The Obama "Birth Certificate" Scandal

Cliff Kincaid, the editor of Accuracy in Media, has released a copy of his own birth certificate, in order to demonstrate what needs to be done to resolve the growing controversy over the alleged birth certificate of President Barack Obama. "My birth certificate includes the names of my mother and father, my mother's doctor, and the hospital in which I was born," said Kincaid. "This certified copy of an original long form document is what anyone who wants to be president should be prepared to produce."

Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

The problem, of course, is that this provision does not require public disclosure of detailed information, in the form of a birth certificate with the names of the parents, hospital, and attending physician, and it does not mandate who makes the decision as to whether a particular candidate is constitutional eligible to be president. Our media should be performing that function.

Kincaid described what was on his own birth certificate: "It reveals that my mother's maiden name was Beverly Ann Mason and my father's name was Clifford Paul Kincaid. It says that my mother's doctor was Walter Washburn. He certifies in the document that I was born at 8:38 in the morning. It says that I was born in Research Hospital in Jackson County, Kansas City, Missouri, on May 16, 1954. It says my father worked as a warehouse supervisor for Owens-Corning Fiberglas."

By contrast, the "birth certificate" released by the Obama presidential campaign includes no name of a hospital, a location of that hospital, or a physician. "The contrast between what is on so many birth certificates for ordinary Americans, such as mine, versus what the Obama campaign has released, is striking," said Kincaid. "This contrast is what accounts for the many questions that have arisen and which have given rise to the so-called 'Birther' Movement. Many ordinary Americans are wondering why the major media have not explained why the Obama 'birth certificate' is so lacking in basic and essential information about where he was born and which doctor by name was there when he was born. If he was born in Hawaii, as he claims, then this information should be readily available and printed on the original birth certificate."

"Journalism used to ask who, what, when, where, why and how," said Kincaid. "But today's pro-Obama journalists want to ignore those questions when it comes to the constitutional eligibility of the current occupant of the oval office. They would rather accept what the Obama campaign (and now administration) wants them to believe. The Obama document may reflect what is in another document, but we really have no way of knowing. The only way to address these questions is to identify where exactly he was born, in what hospital, and what doctor was present. All of this information should be on an original birth certificate."

Kincaid continued, "It is not unreasonable to ask questions about Barack Obama's birthplace. Anybody who has an original copy of their own birth certificate, or a certified copy of their own original birth certificate, should immediately understand that the Obama version is lacking in basic information that should be publicly available."

A Newsmax.com story by David A. Patten noted that, contrary to widespread media reports, Hawaiian health officials have not publicly released President Obama's original, "long-form" birth certificate. He explained, "Many media reports have insisted the President's actual birth certificate is available on the Internet for anyone to download. It is not." What is posted, he noted, is Obama's "certification of live birth."

Patten said, "The document is essentially a summary of the actual long form birth certificate. The certification does not list the attending physician, the address or hospital where the delivery took place, or the parents' occupation. Typically, this information is included on the birth certificate."

Indeed, this is the kind of information on the birth certificate posted by AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid

Patten said that, throughout the controversy over whether Obama was not born in the United States and therefore is not constitutionally eligible to serve as president, "anchors and reporters have assumed wrongly that Obama's 'certification of live birth' contains the same information as an original, long-form birth certificate."

For example, Patten noted that MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews, who interviewed Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., on July 21, lambasting him for co-sponsoring a House bill that would require presidential candidates to submit documents to establish their constitutional eligibility to serve as president, held up a copy of Obama's certification of live birth-not his birth certificate-as if it put the controversy to rest.

Another MSNBC host, Rachel Maddow, stated on June 11: "This baseless, mouth-breathing, whack-job theory became such an issue during the presidential campaign that Mister Obama did actually release a certificate of his birth from Hawaii, showing that he was born in Honolulu in 1961. And yet, the 'birther' movement persists." Over on CNN, anchor Rick Sanchez held up a document for cameras to zoom in on. "This is a reprint of his birth certificate . . . or as it says here, certificate of birth." The document presented by Sanchez was clearly marked "certification of live birth." It was not the real birth certificate.

Patten noted that critics "point out that Obama is the only modern president whose precise place of birth remains undetermined. Honolulu's Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital has been widely cited as his birthplace, but another Honolulu location has been mentioned as well. The hospital has declined to address whether Obama was born there. Presidential birthplaces typically receive recognition and commemoration."

In order to drive this point home, WorldNetDaily.com editor Joseph Farah has offered $10,000 to the hospital where Obama was born that is listed on his long-form birth certificate.

