The Birth Certificate Question: An Open Letter to Shephard Smith at FOX News

Family Security Matters ^ | 6-19-09 | Col. Bob Pappas (USMC, ret.)

[smoothsailing]

June 19, 2009

The Birth Certificate Question: An Open Letter to Shephard Smith at FOX News

Col. Bob Pappas (USMC, ret.)

Dear "Shep,"

 

I am a regular viewer of your program, specifically the evening news, since I work. I appreciate your show and the news you deliver. As one who watches Fox because of its Fair and Balanced coverage, It is most unsettling that you would refer to those who challenge Obama's eligibility as "right wing crazies." Your definitive statement, "there is no truth whatsoever that Obama is not a natural born citizen" is problematic.

 

As one not given to "conspiracy theories," the larger issue surrounding Obama's eligibility strikes at the heart of the Constitutional underpinning of virtually all oaths of office at the Federal level, including Obama's. Your comments trivialize that exceptionally important issue for all Americans and for me personally and millions of past, present and future military service personnel or for that matter anyone who takes an oath of office to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

First, your assertion suggests that you have seen his original birth certificate. Okay, since you are in effect a "star witness" in a case of monumental proportions with millions Fox News viewer's being the jury, have you? If not, you might consider doing some no kidding investigative journalism and apologize to your viewers for the unfounded blather.

 

Second, there is considerable anecdotal evidence that Obama is not a natural born citizen. His eligibility is complicated further by his sojourn in Indonesia, or did you know that? It is my understanding that his step-father adopted him, is that true, or not? If so, the question then would be, "did that act confer Indonesian citizenship?" If so, where are the documents that "restored" his U.S. citizenship, if indeed he was natural born?

 

It is complicated even more by the fact that at the time of his birth his father, "The Old Man," was a British citizen, which alone would not be a show stopper, but given his paternal (Obama's father) grandmother's claim that she was present at Obama's birth in Kenya raises a legitimate question about citizenship, not to mention the "natural born issue." Is he a British citizen born of an underage American girl in Kenya? Would he then be a British citizen or an American citizen? Or, is he a dual citizen, and can a person with dual citizenship be President of the United States of America?

 

I would appreciate a definitive explanation of your rationale and sources, i.e., where did you get your information and an explanation so that would I can put this to rest. Because I would like to do exactly that, but it bugs the hell out of me that he is so clinched fisted about it, and so far you are an accomplice. I would expect that of MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN, but it disappoints me greatly that Fox News would stoop, no grovel for Administration approval at the expense of the right of the American public to know.

 

On the other hand, if you do not have any definitive data and please don't brush anyone off with the "old saw" that "Hawaii issued a certificate," especially since it is well known that Hawaii issues or issued certificates for people born elsewhere, please make it your business to find out.

 

Given Mr. Obama's commitment to be totally transparent with the American people, please explain in detail why he has gone to such lengths to deny discovery of any of his records. Or, is that an untrue allegation? If he has nothing to hide, what's the problem? Either way, you have a responsibility to the public to find out not summarily sweep the matter aside especially with unbecoming derisive comments.

 

One must conclude that you have a set of journalist integrity problems:

 

1. Either you have your mind made up without regard to the issues, or

2. You have been told what to say by someone with power over you.

3. You don't know what you are talking about,

4. Someone is buying you off,

5. You are biased and don't care about truth much less letting the truth to be known,

5. You are too lazy to discover the facts, or

6. All of the above, and more.

 

Finally, we either have a Constitution or it is an anachronistic piece of paper. In addition to the "natural born" requirement, which is arguably suspect in Obama's case, it appears that there is a legitimate argument that the courts are shirking their responsibility by refusing to adjudicate the matter. So, absent the legal process, how does one clear the air? It would not matter that 100% voted for Obama, if he is not qualified, he cannot be President under the provisions of the Constitution. To repeat what I've already noted, we either have a Constitution or we do not.

 

Sorry, but your backhanded and insulting treatment of those who have a right, not merely a desire, but a right to know, and that includes every American citizen, diminishes both you and Fox News.

