Why the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate (Nov. 08)

Does this Barack Obama birth certificate issue bug you because, although improbable, it's possible that he's not a natural born citizen, isn't eligible to be President under the Constitution, and this issue could be bigger than Watergate -- or any other "gate" in history?

Are you afraid that if you were even to raise the subject with your friends that they will think you wear a tinfoil hat, because Factcheck.org, the final arbiter of truth in the universe, said so?

Are you with the news media, and after spending so much money to get Barack Obama elected, you'd hate to ruin your investment?

Are you a talk radio host who thinks that if you say the burden of proof needed to demonstrate one is eligible to be Commander in Chief should be at least as high as, oh, say, the level to be eligible for Hawaiian homestead status (see 1.F. below), that you'd be forced to give equal time to someone who disagrees?

Are you a conservative, libertarian, or any conscientious constitutionalist from any ideological side of life, who's convinced something's not right, but you're afraid your reputation might be tarnished because, after all, this could be one big Saul-Alinsky-style set-up, and the joke would be on you?

Fear not! Joe the Farmer has prepared an outline showing that no matter how this issue is ultimately resolved, you have legitimate concerns, and that Barack Obama should, simply out of respect for the nation he was elected to lead, disclose the sealed vault copy of his birth certificate.

Given the circumstances, if Barack Obama respected this nation, he would prove it by the simplest and easiest of gestures - unless, of course, all this talk about change and hope was just a bunch of bull, and he's just "another politician." Here's the outline:

1. Under Hawaiian law, it is possible (both legally and illegally) for a person to have been born out of state, yet have a birth certificate on file in the Department of Health.

A. From Hawaii's official Department of Health, Vital Records webpage: "Amended certificates of birth may be prepared and filed with the Department of Health, as provided by law, for 1) a person born in Hawaii who already has a birth certificate filed with the Department of Health or 2) a person born in a foreign country" (applies to adopted children).

B. A parent may register an in-state birth in lieu of certification by a hospital of birth under HRS 338-5.

C. Hawaiian law expressly provides for registration of out-of-state births under HRS 338-17.8. A foreign birth presumably would have been recorded by the American consular of the country of birth, and presumably that would be reflected on the Hawaiian birth certificate.

D. Hawaiian law, however, expressly acknowledges that its system is subject to error. See, for example, HRS 338-17.

E. Hawaiian law expressly provides for verification in lieu of certified copy of a birth certificate under HRS 338-14.3.

F. Even the Hawaii Department of Home Lands does not accept a certified copy of a birth certificate as conclusive evidence for its homestead program. From its web site: "In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green.

This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL."

2. Contrary to what you may have read, no document made available to the public, nor any statement by Hawaiian officials, evidences conclusively that Obama was born in Hawaii.

A. Associated Press reported about a statement of Hawaii Health Department Director Dr. Fukino, "State declares Obama birth certificate genuine."

B. That October 31, 2008 statement says that Dr. Fukino "ha[s] personally seen and verified that the Hawai'i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

That statement does not, however, verify that Obama was born in Hawaii, and as explained above, under Hawaiian policies and procedures it is quite possible that Hawaii may have a birth record of a person not born in Hawaii. Unlikely, but possible.

C. The document that the Obama campaign released to the public is a certified copy of Obama's birth record, which is not the best evidence since, even under Hawaiian law, the original vault copy is the better evidence. Presumably, the vault record would show whether his birth was registered by a hospital in Hawaii.

D. Without accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, we nevertheless know that some people have gone to great lengths, even in violation of laws, rules and procedures, to confer the many benefits of United States citizenship on themselves and their children.

Given the structure of the Hawaiian law, the fact that a parent may register a birth, and the limited but inherent potential for human error within the system, it is possible that a parent of a child born out-of-state could have registered that birth to confer the benefits of U.S. citizenship, or simply to avoid bureaucratic hassles at that time or later in the child's life.

1. We don't know whether the standards of registration by the Department of Health were more or less stringent in 1961 (the year of Obama's birth) than they are today. However, especially with post-9/11 scrutiny, we do know that there have been instances of fraudulent registrations of foreign births as American births.