Farah, whose website has been covering the controversy on a regular basis, says that "Barack Obama claims to have been born in Honolulu Aug. 4, 1961. His entire constitutional claim to the presidency rests on this premise. Yet, he refuses to release a copy of his long-form birth certificate-the only document that could possibly corroborate his claim. Instead, he has released to select news organizations and posted on the Internet a document that could never serve as proof he was born in the United States-a so-called 'certification of live birth,' a digital document that could, can and has been obtained by people who were actually born outside the country. The American people can never be certain their president is legitimate constitutionally without proof."

There were two newspaper birth announcements appearing contemporaneously in two Hawaii daily newspapers about Obama's birth but it's not clear whether they were generated by the issuance of the "certification of live birth" document or something else. In any case, they do not have the information that most people are seeking and which appears in original birth certificates.

WND had previously run on August 23, 2008, an article by Drew Zahn reporting that a group known as FactCheck.org had "obtained Obama's actual certification of live birth and that the document was indeed real." Furthermore, it said, "A separate WND investigation into Obama's certification of live birth utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic."

FactCheck.org had claimed that its staffers had "seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate" and that "We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship." But it was clearly not the "original" birth certificate. And whether it meets the Constitutional requirement to be president is questionable.

In other words, FactCheck.org may have seen an "authentic" document, but it was not Obama's real birth certificate. The same group had also defended Obama's misleading campaign ads about his upbringing. Those ads claimed that he was raised mostly by his grandparents, when we know that Communist Frank Marshall Davis was his mentor for 10 years of his young life. Davis, who was black, had been picked by his grandfather, who was white, to be Obama's father-figure.

Columnist Frank Salvato has noted that hosts on the liberal MSNBC and CNN cable networks haven't been the only ones to attack those who raise questions about Obama's birthplace. He pointed out that Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Michael Medved have been quick to condemn the "birthers" as "a fringe group and a group detrimental to the conservative cause." Salvato says this attitude "is not only irresponsible, it is the antithesis of what they say they provide the public: media entities acting as serious governmental and constitutional watchdogs."

He adds, "What we need is for the conservative media to honestly look out for the Constitution...and right now, they are not."

On April 1, 2009, Andrew Walden, a conservative journalist based in Hawaii, tried to claim on Frontpagemag.com that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii and that "By refusing media requests for a look at the actual paper birth certificate, Obama's campaign gave sly backhanded assistance" to those claiming the version posted was a forgery. He noted, "The internet release of the birth certificate via hyper-partisan website Daily Kos on June 12 before posting it on a campaign website was likely calculated to fuel the frenzy." Walden asserted that the failure to release the long-form document was part of a Marxist strategy by Obama to "redirect the opposition down a blind alley."

He added, "It is time for folks to stop being played by the Obama campaign and drop this counter-productive 'phony birth certificate' nonsense. Obama opponents can find plenty of real material by focusing on the hard-left alliances, stated positions, personnel appointments and policy actions of the Obama administration and of the Democrat-controlled Congress."

Taking a different tack, former CIA officer Larry Johnson believes that Obama was born in Hawaii but that the original birth certificate is being withheld for other reasons.

He wrote on his blog http://www.noquarterusa.net that "Barack Obama was not named 'Barack' in the original birth certificate. He was 'Barry' not Barack. But that's not all. The birth certificate was amended when he was adopted by Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian muslim, around 1968. David Axelrod and Barack Obama decided against trying to explain these issues, worried that the Soetoro birth certificate would reinforce the charge that Barack was a secret muslim. Such a charge would have muddied the waters and alarmed too many folks in the midwest and south. They covered it up and, with the help of an incurious media, kept these questions tamped down."

Meanwhile, CNN's Lou Dobbs has come under a vicious attack by Media Matters, the far-left media "watchdog" group, for merely covering the issue and raising questions about where Obama was born. The leftist group insists that Dobbs is guilty of promoting "racially charged conspiracy theories" because Obama is black.

Media Matters had previously criticized AIM Editor Cliff Kincaid's comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference, when he merely noted that while we knew where President Reagan was born, we don't know for sure where Obama was born.

As we have previously reported, in order to clear up the controversy, Rep. Bill Posey of Florida introduced H. R. 1503, whose purpose is to "amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of President to include with the committee's statement of organization a copy of the candidate's birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the Office of President under the Constitution." It was referred to the House Committee on House Administration.

If passed, however, this legislation would only impact the 2012 presidential election.

If it were to be proven that President Obama was ineligible to hold office, Salvato notes, "it would throw our country into a constitutional crisis the likes of which has never been seen. There is no provision for removing someone from the office of President or Vice President of the United States who has been deemed-after the fact- ineligible to have run for the office." He says the only possible remedy, impeachment, would be a practical impossibility, considering that Obama's political party controls Congress.