 

Please reconsider your comments at the least, or better, do some serious growing up with respect to those whose sacrifices have given you the right and opportunity to be who you are and dig into it. You have an historic opportunity and you are blowing it.

 

 Semper Fidelis

 

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Col. Bob Pappas (USMC, ret.) writes for Gulf1.com from his home in Florida’s Panhandle. E-mail him at pappas@gulf1.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS INC.

[John Valentine]

And that same document lists his place of birth as “Honolulu, Hawaii.”

Your point being? That parents lie?

[John Valentine]

And that same document lists his place of birth as “Honolulu, Hawaii.”

Your comment would seem to indicate that this entry was somehow out of place, but if Barry was adopted as a child of Soetoro's new American-born wife, where else would you think they might claim he was born? Kenya?

Seriously, where else would you expect the Soetoros to have named as a birthplace, if not Honolulu?

[Windflier]

I’m just throwing out some potential reasons for the lack of appeasement.

"Lack of appeasement"?

The American people aren't looking for appeasement from Barack Obama. Just simple honesty and openness. No one's asking him to do anything extraordinary, or anything unusual.

And, none of the reasons you threw out hold water. Only a usurper or dictator would ignore half of the American people for the reasons you gave.

The fact that he produced a JPEG of a Certification of Live Birth when asked for his birth certificate, instead of producing the real thing - and thereafter ignored ALL requests from the public to do so, is reason enough to suspect that something's amiss.

If that weren't enough, ALL of his travel records, visas, and education records are sealed as well, and that's just the short list.

An honest (and innocent) person would simply open their records up for public inspection and end all of the suspicion and speculation. Especially someone who's in the most important job on planet earth.

Barry Obama has not done so. Why? What's he got to hide?

It's far too late to play devil's advocate at this late stage. Doing so now only makes you appear like an Obama apologist or supporter.

[John Valentine]

.... Doing so now only makes you appear like an Obama apologist or supporter.

I have to say that the word stooge comes to mind referring to stuartcr.

[real_patriotic_american]

Shep, you’ve been exposed!

[stuartcr]

Please substitute whatever word you wish for appeasement. I really don’t care if any of the reasons hols water, as I said, they were potential reasons, if you don’t think they’re any good, OK.

[Mom MD]

His documentation to enter Indonesian school. It has been posted several times. Interestingly, it shows citizenship as Indonesian, religion as muslim (not that I think Barry has any religion, just shows he was brought up muslim)

[mc5cents]

to deny anyone other than Obama access the original document in Hawaii.

I have often wondered that if he was born in Kenya why whould the "original" BC be in Hawaii? It would be in Kenya, would it not?

[Non-Sequitur]

For school registration. And, for the record, his school registration documents list Barry as “Warga Negara: Indonesia”. For those not familiar with Indonesian that translates as “Citizenship: Indonesia”

I've seen the Document.

So I'm assuming that line 2 translates into date and place of birth? Which is given as Honolulu and August 4, 1861? So if once accepts this as gospel proof of Obama's citizenship status then one would also have to accept his natural born status as well, right?

In any case, under the laws in place at the time Obama could not be a citizen. Absent anything else like adoption documentation or naturalization papers or his passport or identity card then this is not conclusive evidence.

[Non-Sequitur]

His documentation to enter Indonesian school. It has been posted several times. Interestingly, it shows citizenship as Indonesian, religion as muslim (not that I think Barry has any religion, just shows he was brought up muslim)

And in line two it also shows his birthplace as Honolulu. Does that clear up the natural born citizenship question for you?

Link

[Non-Sequitur]

By U.S. law it would not.

I pointed to Article 4 because it is one of several places in the full statute which embodies the controlling doctrine at the time that barred dual citizenship.

Ignoring the clause about being 18 years old.

There is nothing in Article 2 that would have allowed the dual citizenship that you so confidently assert. There is nothing that makes Article 4 specifically applicable here except as demonstrating the general doctrine that Indonesia did not allow dual citizenship. Neither did we at the time.