2. From a 2004 Department of Justice news release about multiple New Jersey vital statistics employees engaged in schemes to issue birth certificates to foreign-born individuals: "An individual who paid Anderson and her co-conspirators for the service of creating the false birth records could then go to Office of Vital Statistics to receive a birth certificate . . .

As part of the investigation, federal agents executed a search warrant of the HCOVS on Feb. 18, 2004, which resulted in the seizure of hundreds of suspect Certificates of Live Birth which falsely indicated that the named individuals were born in Jersey City, when in fact, they were born outside the United States and were in the United States illegally . . . Bhutta purchased from Goswamy false birth certificates for himself and his three foreign-born children."

3. Even before 9/11, government officials acknowledged the "ease" of obtaining birth certificates fraudulently. From 1999 testimony by one Social Security Administration official: "Furthermore, the identity data contained in Social Security records are only as reliable as the evidence on which the data are based.

The documents that a card applicant must present to establish age, identity, and citizenship, usually a birth certificate and immigration documents-are relatively easy to alter, counterfeit, or obtain fraudulently."

All Ineligible

All three of the 2008 presidential candidates, Obama (aka Soetoro), McCain, and Calero were not eligible under Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution to serve as Commander-in-Chief.

Just like a residential purchase of a home is void if fraud in the inducement (where one party conceals a material fact that if people knew about it ahead of time, they would not enter into a residential purchase of a home), the same thing has occurred with the primaries and presidential election on November 4, 2008.

Because these three candidates (Obama (aka Soetoro), McCain, and Calero) were ineligible under Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, the 2008 presidential election and its results should be voided.

Regardless of what game of charades people in the mainstream media and people within our federal government are trying to pull. That is a legal fact that can not be disputed.

Obama has only one US citizen parent. His father was British subject and a Citizen of Kenya — as was Obama.

McCain was not born in the mainland US. John Sidney McCain III was born at the Colon Hospital, located at Avenida Melendez and 2nd Street, Manzanillo Island, City of Colon, Republic of Panama.

The time of birth on the birth certificate issued by Panama Railroad Company (which owned the Colon Hospital) was 5:25 PM and the day and date of birth was Saturday, August 29, 1936.

Calero was not born in the mainland US. He was born in Nicaragua.

***

Democrats Try To Change The Rules

On February 28, 2008, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced a bill to the Senate for consideration. That bill was known as S. 2678: Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act. The bill was co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and Sen. Thomas Coburn (R-OK).

Bill S. 2678 attempted to change article II, section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution of the United States with reference to the requirements of being a “natural born citizen” and hence; the entitlement to run for President of the United States.

This bill met the same fate that similar attempts to change the Constitution have in the past. Attempts such as The Natural Born Citizen Act were known to have failed and the text scrubbed from the internet, with only a shadow-cached copy left, that only the most curious public can find.

Sen. McCaskill, her co-sponsors, fellow colleagues and legal counsel, contend that the Constitution is ambiguous in article II, section 1 and requires clarification. But does it?

***

Senate Judicial Committee Chairman Says Obama Not Eligible — And Obama Agrees

On April 10, 2008, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced a resolution expressing the sense of the U.S. Senate that presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was a ‘natural born Citizen,’ as specified in the Constitution and eligible to run for president.

Sen. McCaskill knew Obama was not a U.S. Citizen, that’s why she introduced this bill — dressing it up to look like it was in Sen. John McCain’s cause.

It was during the bill’s hearing that Sen. Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made the following statement:

“Because he was born to American citizens, there is no doubt in my mind that Senator McCain is a natural born citizen,” said Leahy. “I expect that this will be a unanimous resolution of the Senate.”

At a Judiciary Committee hearing on April 3, Leahy asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a former Federal judge, if he had doubts that McCain was eligible to serve as President.

“My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” Chertoff replied.

“That is mine, too,” said Leahy.

What’s interesting here is that Sen. Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary, confirms that a “natural born” citizen is the child of American citizen parents.

Parents — that’s two. That’s BOTH parents.

Every time the words, “citizen” and “parent,” are used by Sen. Leahy and Sec. Chertoff, the plural case, “citizens” and “parents,” is used. The plural case is the operative case.

