Blogger admits Hawaii birth certificate forgery, subverting Obama claims (Uh-oh)

Israel Insider ^ | 3 July 2008 | Reuven Koret

[SE Mom]

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears.

The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos, an extreme left blog site, and the Obama campaign, in misleading the public with official-looking but manipulated document images of doubtful provenance.

The perceived unreliability of the image has provoked petitions and widespread demands for Obama to submit for objective inspection the paper versions of the "birth certificate" he claimed in his book Dreams from My Father was in his possession, as well as the paper version of the Certificate of Live Birth for which the image on the Daily Kos and the Obama "Fight the Smears" website was supposedly generated.

Without a valid birth certificate, Obama cannot prove he fulfills the "natural born citizen" requirement of the Constitution, throwing into doubt his eligibility to run for President.

McKinnon, who says he is 25-30 years old, operates a website called OpenDNA.com and uses the OpenDNA screen name on various web sites and blogs, including his comments and diary on The Daily Kos. In recent years he has divided his time between Long Beach, California and Vancouver, British Columbia. He is a Democratic political activist, frequent contributor to the left wing Daily Kos blog, and a fervent Barack Obama supporter.

[AppyPappy]

So any US citizens can be President? I thought it was only naturalized citizens. I thought we discussed that Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t run for President. I bet he has a passport.

[Spunky]

"If the law says that two US citizen parents give you the right to citizenship at birth, that’s what I’d call a natural-born citizen. If this weren’t true, all the kids born of soldiers overseas would not be natural born citizens. This concept of citizenship by birth when born outside the US has been in place since the 1700s.

IMO there IS and needs to be a difference between Citizenship at birth and Natural-born citizen in order to be President of the U.S. My reasoning is this. Say a person is born of two U.S. citizens but those two U.S. citizens have lived in say France, or Germany or where ever for many, many, many, years and their son was raised there from the time he was born until the age of 35. He then comes to the U.S. and decides to run as President. Now this persons culture and ideas would have been formed by the culture and ideas from where he grew up. This may or may not be a problem, but it very well could be. We definitely need people who are loyal to the U.S. and no where else.

[Political Junkie Too]

Either there is something to hide or this is simply to divert attention from more serious issues facing Obama.

I'm starting to ask the question, divert attention from whom? Us at FreeRepublic? The MSM aren't reporting any of this, so it's not like it's taking up MSM bandwidth that would have gone to other stories. Only a few blogs are paying partial attention, so it's not like it's eating up the blogosphere, either.

So who's attention is really being diverted from other things?

-PJ

[Political Junkie Too]

Should have asked, so who's attention is Obama thinking he's diverting, just us at FreeRepublic?

-PJ

[El Gato]

I believe there is a record that raises a fair inference he was in fact born in Kenya and if so, he is not a US Citizen under any statute or theory I have yet seen or heard.

Well I did not make the comment "of course he is a citizen". But he could still be a naturalized one. His mother being a citizen would give him a leg up on that process.

[antiRepublicrat]

He was born on foreign soil.

Of two American parents. That makes him a natural-born citizen even according to the law back in 1790.

[null and void]

So any US citizens can be President?

Nooooo, that's the opposite of what I've been saying. Re-read and try again, please?

[AppyPappy]

So Obama might not be eligible to be President since we have never seen his birth certificate.

[Political Junkie Too]

Why would an Obama supporter offer a forged document unless they’re trying to BAIT conservatives like ourselves to question it.

Because he was acting in a rogue way, thinking he was helping, the Obama campaign (the Smears website people, maybe, without authorization, thinking they, too, were helping, maybe) latched onto it initially without thinking it through, and now they're stuck with it.

It may not have been a planned Rope-a-Dope ploy by the campaign. And if it were, it would open them up to playing stupid games with the campaign, and forging official government documents to do so. That would be worth a question at a debate, such as "Do you think that forging an official government document to bait your opponents is as serious a charge as a president breaking into an opponent's office to steal campaign documents?"

-PJ

[null and void]

But he could still be a naturalized one. His mother being a citizen would give him a leg up on that process.

So? You do know that a naturalized citizen is NOT eligible to be president, don't you???

[null and void]

Bingo! Further, the documentation we have seen is very questionable.

Personally, I don’t think he’s qualified to be President.

But that is in addition to his possible lack of Constitutional qualifications.

[null and void]

That makes him a natural-born citizen even according to the law back in 1790.