For naturalized citizens we didn't. We still require naturalized citizens to forsake any loyalty to any other country when they take the oath of citizenship. But they are adults. If a child acquires citizenship status at birth in another country, then U.S. law cannot overrule that. A child born in the U.S. of parents, one of whom is a citizen of Great Britain, has dual citizenship and there is nothing the U.S. can do to prevent that. Likewise, a child born in Great Britain of parents, one of whom is a U.S. citizen, can have dual citizenship in the U.S. and there is nothing British law can do to prevent that. If Obama was born in Hawaii then he's a U.S. citizen, a natural born U.S. citizen. Nobody can strip that from him - not a foreign country and not his mother on his behalf. The only way a U.S. citizen can relinquish that birthright is to do so himself, as an adult, in writing, before U.S. authorities. And if such a situation violated Indonesian law then it would be his Indonesian citizenship that was fraudulent and not his U.S. one.

It seems likely that Barry Soetoro's mother acquired Indonesian citizenship under Article 7 (2) of the statute.

There is absolutely no evidence that Obama's mother gave up her U.S. citizenship, yet you say "it seems likely". What do you have to support your claim other than wishful thinking?

We do know that under Article 14, if Barry did become an Indonesian citizen under Article 2 as you posit, he would still be an Indonesian citizen today unless he formally released that citizenship within a year of becoming 21. What if he did not release and in fact claimed it at one or more U. S. institutions of higher education. Under that scenario, how would he have still been a U. S. citizen?

Unless he formally relinquished his U.S. citizenship, yes he would. And if you want to posit that he attended U.S. schools as a foreign national then some evidence of that would be nice. Remember, by the time he went to college he'd been back in the U.S. for 8 or 9 years.

In short you continue to misrepresent and mislead. Why don't you have the decency and integrity to stop?

Because you're the one misrepresenting and misleading and wishing and hoping and calling conjecture fact, not me. You whole tale is full of if's and maybe's and likely's and possibly's, and very short on fact.

[John Valentine]

I wouldn’t term this as “gospel proof” of anything. It’s just evidence.

On the other hand, your statement “under the laws in place at the time Obama could not be a citizen,” assuming that you are referring to Indonesia, is simply untrue. Based on other post of yours on this thread, I have already concluded that you have no idea what you are talking about with respect to Indonesian law, and this latest statement is further evidence of that truth.

[John Valentine]

Assuming a Hawaiian birth for Obama, you correctly state that he is a United States Citizen by birth, but you INCORRECTLY state that he is a “natural-born” citizen by virtue of the physical location of his birth. That stems from a common but false equivocating between native-born and natural-born.

Obama would ONLY have natural born citizenship if his father was an American citizen at the time of Obama’s birth in Hawaii. Otherwise he has citizenship by statute; i.e. a form of naturalized citizenship. Since Obama’s father was a British subject at the time of Obama’s birth, he cannot be a natural-born citizen, despite being a US citizen by birth.

Please don’t come back at me with some nonsense about multiple classes of citizenship. There are MANY varieties of citizenship. Citizenship is something that can be sliced and diced many ways to draw valid distinctions. The point is that there is only one set of criteria for natural born citizenship, and no matter which set of facts you take, Obama does not meet them.

[itsahoot]

If O’Reilly were getting over 5 million, he’d have been in 6th place.

He have may have been referring to his combined audience, since his show replays 3 hours later, both combined top 5,000,000 regularly.

[Polarik]

PING!

[MHGinTN]

Yeah, Shep will react, like most dead-soul liberals do, by tightening his Obamanoid kneepads. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Shep enjoys his blindness and will not allow anyone to disturb that childhood he’s in.

[ExTexasRedhead]

Since Shep Baby won’t admit to ever receiving this excellent letter, I think it should be sent to Glenn Beck, Rush, Mark Levin, and others so it can be read on their shows. The truth is in short supply these days and the state-run Media is, obviously, hiding anything negative about Zero.