It is Sen. Leahy’s opinion — his own recorded words, in a formal Senate Resolution and on his U. S. Senate website — that Barack Obama is not a “natural born” citizen, and therefore not eligible to serve as Commander-in-Chief, regardless of his birthplace.

Obama had one American parent —singular — his mother. His father was a citizen of Kenya, and a subject of Great Britain.

Obama, himself, “at birth,” was a citizen of Kenya, and a subject of Great Britain — he says so on his own campaign website. This fact introduces the concept of “divided loyalties,” — the reason the founders created the eligibility requirement in the first place — a fact that further underlines Obama’s ineligibility.

The source of this information is Sen. Leahy’s own website. The webpage contains a statement about the resolution; the resolution, itself; the Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and an excerpt of Sec. Chertoff’s testimony.

The plural word “parents” is used four times. When used to identify the parents, the word “citizens” is used five times. That’s nine times that Sen. Leahy, on his own website describes the eligibility requirement. There is NO PLACE in any of these four documents where the singular case of “parent” or “citizen” is used.

The real purpose of this bill was to change article II, section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution of the United States with reference to the requirements of being a “natural born citizen” by the Democratic Party leadership — paving the way for an Obama run.

Both Leahy and Chertoff avoid addressing the “in the US mainland” (jus solis) element of the eligibility requirement and focus solely on parentage (Jus sanguinis) in making their arguments and by doing so bring focus to the fundamental reason Obama is not qualified. He had one American parent and one foreign parent. Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen — no matter where he was born.

Obama is a co-signer of this resolution. So, I guess he too agrees that one needs two American parents to be eligible for POTUS — except he doesn’t care — after all, he’s the Obamamessiah. Rules don’t apply to him.

***

35 Or 36

Since the 1870s, assorted Congress critters have attempted to define or redefine “natural born” citizen status nearly 30 times!

There were five attempts to re-define “natural born” citizen status since 2001 — that’s six attempts, if you include Sen. Leahy’s Resolution for McCain in March 2008.

http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaNaturalBorn.htm

Well put STARWISE. The more deeply one pursues the definition and motivation for the additional requirement beyond native or citizen, that of having two citizen parents, the less doubt there is. France was a jus sanguinis - parentally-passed citizenship - country at the time of the revolution. The Alexander Morse Treatise on Citizenship is exhaustive on the history of natural law, the law of the Continent, or Roman law, as it was called by some. What the founders required was very consistent with the law of nations and thus with Vattel’s Law of Nations, and Alexander Hamilton said exactly that. English Common Law was arbitrary. A nation of laws needed an immutable foundation, not alterable by the legislature or “The King”. That is made clear in Vattel, but far from a new concept. Vattel cites Cicero.

One approach to learning about our foundations is to read Wolf and Pufendorf and Leibniz, precursors of Vattel. Another is to read the extensive discussions of citizenship in supreme court cases (some lower courts pay little attention to precedent, such as the Indiana Supreme Court in their recent decision which rewrites the History around Chester Arthur).

Legal scholars have spent volumes on citizenship since The Revolution: Alexander Morse, Piggot, Collins, Kent, Story, Desty. Then there are the last ten years. I did not realize there had been five attempts to redefine Article II since 2001. I knew of Orren Hatch, who subsequently forgot his understanding of what it was he tried to change in 2003. Do you include statutes, which cannot, of course, amend The Constitution? What are some other attempt to alter Article II Sect 1?

Being lazy, I usually depend upon a citation in the Herlihy Paper wherein she cites 24 attempts to amend the definition of natural born citizen. She, of course, in her 26 pages, doesn't mention Marshall, or Happersett, or Waite, or Venus, or Hamilton, or Jay, or Washington, but makes the advent of globalism the reason we need to admit children of aliens to the restricted class of presidential qualities.

Has someone preserved the “shadow-cached” bills which have been scrubbed? I, for example, saved the Herlihy Chicago-Kent Law Review article, noting that it was so obviously aimed at supporting an Obama run that it might be useful. Of course it disappeared from the Internet. It must still be on paper in law libraries, so it appears the Obama team is just buying time; until what? Do they expect to have replaced the 1st Amendment? Perhaps.

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