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(Obama) Born in the U.S.A. (says National Review)
National Review ^ | July 28, 2009 | The Editors

Posted on 07/28/2009 5:29:21 AM PDT by reaganaut1

Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack’s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.

Much foolishness has become attached to the question of President Obama’s place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration. We’ve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie O’Donnell has given us much mirth with her metallurgical expertise, while Andrew Sullivan has beclowned himself and tarnished the good name of The Atlantic with his investigation into the “real” parentage of Trig Palin. Most notable, the Iraq War summoned the craziness in a big way, and there are those who still shudder over their espressos at the mention of the Carlyle Group. And there is a fair amount of crossover between those fixated on Obama’s birth certificate and the 9/11 “truthers” — lawyer Phil Berg, for instance, is a player in both worlds. There is nothing that President Obama’s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003.

The birth-certificate business is not a uniquely conservative phenomenon; the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya seems to have originated with a Hillary Clinton supporter at a blog called The Blue State. Either way, this fantasy is not particularly widespread within the conservative movement, but it has attracted enough interest that it needs to be addressed.

The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.

If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.

The attention paid to President Obama’s place of birth is not unprecedented. In fact, it may be the only thing President Obama has in common with Pres. Chester Arthur, whose opponents whispered that he had been born in Canada. A number of unsuccessful presidential candidates—George Romney, Barry Goldwater, and Lowell Weicker among them—actually were born outside of the United States (in Mexico, the Arizona Territory, and Paris, respectively) to American parents and thereby into American citizenship. If the conspiracy theorists have evidence that President Obama went through the naturalization process, let them show it. But there is no such evidence, because this theory is based on unreality, as two minutes’ examining the claims of its proponents reveals. The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is that a lack of evidence for the theory is taken as yet more evidence for the theory. Indeed, the maddening thing about dealing with conspiracy hobbyists of this or any sort is the ever-shifting nature of their argument and their alleged evidence: Never mind the birth certificate, his step-grandmother said he was born in Kenya! (No, she didn’t.)

One of the unfortunate consequences of this red-herring discussion is that there are plenty of questions about Obama’s background and history that we would like to have answered. In spite of two books of memoirs, there remain murky areas in his biography. And when it comes to those college transcripts, count us among those who’d love to know whether Dr. Bailout ever took an advanced economics class and how he performed in it.

Barack Obama may prefer European-style socialized health care. He may consider himself a citizen of the Earth and sometimes address his audiences as “people of the world,” as though he were born not in another country but on another planet. Like Bruce Springsteen, he has a lot of bad political ideas; but he was born in the U.S.A.


TOPICS: Editorial; Front Page News; News/Current Events; US: Hawaii
KEYWORDS: birthcertificate; birthers; certifigate; obama
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To: Will88
The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information.

The troubling part of the COLB for me is the entry for "Race". It says African.

African is not and never was considered a race. Negro, Caucasian or Asian would have been used in 1961 on the "long form".

My conclusion is that Barry's "long form" entry under "Race" says Caucasian. The COLB is either forged (felony fraud) or -if legit- was altered at the time of issue by an in-house wonk who was influenced ($$$) to enter African (felony conspiracy to commit fraud).

141 posted on 07/28/2009 6:24:25 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Palin shrugged.)
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To: manc

Here’s another “Why”, yesterday there was a post here on FR that says his sister Maya, born in Indonesia had an Hawaiian Certificate of Birth.


142 posted on 07/28/2009 6:24:48 AM PDT by panthermom
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To: Old Teufel Hunden

That is flat wrong.


143 posted on 07/28/2009 6:25:52 AM PDT by DB
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To: Old Teufel Hunden
No, I don’t believe you’re correct.

In 1800 a natural born citizen had 2 parents of the same nationality.

Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report

It is only by examining the 18th century usage and definition of a term that we can ascertain its meaning in the Constitution. In the 18th century, and at the time of the framing and ratification of the Constitution by the states, the term “natural-born” subject or citizen was always used or defined in such a way as to exclude the child of a British or American girl or woman when that child was born in a foreign country and that child’s father was a foreign citizen. No 18th century jurist would have thought the term “natural-born” citizen or subject could have been extended to the child of a British or American girl or woman when that child was born in a foreign country and that child’s father was a foreign citizen.

William Blackstone, Commentaries 1:354, 357–58, 361–62

1765

“Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it.. . .

To encourage also foreign commerce, it was enacted by statute 25 Edw. III. st. 2. that all children born abroad, provided both their parents were at the time of the birth in allegiance to the king,…might inherit as if born in England:

If Obama was born outside the U.S. and one of his parents was over 18 and a U.S. citizen he would be a natural born citizen.

No. His mother was not old enough to confer citizenship.

Same link: In 1961 if a 17 year old American girl gave birth in a foreign country to a child whose father was not an American citizen, that child had no right to any American citizenship, let alone the “natural born” citizenship that qualifies someone for the Presidency under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.

“ 7 FAM 1133.2-2 Original Provisions and Amendments to Section 301

(CT:CON-204; 11-01-2007)

“a. Section 301 as Effective on December 24, 1952: When enacted in 1952, section 301 required a U.S. citizen married to an alien to have been physically present in the United States for ten years, including five after reaching the age of fourteen, to transmit citizenship to foreign-born children. The ten-year transmission requirement remained in effect from 12:01 a.m. EDT December 24, 1952, through midnight November 13, 1986, and still is applicable to persons born during that period.