Those that read history will remember that it was the “Underground” that had to fight back against Hitler. Freepers and others will now have to become the “American Underground” in order to get the truth out against state-run media and the Fuhrer’s machine.

[BIGLOOK]

Shep Smith vs a Marine......This'll be good!

Of course nothing will come of it. Shep spends more time in makeup than at the news desk.

Aloha Smooth!

[Polarik]

We have no proof of where Obama was born. Anyone who claims that he was born in Hawaii is suffering from COLB Derangement Syndrome. Hawaii never confirmed that he was born in Hawaii, never confirmed that he has a Hawaiian long-form birth certificate or any other US birth certificate on file, or even if they have anything tangible beyond a computer record.

Most of all, Hawaii confirmed that they never released a copy of Obama’s COLB to anyone in June 2007.

Einstein could have called himself, “Humpty Dumpty,” and hid his face, but that would not change the fact that he discovered E= mc^2. Likewise, Obama’s 2007 COLB would be just as nonexistent as if I had never discovered that it was nonexistent. But, it is a good thing that I did.

It's positively amazing the amount of effort that people have expended in defense of this piece of crap COLB image that the Poseur-in-Chief now admits to posting online. There is only one reason why, after more than a year, that only one scan image of one side only has ever been made from what is alleged to be Obama’s 2007 COLB: it doesn't exist. Obama’s 2007 COLB is a forged fake, fabricated in Photoshop, and nothing that anyone says or does can change that fact.

There is absolutely no reason, whatsoever, that the Obama Campaign would not make another, more detailed scan, including one of the reverse side of the COLB, and send that out to quiet critics. No reason, EXCEPT that the document does not exist in the real world. It only exists in the unreal, virtual world of Photoshopped fakes.

BTW, a digital photo is not the same thing as a scan image, and it most certainly cannot be used to validate a scan image. Certainly not when the document object is photographed at a steep angles from the capture device (which were intentional).

Remember that Factcheck did not take a digital photo of the reverse side (all that Factcheck photographed was only 1/4 of the entire back page, and only 2/3 of the Seal). Why was so little of the back page shown? Because what was photographed belonged to a different COLB!! Check it out for yourself: the Seal on the reverse side does not match the one on the front side. It is one of several, new discoveries I've made after revisitng the Factcheck photographs.

A year later after the bogus scan image was posted, THAT is exactly what people are still talking about. They are referring back to the original forged image on Fight the Smears and Factcheck. They are quoting Factcheck — the co-conspirator in this birth certficate scam — as having “verified” the bogus “scan image”.

Recall that Factcheck claimed they photographed the same object that the Obama Campaign scanned two months earlier. They took these photos SOLELY IN DEFENSE of the scan image that they alleged to have “validated,” and to fend off the widespread criticism of the COLB as a forged image. However, they failed to “debunk” the critics. This was all part of an elaborate ruse to create the illusion that Obama had released his genuine, certified original birth certificate to the public.

What is hard to believe are the people in high places who actually believe that this document exists, but of those, here is a segment who also discount it as being proof of where Obama was actually born. COLBs are incredibly easy to get with little documentation required. And, yes, it is a well-documented fact that Hawaii was giving COLBs to foreign-born children.

But the bottom line is that the original “scan image” is what people are still talking about today, and it is an indisputable fact that Obama, or anyone else, does not have a genuine 2007 COLB document. and that what is posted online is as bogus as a four-dollar bill.

Obama ascended to the position of President by fraudulent means, including document fraud, Internet fraud, voter fraud, and campaign funding fraud, to name a few. The only question at hand now is whether he will be removed by invalidating his election, or by the articles of impeachment. If I were a Democratic Congressman, and I was going to be implicated in this fraud, I'd be calling for impeachment in a New York minute.

[LucyT]

Hey nully, someone is talking about us.

sadly we haven’t proved our case and can’t do so without access to those records.

It's all conjecture; there is no evidence to prove, or disprove, 0bama's place of birth.