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 offor 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 presidents 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 Baracks 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 Obamas 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. Weve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie ODonnell 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 Obamas birth certificate and the 9/11 truthers lawyer Phil Berg, for instance, is a player in both worlds. There is nothing that President Obamas 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 producedthe document is formally known as a certificate of live birthbears 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 presidents birth certificatewhich 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 Hawaiis health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obamas birth certificate is identical to that in the states 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 Obamas 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 candidatesGeorge Romney, Barry Goldwater, and Lowell Weicker among themactually 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 didnt.)
One of the unfortunate consequences of this red-herring discussion is that there are plenty of questions about Obamas 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 whod 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.
Has anyone seen an original newspaper, or are these opinions based upon images seen on the Internet? ( Just wondering.)
Two very likely explanations:
The grandparents arranged for a COLB. ( A COLB can be issued for a child born out of state or out of the nation.) The Hawaii Department of Records routinely reported it to the newspaper.
Or..
Obama’s parents or grandparents reported it to the newspaper themselves. Geeze! In my county, the families will **pay** to take out a quarter page ad to announce a birth, death, anniversary, or even a birthday. What's so odd about that?? Nothing! Why would it be odd for Obama’s family to phone in and report his birth to the newspaper?
Finally, it has been proven that Obama’s parents never resided at the address shown in the newspaper ad now circulating in the Internet. And..oddly...Twins born on the same day don't show up. What happened to the birth announcement of these twins? Now that's odd!
The National Review is a periodical that I have done without for over 30 years.
I began to fall out of love with the magazine about the time William F. Buckley joined Jimmie (the Geek) Carter in pushing for the giveaway of the Panama Canal which is currently operated by interests of Communist China.
Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence.
Questions for the National Review:
What was the filing behind the birth certificate? What facts did it report? Who was the person making the report of birth?
The address in the forged-microfilm birth announcements: Is there any other evidence the Obamas or Dunhams ever lived there? Could a couple of college students have possibly afforded to live at that luxury address?
At this point only stupid credulous, or uninformed people believe that Barry Obama was born in Hawaii. Barry’s people don’t believe it: they are too busy forging new “facts” for the morons at the National Review to believe in.
“Not under the law 1961.
Obamas mom hadn’t been in the country long enough to qualify her son for American citizenship if he was born outside the country.”
Assuming for the moment, that Obama wasn’t born in the US (which I do not agree with), he could still be a citizen despite the age limit.
US immigration law has undergone a lot of changes since the 1960’s largely due to a series of court cases that threw out large chunks of the law as being unconstitutional. It certainly could be argued that by imposing a time limit on a minor, that she could not possibly meet, would act to deprive Stanley Ann Dunham and her son of their rights under the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
It would have to be hashed out in court, but from what I’ve read a case could be made, and if he has citizenship from birth, then he’s natural born.
I won’t slink away and I’ll never shut up!
“They are trying to tar the GOP with the birther brush (hence the recent increase in media coverage of this issue) to try to make them look like kooks.”
Not only that, but there’s an almost visible ball of energy being built up behind this. There are so many blogs, so many people doing research, and so much hope being put behind this, that when they burst it, but showing the certificate NR mentions, the opposition’s bubble will be largely burst. We will have to start from ground zero again.
Meanwhile, good citizens like Mark Steyn or Rush Limbaugh might not be getting the support they should on real issues.
The issue is not whether he’s a US citizen. No one disputes that. The issue is whether he’s a natural-born US citizen.
My gosh, the Birth Announcement thing is just plain stupid. My husband is 50, he still has his babybook. It contains many birth announcements, some that were put in by his grandparents!
Go and microfiche your birth announcement and use it in place of your BC, see how far you get with that.
The fact that EVERYTHING regarding this man is secret is very disturbing. We have his books that he himself wrote and that is it! I want to see his grades at all of these schools he attended. I will bet that he used his Indonesian ties to work the system as well. We will also find out that he was a freaking Dunce, who took the spot of a more qualified student because of Affirmative Action. That alone will expose the fact that for years we have been promoting incompetence in the name of race.
I let my NR subscription expire years ago. Navel-gazing simpletons.
I know you’re kind of new here, but you trust FACTCHECK??? a LEFTIST-Backed outfit?? Wow......sorry...I can’t.
FR on 11/22/08 “Polarick’s Final Report” has more information than you’ll ever want to see or be able to digest. Very lengthy but there is a redacted copy of a HI birth certificate from 1963 so it would fit the time period ok. Totally different from anything the media wants to put forth as authentic.
He has no clue but they have covered his background up, they set his background up by the two books instead.
There are so many questions and yet the media sit there and say , nah he is an America he had something in the paper or he had a thing on a website.
All he has to do is show the damn thing.
All the media have to do is go to Kenya and ask why two of his family say they saw him born there and ask why they are charging tourists to see bozo's birth place in Kenya
You can obtain a passport if you have a certification of live birth and were born “ABROAD”.People need to look at the passport requirements on .gov.It’s interesting.
Let me guess -- there was no follow up question....
No.
“a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States, who prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.”
She wasn’t in the United States long enough after age 14 to qualify her son.
This is the part I don't get: if Barack’s mom was a U.S. citizen, then he's a U.S. citizen. Doesn't matter if he was born on the Moon.
________________________________________________________
Actually the laws at the time make your statement wrong. If only one of your parents was a citizen at the time and they only spent less than 5 years in the US after the age of 16 then you are not born an American citizen.
Since Kenya was part of Briton when Obama was born and his father was Kenyan, that also made his father a British subject and a British citizen. That also makes his children British citizens.
If all that weren’t bad enough, his stepfather adopted him and took him to Indonesia and he became an Indonesian citizen. Although not Supreme Court tested dual citizenship generally disqualifies one as natural born.
I don't know where he was born. It is disgusting to me that the matter is not open for people to know. We have a President leading us that has far too many secrets.
The director of Hawaiis health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obamas birth certificate is identical to that in the states records, the so-called vault copy.
There is no "secondary document cloaked in darkness" and two state officials have examined "the so-called vault copy." Yeah, that's all crystal clear.
If I’m shown a real long form BC of Bammy’s, I WILL shut up.......til then.....RELEASE THE HOUNDS!!
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.