The Constitution determines the Law.

The Law does not determine the Constitution.

[bvw]

BOAC, British Overseas Airways Company, 1960 world-wide route map.

It's a lot of hops. Main BOAC planes in 1960s were the Bristol Brittania and the Comet. BOAC had its first delivery of 15 Boeing 707s in 1960.

[Raycpa]

Hawaii became a state in 1959, so he's have to be two years older than he claims.

It doesn't matter when Hawaii became a state for citizenship. Anyone born in Hawaii is made a citizen by 8 US 1405

§ 1405. Persons born in Hawaii How Current is This? A person born in Hawaii on or after August 12, 1898, and before April 30, 1900, is declared to be a citizen of the United States as of April 30, 1900. A person born in Hawaii on or after April 30, 1900, is a citizen of the United States at birth. A person who was a citizen of the Republic of Hawaii on August 12, 1898, is declared to be a citizen of the United States as of April 30, 1900.

[bvw]

The schedule page in 1960 from Kenya:

There are other timetables and a couple of updates on the BOAC schedules between Aug 1961 from this 1960 page posted above.

[bvw]

Source for prior images: Airline Timetable Images

[AuH2ORepublican]

“I would feel comfortable making the argument to the Supreme Court that the Natural Born test means born in the geographical territory of the states of the United States. Observe that if the citizenship statutes control, Congress can effectively amend the Constitution by statute. I don’t think the Court will reach that decision.”

---

So you would argue that had Barry Goldwater been elected president in 1964 that he could not have served because he was born in a U.S. territory, not a U.S. state? And ditto for John McCain if he gets elected in 2008?

If Article II says that one must be a natural-born citizen to be eligible for the presidency, and if a natural-born citizen means a citizen at birth, then logically one must look to federal law at the time the person is born in order to determine whether such person is eligible, but Congress isn’t “amending” the Constitution when it modifies the rules for citizenship at birth any more than it amends the Constitution when it admits a new state to the Union. Please note that by looking at the law in effect when the putative president is born it prevents Congress from passing retroactive laws so as to make Obama eligible or to make McCain ineligible.

BTW, the publication date of the note is 1988. What is the political origin of the views espoused?

[AuH2ORepublican]

“by publication date, I mean the current reference to the article is politically motivated because the article reaches their conclusion.”

---

OK, got it. Please disregard the final two sentences of my reply to you.

BTW, I first heard about this note years ago, when I was a law student myself, back before John McCain was even thinking of running for president and when Barack Obama was probably “doing the things he was doing back then” (to paraphrase Hillary’s former New Hampshire state chairman).

[David]

For you to be correct about the effective date of the law in regards to the child of an unwed mother then the SC is wrong in its recitation of the history of the laws on unwed mothers http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/96-1060.ZD.html, and the statute itself is wrong in referring to 1952 and the history that only specified a reference to 1409 (a) was merely an oversight and it should have referred to 1409 (c) as well.

Did you even read the post regarding the history of the law?

Not only did I read the post on the history, more important, I read all the Public Laws and searched down their effective dates. I gave you the effective date clause for all the amendments to Sec. 1409 and it looks fairly clear to me.

I have never to my knowledge anywhere suggested that the unwed mother clauses originated in 1952 or 1986 because I think it is clear on their face they did not. To the contrary, I think the material change to Sec. 1409(c) in 86 and 88 is only to the date.

Which statute have I misread? Which Public Law doesn't fit with my description? Where (in what statute or Pub.L.) is the effective date of the modifications to (c) made by the 1986 or 1988 acts?

I don't think moving back the operation of the statute does much violence to the fundamental issue here--if he was born offshore and was illegitimate, he wasn't a citizen when he was born because the statute didn't exist in that form on that date; he still flunks the natural born test. To get to citizenship, he needs to reverse the record of marriage of his parents.

I suspect the latter would be difficult to do because I now believe it will turn out that they were married in Kenya where having more than one wife was not a problem.

And I continue to think my reading of the effective dates is probably correct because the LawLink description of the law posted above says the same thing. Both of us might be incorrect--I don't see where.

What part of what statute conflicts?

[Raycpa]

David, the case I cited is 1998, well after the 1986 act and the 1988 act.

You didn’t read it did you ?

Otherwise someone with your legal background would not continue to deny the fact that the law regarding unwed mothers precedes 1952.

You think the SC got there history wrong on the statute?