Posted on 08/07/2009 10:47:02 PM PDT by pissant
It used to be tough and unrewarding to be a crank. You had to communicate by inky mimeograph. The big media monopolies refused to accept your calls. Your neighbours ignored you or laughed at you.
How that has changed! Modern communication technology has empowered cranks, enabling them to build entire virtual crank communities. It has multiplied the number of media outlets --and thus the number of hours to fill -- creating new crank opportunities on radio and television.
Among the greatest beneficiaries of these new opportunities: the cranks known as "birthers." The birthers claim that U. S. President Barack Obama is not legally entitled to occupy his office because he is not in fact a "natural-born citizen" of the United States, as the federal Constitution requires.
This claim rests on two assertions, one wrong, one crazy.
The wrong assertion is that Obama is not "a natural-born" citizen because his father was not a U. S. citizen. People born on American soil are American citizens, full stop, regardless of their parents' status in the country. The phrase "natural-born" means that a president cannot be an immigrant himself, not that his parents cannot be immigrants. Nobody imagined that Chester Arthur was ineligible for the presidency because his father was born in Ireland.
The crazy assertion is that Obama himself was born somewhere other than the United States. (
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
I am always heartened to be on the opposite side of any issue Frum supports. He’s the classic back-bencher who compounded his own lack of status by shifting from moderate right to moderate left and cementing his position with mediocre writing. He is a great example of how you get nowhere by standing for nothing.
LOL! I thought this story was “dead.”
It keeps coming back from the dead like...ah...Frank Lautenberg.
Where’s the Beef?
Aside from that, Frum must be up in Canada because there seems to be a week's delay in his getting the Democratic talking points and then following thru on them in his column.
Given old Hillary took to the Senate floor asking the lying accusing question of President Bush with her New York paper in hand ...” What did Bush know and when did he know it?” and birthed the so called ‘truthers’ movement and that Soviet style 911 Commission. SHE was the point source that politically speaking planted two horns of the devil atop the George Bush presidency.
Frum is playing his own form of lunacy by literally ignoring how we got to where we are today. But of course Frum seems to be in a vat of his own self deception up over his eyeballs in the supposed power of his words. Isn't he the originator of the ‘axis of evil’ phrase, that got all these agitators of the left panties in a wad?
Actually what I would like to know is what did Hillary Clinton know and when did she know it. And the only way to discover that is to have the ‘official’ documents released that tell the life's story of our dear president.
Dude. I admire tenacity, but when you finally have to face that BO is an American, feel free to ping me. I’ll help you make the transition, provide you a virtual shoulder to cry on, and then we move on to serious issues, like the NAACP trying to ban country music from the radio stations.
parsy, who can’t find his long form
Frum, can you just go live with Andrew Sullivan and get it over with?
No worries. I figger he’s an American while I type this. Have all along. Has nothing to do with the issue at hand though.
Good. I was just worried about you.
parsy, the concerned.
The McCain/Palin ticket was up 8 pts. days prior to September 18th.
Obama was losing until the DNC played their October surprise on the economy
and the RomneyTeam attacked Gov. Palin and her children to throw Election2008.
Who benefits most from Sanford meltdown? Californian (that's right) Mitt Romney
"Peeking Out From the McCain Wreckage: Mitt Romney"
"Someone's got to say it: IS MITT ROMNEY RESPONSIBLE FOR OBAMA'S VICTORY?"
"Vanity: Team Romney Sabotaged Palin and Continuing to Do So?"
So you don’t think that Obama was his father and thus there can be no “doubt” about his being a “natural born citizen” within the meaning of Article II?
Excellent point about why that survey cannot be directly compared with the survey indicating the dismayingly high prevalence of "birther" wingnuttery within the GOP.
It’s going to get alot higher.
No. I think all this certificate stuff ended FOR SURE when they found the birth announcements in the papers. And yes, I know that they could have been sent by the DOH but c’mon, if he walks like an American, quacks like an American, etc....
parsy, who says suspicions don’t amount to evidence
With all due respect I don’t think you have any understanding whatsoever of the legal system and how it is supposed to operate in theory based on the Constituiiton and a long tradition stretching back into the common law of England. That’s what your remarks indicate. In particular you don’t seem to have a clue what evidence is in the courts and how it is supposed to be developed based on what.
You certainly have no clue as to what the Supreme Court has said based on what the man presently occupying the Whate House himself has said on the public record throughout his political career. But you are certainly entitled to your opinions and your ignorance.
