Posted on 06/10/2008 10:11:40 AM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Jim Geraghty takes a look at longstanding blog buzz over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, which the campaign refused to release to the St. Petersburg Times in April:
We tried to obtain a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.
Has anyone seen it? Why shouldn’t the record be in the public domain for presidential candidates?
Geraghty walks through various rumors now circulating in the wake of the Obama campaign’s birth certificate blackout, including this one:
Rumor Three: His mother did not want to name him after his father, and his birth certificate says “Barry.” Perhaps the most plausible of the rumors, as Obama was known by that name through much of his childhood and young adulthood. If true, this would spur a new round of “When Barry Became Barack” stories – a minor headache for the campaign, but hardly a major scandal.
Lest the Obama campaign start whining about this issue being an unfair “distraction,” John McCain underwent intense scrutiny of his citizenship status because of his birth in the Panama Canal zone, leading the Senate to declare him a natural-born citizen in April.
Do they keep a copy of the old certificate?
No clue. If I had to guess, I’d say yes...there is probably some paper trail but I have nothing to base that on.
From FindLaw.com: “If only one parent was a U.S. citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the age of 16.” Obama’s mother would not meet this standard.
But have 2 non-citizen parents and be born here and bingo you’re a citizen, what’s wrong with this picture?
So the USSC could rule on which defiintion is the "one" definition to be used as regards the US constitution and the eligibilty for the office of the Presidency.
I don't know how it was done in Obama's case, it might vary by State, but I do know how it was done in my husband's case.
My husband was born in Massachusetts, and his parents divorced when he was only a few years old. Several years later (around 1953 or so), his mother remarried and her new husband adopted her two children from the previous marriage. He has his first birth certificate, which lists his mother and original father. He also has a copy of a birth certificate that was issued when his "new" father adopted him. It lists the "new" father and his mother as the parents, just as if his first father never existed and his "new" father was there from day 1.
If those “states” were voting he’d win in a landslide.
Nobody who would ever vote for him would care.
No, but we only need to sway a small percentage of the middle to make a difference.
As has been posted by others on this thread, when Obama was born (1961), a person born in a foreign country with one U.S. citizen parent and one non-citizen parent would be a U.S. citizen at birth only if the U.S. citizen parent had lived at least 10 years in the U.S. (which was clearly the case for Obama’s mother) and lived at least 5 years after the age of 16 in the U.S. (which was *not* the case for Obama’s mother, since he was born when his mother was only 20 years old). Thus, if Obama was not born in U.S. soil, he was not a U.S. citizen at birth, and thus would be ineligible to become president. (And if he didn’t subsequently become a naturalized citizen, he wouldn’t even be eligible to become a Senator or even to vote.)
That being said, I assume that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii and that he doesn’t want to release his birth certificate for another reason (such as because it says that his parents were not married to each other, or because it lists a second middle name).
Well, at $5 a pop, we're not talking about a lot of money to ask all the questions that need to be asked to whittle this down.
We need to isolate these radicals, and we need to turn their own people against them, it needs to be done before NOVEMBER.
That's all I'm looking for. A little historical accuracy. ;^)
It did slow the Hamiltonians down.
Spark it!
By the way this may be tied to the passport gate incident a few months back when Obama’s records were how shall I say it “gone through” by employees of one of Obama’s supporters, along with Hillary’s and John McCain’s.
Were they there to uncover something or to cover up something, they had the access to do either.
"But, if there is just one US citizen parent for the baby, then the rules that I quoted above for those born outside the United States apply and though the baby may become a "naturalized" citizen, they are not "natural (or native) born". Not being one to quibble, but why don't you simply find the evidence that he went through the "naturalization" process and took the test rather than hoping that he was born before Hawai'i became a state or theorizing he was born in a foreign country. Last time I checked this is America. If you have proof, show it, don't ask him to prove a negative. I never saw Ronald Reagan's birth certificate either, so I guess we'll just have to rescind his whole presidency. Gee, that means that if Obama becomes POTUS he will be #43. I wonder if anyone has a product with the function "scan and replace" that will scrub the entire internet of all the lousy comments about #43, or if Obama will simply get tagged with all the BS that was attached to W?
If he was born in a foreign country then some conservative working at Kapiolani Med Center would have made news by claiming there are no records of his birth. It would be totally legal to do so since their is no law against releasing information that doesn't exist, however, if he was born in Hawai'i then Kapiolani Med would not release the documents due to priviledge... indicating he was actually born on U.S. soil. End of story.
The theory that he was born before August 21, 1959 (Hawai'i statehood) is easily debunked, since his mother graduated from Mercer Island High School, a public high school located in Mercer Island, Washington in June of 1960, and started college at the U of H - Manoa in the fall of 1960. She and Obama Sr were married on 2/2/61 in Maui. A search on Stanley Dunham retrieves the following of which Stanley Ann Dunham is his mother.
You did not see , and no one asked about Reagan because there was no question. McCain, in 2000, was put through the ringer on this issue and he ended up passing the smell test. Obama has an issue...both about his birth and about his citizenship as a child in Indonesia. I would like to see them put to rest.
Others apparently agree, just as many (particualry libs) did with McCain (and still do BTW).
I personally believe that when running for president, because of the huge trust, responsibility, and impact issues on all of us, that there is a need to prove that a candidate meets all the criteria spelled out in the constituion, including the US natural born citizenship issue.
We obviously do need an amendment to the Constitution just to make this clear. It is worse than what you say, above. Right now, we have someone born to two people who are not even legally allowed to be IN the country becoming a full citizen AT BIRTH.
We should distinguish between a child born to two legal residents of this country, or even two students on visas, and to two people illegally here. If neither of the parents is legally in the USA, the child should not even be in LINE for citizenship. And we should reserve the right to refuse all but life-saving free care to that child. No education, no NOTHING.
We obviously do need an amendment to the Constitution just to make this clear. It is worse than what you say, above. Right now, we have someone born to two people who are not even legally allowed to be IN the country becoming a full citizen AT BIRTH.
We should distinguish between a child born to two legal residents of this country, or even two students on visas, and to two people illegally here. If neither of the parents is legally in the USA, the child should not even be in LINE for citizenship. And we should reserve the right to refuse all but life-saving free care to that child. No education, no NOTHING.
“Barack Hussein Obama, born in Hawaii, mother was a US citizen, her father served in WWII
... Those are fact[s]”
If they are “facts”, they should be provable through supporting documents.
All Obama has to do is PRODUCE those documents.
He refuses to do just that. Hence, such documents are suspect. One wonders if they even _exist_ at all.
Why? Why the reluctance to share with us, information that is so fundamental and basic to his citizenship?
Just an off-the-wall comment here. One of the fundamental reasons we elect someone to the office of the presidency is because he engenders our trust. Simple enough. But how can I be expected to give that trust to someone who refuses to share with me facts about his life as elemental as the circumstances of his birth?
- John
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