"If someone is not technically the President of the United States how does the Legislative Branch remove him or her from the position? "Because the Commander in Chief would not technically exist and the Vice President wouldn't be technically seated as the President, would the military be prohibited from executing any order to remove the usurper? And who would give that order? "If the Supreme Court ruled that Article 2, Section 1 was not satisfied, where in the Constitution does it authorize them-or any other body-to nullify a federal election? "What would be the constitutional procedure for validating that the usurper was indeed ineligible to hold office and for removing him or her from control of the US military, the Executive Branch departments and the United States' nuclear arsenal?" Interestingly, back in the Winter 1992-93 edition of Parameters, the U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. published a fictional article, "The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012," in which he speculated about a military takeover because "Americans became exasperated with democracy. We were disillusioned with the apparent inability of elected government to solve the nation's dilemmas. We were looking for someone or something that could produce workable answers. The one institution of government in which the people retained faith was the military."

Neither. That's a matter for the civilian authorities.

Sometimes the civilian authorities will put a "high risk" prisoner on a military base. How much higher risk could one get than someone with the gall to usurp the Presidency of the US?

And although he wouldn't deserve the protection, I'd be OK with it. Just to watch watch him get what he would so richly deserve. In a civilian federal court, temporarily sitting on a military base. There is a certain amount of "assistance" the military can lawfully give to the civil authorities you know, and think this scenario would fall within those limits.

Sometimes the civilian authorities will put a "high risk" prisoner on a military base. How much higher risk could one get than someone with the gall to usurp the Presidency of the US?

You mean like Gitmo or the Charleston brig? If memory serves, those are all classified as 'enemy combatants' or some such thing. I cannot think of a single instance where a civilian prisoner was placed in military control, except maybe World War I and II. Federal law, in fact, severely restricts the use of military in law enforcement. If Obama is ever arrested for anything it'll be federal law enforcement that does it, not the military.

If Obama is ever arrested for anything it'll be federal law enforcement that does it, not the military.

I did not say the military would be arresting, or even holding the usurper, I said they would be *protecting* him. I speculated that the *civilian* authorities might choose to hold the trial on a military base for security reasons. Military facilities are generally more isolated, and military bases are already "limited access* facilities. Even if someone did manage to get onto the base, the detention and trial facilities are often not directly adjacent, nor are the nearly as "cheek by jowl" with other facilities as might be the case for a federal courthouse.

The proceedings would be civilian controlled, with the military providing support and assistance.

Federal law, in fact, severely restricts the use of military in law enforcement.

Not nearly as strictly as most people think. There all sorts of exceptions. Back during the Clinton years, several of the members of my old reserve Intelligence detachment were "seconded" to the FBI, DEA and other federal law enforcement agencies. One then major in particular told me that as long as they didn't directly participate in an arrest, it was legal, and he is a lawyer.

Providing the sort of services I'm postulating would be well within the law, 18 USC 1385, which states:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

But you might take a look at 10 USC 333 which states in part:

The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to— ... suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

One of the "conditions" allowing such use is:

That would fit the situation to a "T". There are other possibly applicable exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act above.

“If someone is not technically the President of the United States how does the Legislative Branch remove him or her from the position? ‘Because the Commander in Chief would not technically exist and the Vice President wouldn’t be technically seated as the President, would the military be prohibited from executing any order to remove the usurper? And who would give that order?’” ...

Look at agency and ratification. If you have someone who is not an agent but who holds himself out to be so, or if you have someone who was an agent of a principal but takes acts that exceed his authority, the principal may ratify (or not) the acts of the agent.

Like it or not, the majority of the electorate voted for the Democratic candidate - that their candidate for president may have been ineligible (and at this point, that’s all we have) is inconvenient for them, but not impossible to address.

Section 3 of the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that if, on Inauguration Day, the President-elect does not qualify for the presidency, the Vice President-elect acts as president until a president is chosen or a President-elect qualifies. Section 3 allows the Congress to provide by law for cases in which neither a President-elect nor a Vice President-elect is eligible or available to serve.

Thus far, I don’t think that anyone has found any basis on which Biden is ineligible (other than terminal foot-in-his-mouth disease). Therefore, under the Constitution, Biden would be the president - then, Congress could either confirm Biden as president and ratify or revoke acts taken by Obama while ineligible, or it could put Biden in as interim President and hold a new election. My guess is that Biden would hold the office until the next regular presidential election, due to cost.

Not too similar a situation happened recently in Detroit - Kwame Kilpatrick was removed (or resigned), and the next person in the line of succession held the office until a special election could be held; that person (Dave Bing) will hold the office until the next regular election for the office of mayor. The city’s charter specified that procedure; the U.S. Constitution doesn’t.

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