Nor does he in any way walk like or quack like an Ameican. See the African Colonial post and columns by Chuck Norris, Pat Boone and the commentary of Shelby Steele.
Legally, evidence is the COLB. PERIOD. Like it, don’t like it, suspicious about it, not satisfied by it -—whatever. It doesn’t matter because it is EVIDENCE. It says so on the face of it. It is issued by a lawful authority.
Unless somebody has something other than suspicions and curiosities, the birthers have no EVIDENCE. It is that simple.
Get sworn affidavits by people who saw him born in Kenya. That would be EVIDENCE. Show that the person who issued the COLB in Hawaii got 1 million dollar deposit into her bank account. That would be EVIDENCE. Whatever EVIDENCE you can gather goes into a pot to be weighed against the EVIDENCE presented by BO.
You will hear this referred to as the weight of the EVIDENCE.
The birther problem is that you have no EVIDENCE. Period.
Your respect for the law should start with the realization that courts work off something called EVIDENCE. Not suspicion, doubt, or uncertainties. This is a real good system. When or if the birthers ever get some EVIDENCE, then they can come to court and play with the grown ups.
Personally, I have yet to see anything that constitutes EVIDENCE on the birther side. If you guys are right, you might want to direct your attention towards getting EVIDENCE. Or, you can act like the liberals, smear people, run around in hysterics, make up stuff as it suits your cause, etc.
parsy, who chooses to not act like a liberal.
As I thought, you are completely ignorant. A COLB, under Hawaii law, is not evidence that the person was born in Hawaii. Sun Yat Sen, after he had to flee because of the communist takeover of China, spent his last years in Hawaii, was issued an equivalent document then available. So under your ignorant supposition, that is proof that Sun Yat Sen was born in Hawaii, right?
It has been endlessly pointed out on this and many other conservative sites that under Hawaii law and procedures COLB’s such as the document that you refer to as proof of Hawaiian birth for Obama are issues in large numbers to people who were not born there, since before the birth of Soetoro and at the time hat he was born and ever since.
To introduce such “proof” in a court, since the inadequacy of the COLB is demonstrable within Hawaiian law and public procedures on their face, one would have to produce an official who could be questioned to prove that there was actual proof, such as the actual paper document of the time, that showed actual birth in Hawaii under the practices then in effect. The first questioning of such an official, together with the laws and practices and procedures in effect, would quickly establish that the COLB by itself is not proof of Hawaiian birth. Jut to give one example that can be shown of record in Hawaiian law, for a long time, under the laws designed to protect and benefit native Hawaiians, the COLB was not sufficient to prove birth in Hwaii. Why? Because it does not prove birth in Hawaii.
I gather you believe yourself to be a “conservative” by your calling me liberal. It is amusing to see someone who conceives of themselves as conservative having such blind faith in a government document. In court, you know, there are governing laws and rules of evidence. In fact quite recently the Supreme Court has ruled, as you might have noticed, that the unsupported official reports of official government forensic experts cannot be introduced into evidence in criminal cases without producing the actual examiner who produced them and subject him to examination. Why? Because such official government documents were shown, quite dramatically in fact, to be unreliable.
The question then becomes why the minions of the man in the White House, occupying it at this time, why have they endlessly represented that the COLB is “proof” of his being born in Hawaii when it clearly is not and that can easily be established in the laws and procedures of Hawaii itself as in place at the pertinent times.
Further you appear to have no knowledge of the clause in Article II at issue and what the Supreme Court has said about it. But that is only the beginning. Before you call names you might endeavor to learn something in some depth about the topic, which you admit you have not done.
I didn’t call you a liberal. I said birthers had the choice of getting EVIDENCE or behaving like liberals.
Assume, one day, under BO, private ownership of guns is banned. When the police come to a freeper’s door, do you want to look a search warrant that says, “I Officer Rahm Emanuel, have a suspicion that American Victory has an illegal weapon in his house”?
I doubt it. Same here.
As far as Sun Yat Sen, Hawaii admits they will issue a COLB, but that it will state the true place of birth. So, get a copy of Sun Yat Sen’s COLB, and check it out. It might be EVIDENCE. Same for BO’s sister’s alleged fake COLB. It might be out there. I just ain’t seen it and nobody seems to have a copy. Get it. That could be EVIDENCE.
What coulda happened is not EVIDENCE. If there are large numbers of phony COLBs out ther, find ONE. It could be EVIDENCE.
parsy, who is so ignorant he wants to see some EVIDENCE.
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