obligated if a court requires him to respond.
None has, and none will. They have no legal grounds to order it.
And the idea that a president should exhibit openness and candor before the American people about the place where he was born apparently is risible to you.
He has been open about where he was born: Honolulu, Hawaii, in Kapiolani Medical center.
You know, it is customary in this country for places of a president’s birth to be honored by a marker or a museum. Will Obama be the first president whose birthplace is a state secret?
It's no secret: Kapiolani Medical Center. Now I suppose he hasn't made public a document proving he was born there, but that wouldn't make him any different than any other president.
You say we should all be satisfied with the purported COLB images, that we have no reason to want to know in which hospital he was born or which doctor delivered him.
The hospital and doctor are irrelevant to the question of his eligibility.
On the other hand, if the long form birth certificate reveals that his Hawaiian birth was based solely on the claim of a family member, such as in the case of a claimed home birth without corroboration of a doctor, midwife or other medical professional, that would suggest there may in fact be reason to doubt his Hawaiian birth.
Uh huh. So what you are saying is that the State of Hawaii can't be trusted when if officially certifies that an individual was born in Hawaii. Too bad the state department doesn't agree with you.
But, one can get a reasonable idea of the magnitude of the legal costs incurred, at least to March, by the information cited in post #283 in this thread.
In other words, you have no credible information on whether he's spent anything, much less how much he's spent, so you go ahead and take a wild guess.
He can authorize the release of the long-form birth certificate at minimal cost.
Sure he can, but by your own admission, it would do nothing to stop the lawsuits. So why should he?
Furthermore, that Obama of all people is contesting the ability of ordinary Americans to have standing in these types of cases appears hypocritical.
Perhaps, but apparently every single judge who has heard these cases agrees with his arguments about standing in cases such as these. There's a good reason for that, but I'll let you figure out why.
This piece of Cr** was found about 40 some years ago. He kept under wraps, came to U.S. to go to school, then to college, where did he get the money for that?? Then Law School, More mysterious money. He was put into a do nothing job in Chicage ( Neighborhood Organizer) Yeah right the Dems have had Neighborhood Organizers for a long time, they used tommy guns, ball bats, bombs any other thing to impress the neighborhood. Now this Yeahoo, comes up to the Senate, no one knows where he came from, or anything else. He votes 90 some times in the Senate ‘present” Not voicing an opinion one way or the other. Then along comes 2008, EL Zoome is brought out by the Dems. dusted off, shined his shoes, and Walla, the great Savior. My dog has a better pedegree than OBama, and we have the papers to show to all
It's called financial aid. I'll also give you a hint: it's a lot easier to get it if you have the right skin color.
He was put into a do nothing job in Chicage ( Neighborhood Organizer) Yeah right the Dems have had Neighborhood Organizers for a long time, they used tommy guns, ball bats, bombs any other thing to impress the neighborhood.
Can't argue with you there. IMHO, "Community Organizers" are nothing more than instructors of political extortion.
Now this Yeahoo, comes up to the Senate, no one knows where he came from, or anything else. He votes 90 some times in the Senate ‘present” Not voicing an opinion one way or the other. Then along comes 2008, EL Zoome is brought out by the Dems. dusted off, shined his shoes, and Walla, the great Savior. My dog has a better pedegree than OBama, and we have the papers to show to all
No argument there. It's a disgrace to the nation that he was ever elected, but legally elected he was.
So instead spending all your energy on conspiracy theories spun by tinfoil-hat-wearing loons like Phil Berg that are bound to go nowhere, why don't you do something to try to make sure he loses in 2012?
Please tell me exactly what the information on the long form that's not on the short form does to shed light on this matter.
Simply stamping your feet and repeating that the COLB images conclusively prove he was born in Hawaii does not make it so.
Likewise, neither does your assertion that the COLB images conclusively demonstrate that he is a natural born citizen simply make it so.
The Supreme Court has not ruled on the question of what is required to be a natural born citizen for purposes of the Constitution. Maybe they would agree that the meaning was intended the cover a situation where the father was a foreign national and the mother was an American, so long as the child was born somewhere subject to US jurisdiction. Or maybe they would rule that the intention was that both parents needed to be US citizens. It's an open question, legally speaking. It's too bad you are inconvenienced by that fact.
I've outlined the possibility that a birth certificate could have been issued on the basis of nothing more than a claimed home birth.
The best you can come back with is insisting that the fact that some low-level state employee registered the birth in such circumstances conclusively proves the asserted facts. It's a good thing you are not using a webcam, because there is no way anyone could type that with a straight face.
You can't understand why a young American woman who unexpectedly gave birth in a third world country would want to hurry back to America to her family and doctor, even though it entailed a difficult trip? That, to you, is not plausible.
But that a woman who just gave birth, would leave her parents and doctor to take her newborn infant to go live alone far away, is completely explained to you in order to get away from Obama Sr.
But she had already dropped out of school. She could just as easily avoid Obama Sr. at her parents' home. What, was Obama Sr. stalking her? Standing outside her parents' home every time she came and went? These are just fantasies of yours.
And you pretend to know just when she conceived, and just how far along she was when she might have traveled to Kenya or Seattle.
But this is just more fantasies on your part. We don't know when she conceived. We don't know if Obama was born at full term or not. If she did leave Hawaii before he was born, we don't know whether she left in the third trimester or not.
And now you say you know, conclusively, that he was born at Kapiolani Medical Center.
Wow - you must have sound evidence for that! Oh wait, it's just a letter from Obama to the hospital. His own self-serving statement.
So it appears you believe whatever Obama says about it. Yes, he has such a track record for being open and truthful about his background and associations (sarcasm).
And perhaps the most telling point of your credulous irrationality is your refusal to consider the possibility that significant resources and effort are being put into the effort to defend Obama and the DNC in this matter.
Uhhhh.......”’dupes’ like me.....????
Are you sure you READ what I wrote?
I wrote something pretty much the opposite
of what you interpreted I wrote.
I’m not one to pretend to be an expert as to how one
can doctor microfiche, or coerce Pennysaver-type newspapers
how they might help the cause of the Obama presidency by
agreeing to promote counterfeit documentation in their birth announcements, but apparently you are.
Yeah, indeed, EVERYTHING would be easy to forge and counterfeit, and most of the facts of this whole birther issue raises infinitely more questions and creates infinitely more suspicion about Obama than it puts any part of this issue to rest, or at least places it in its proper perspective. NOWHERE in anything I’ve written on FR on this birther issue, do I suggest he’s legitimate. I think he’s illegitimate-—and was just wondering what people made of this possibly totally counterfeit “microfice” verification that Obama was “born in Hawaii”. And yes, of course, a birth announcement by itself means nothing, since there is no name of hospital, attending physician, records of nurses who were there, etc. etc.
So, it's no conspiracy, but it's no proof of native birth, either. Doting grandparents across the country pay for publication of birth announcements in their local paper, no matter where the grandchild was born ... especially a first grandchild.
In short, it's not helpful to either side, really. Just an oddity and something of a mystery. "Toot" could probably tell us why, but she's dead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.