144 posted on 07/28/2009 6:26:39 AM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
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To: manc

She wanted her son to be an America so she could come back here with him.
She did not want him to stay in Kenya.
So she gets the announcement in the paper and says he was born there in HI to the authority and says it was Doc who delivered him but they did not know his name.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

This is the motivation for the BC follies right here. Being declared a US citizen was priceless in the early 60s, especially for a bastard born in Kenya.


145 posted on 07/28/2009 6:28:25 AM PDT by wrench
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To: reaganaut1

Straw man arguments...the issue is not WHERE he was born, but to WHOM? Was the father a legal U.S. Citizen as required by the United States Constitution? Who was he?

Show the Birth Certificate, and end this now!! Unless you have spent millions hiding which fact, Obama?


146 posted on 07/28/2009 6:28:26 AM PDT by TommyDale (Independent - I already left the GOP because they were too liberal)
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To: DouglasKC

“Do you believe the number of birthers is increasing or decreasing the longer this goes on?”

Increasing. That’s the idea. Do you know of a single birther who was formerly an Obama supporter?

I’m not saying he purposely made this information difficult to get with this strategy in mind the whole time, but after releasing his CoLB, maybe it occurred to them that they have nothing to lose by making his birth certificate difficult to get, and a lot to gain by making a large number of their opponents look like lunatics.


147 posted on 07/28/2009 6:28:37 AM PDT by villagerjoel (1. Implement socialist policies 2. ??? 3. Heaven on earth)
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To: rudman

never said the granny said and the officer was in FL not GA, that is a line the left sheep use.
I said two members of his family said they saw him born there.
There is a [place which says bozo was born there in Kenya.

Forgetting everything even him fighting to not show it and yes he has.
Why doesn’t he show it?

Do you not find the visit to see granny AFTER her hospital visit strange, he loves her so much like he said why did he not go to her funeral or when she first went into hospital.
To date he has not even been to her grave.
He went the same time when the court in HI was looking at this issue.

No matter how many times the left tries to justify all of this I come up with mroe questions than answers.

Like I said I do not know but this is really simple even for a community trouble maker.

Show it and his past records.
No use sitting there lie the media does and saying yes we checked it , we looked at the paper on his website

ARF


148 posted on 07/28/2009 6:29:07 AM PDT by manc (Marriage is between a man and a woman , nothing else-- end racism end affirmative action)
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To: 1rudeboy
If anything, the birther movement should work to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. But they're not.

I'd think that would be the job of the US Congress, and even the President, to clear up constitutional matters that aren't specifically spelled out, but which have caused confusion as this has on several occasions.

149 posted on 07/28/2009 6:29:45 AM PDT by Will88
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1) What’s the BC’s sequential, verifiable number?
2) Who was the verifiable Doctor who delivered him?

Where’s the DNC vetting and how much is it costing them & 0bama this time?

$12-15 bucks, this issue’s solved one way or another.


150 posted on 07/28/2009 6:29:53 AM PDT by combat_boots (The Lion of Judah cometh. Hallelujah. Gloria Patri, Fili et Spiritus Sancti.)
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To: AlexW

I forgot about that one provision of the law. Tilt at how many windmills you like. I’ve never met a FReeper who is engaging in this as a purely intellectual exercise.


151 posted on 07/28/2009 6:30:01 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: rudman
rudman since 2008-11-09.
152 posted on 07/28/2009 6:30:09 AM PDT by wintertime (People are not stupid! Good ideas win!)
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To: ScottinVA

ScottinVA:”There’s plenty else to contest him on and I think we need to choose our battles wisely.”

When you consider that lack of natural-born citizenship would disqualify Obama from the presidency, all those other issues become moot. Whether National Review likes it or not, this is a “magic bullet” of sorts since it is such an important part (constitutional requirement) of being President.

And we must ask ourselves why the framers of our constitution were so adamant about this issue - the loyalty of the President to our national interests. It seems pretty evident to me that Obama’s loyalties are not country first based on his actions so far - at least not THIS country...


153 posted on 07/28/2009 6:30:25 AM PDT by visually_augmented (I was blind, but now I see)
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To: DJ MacWoW

Also detailed in the http://www.westernjournalism.com/?page_id=2697 article is a list of 4 different ways to obtain the document that Obamasists wave around.


154 posted on 07/28/2009 6:30:32 AM PDT by Helotes
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To: rudman

Didn’t dig much did ya.


155 posted on 07/28/2009 6:31:11 AM PDT by DJ MacWoW (Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you. Ben Franklin)
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To: rudman

please tell me that one of the links was a joke, right???????

They recorded a conversation and in it his granny said he was born in HI.
Please

Why were they taping it?
Who did record it?
Why was this released?

See more questions than answers


156 posted on 07/28/2009 6:31:37 AM PDT by manc (Marriage is between a man and a woman , nothing else-- end racism end affirmative action)
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To: DJ MacWoW
Ignore facts such as he is not a natural born citizen as the Founding Fathers understood it because citizenship came through the father when the Constitution was written.

Prove it. A link to the relevant Federalist Papers or some other contemporaneous writing is best.

157 posted on 07/28/2009 6:32:00 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: razorback-bert; Hugin

Thanks. A zillion and one.


158 posted on 07/28/2009 6:32:19 AM PDT by Genoa
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To: P-Marlowe

You forgot “draft dodger” and owner of 35+ social security numbers.


159 posted on 07/28/2009 6:33:06 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Palin shrugged.)
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To: Ann Archy

“Show us the Long Form Birth Certificate please, and we will slink away and shut up.”

I am beginning to think that is just what they don’t want to happen. They are using this to smear us and they want to keep it going which is why they don’t release it.


160 posted on 07/28/2009 6:33:11 AM PDT by bilhosty (Tax payers for change)
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