Posted on 07/21/2009 6:32:52 PM PDT by pissant
The increasingly popular term for them is "Birthers" -- the indignant, frantic, seething fringe Republicans who are persuaded that there is strong doubt about where President Barack Obama was born and, therefore, strong doubt about the legitimacy of his presidency.
(snip)
Even assuming Obama was born in Kenya despite the considerable evidence that he was born in Hawaii, that five-year provision in the law was intended, pretty clearly, to prevent a person from claiming U.S. citizenship when he was born in another country to parents who were long-time residents of that country, simply on the grounds that one of his parents was still, technically a U.S. citizen.
Say "Jim" is born in the U.S., lives here until he's 11, moves with his parents to Germany, comes of age there, marries a German woman and, when he's 25, has a child. As a matter of national policy and common sense, we don't want Jim's child to be able to claim automatic U.S. citizenship -- he is born in Germany to long-time residents of Germany. Declaring him a U.S. citizen is fundamentally absurd.
The thinking behind the law seems to be that if Jim spent at least five of his 10 years after age 14 in the U.S. before moving to Germany, he has been sufficiently "Americanized" that his children shall be considered U.S. citizens.
It's fairly clear to me and, should push come to shove, will be fairly clear to the courts and to Congress, that the law was not intended to be a "gotcha!" moment used to deny citizenship to the children of life-long U.S. citizens in their late teens who happen to be out of the country when they give birth.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.chicagotribune.com ...
I’d fly down there just to watch!
Here is what I look for in any article on this subject:
(1) Does it distinguish between the long form Birth Certificate and short form Certification of Live Birth?
(2) Does it acknowledge that Obama has not released his long form certificate?
(3) Does it explain why Obama has not released his long form certificate?
(4) Does it acknowledge that Hawaii grants Hawaiian birth certificates to children of Hawaiian mothers who give birth outside Hawaii?
(5) Does it address whether or not Obama could have a perfectly legitimate Certification of Live Birth, exactly like the form Obama released on the Internet, even if he had been born outside the USA?
The MSM coverage only occasionally gets to (2) before degenerating into insults. The linked factcheck.org piece makes a stab at (3), but misses:
The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department.We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response. (emphasis added)Would real journalists have accepted that lack of response to such a critical question? How pathetic. Actually, the question they should have asked is "If President Barack Obama directed you to release to the public a copy of his long form certificate, would you do so?" Would that have risked an answer they weren't looking for?
For lurkers, this is the best FR thread I have seen on Certifigate:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2139603/posts
For the record, I think it is more likely that Obama was born in Hawaii than elsewhere, and I think that the widely released COLB is probably legitimate. But those are just guesses. A lot more certainty is easily available.
It is reasonable to insist that Obama provide the best available documentation of his birth, but he has not done so. Why?
You make an excellent point. If the COLB is a forgery, that alone is a felony, checkmating the whole matter.
Tomorrow, I will order the Post-It notes. I think it is a way to get the idea out without defacing property or making it hard to clean up. I would like to get the message out but I don't want to irritate people either.
The only ones that have disgraced themselves are the COWARDLY LAPDOG journalists
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
And...Our cowardly conservative talk show hosts.
All of them have lost credibility with me.
The Marine, Judge Carter, is about to “come out”. Judge Carter won't consider natural born status a “technical” matter.
H*ll yeah and we need to get everyone we know at those Town Hall mettings to show them how mad we are about everything AND the Birth Certificate.
I am tired on Congress playing dumb on the BC.
“Look for alot more of this type of argument in the weeks ahead.”
Puts me in mind of what started out as a third-rate burglary.
Town Hall meetings with CongressScum and Imperial Senators. Get as many people as you can at everyone of your local Town Hall meetings and demand Hussein provide BC.
this is the part that has really shocked me about all this.
I TOTALLY assumed that at the very LEAST our government had a process in place that checked all information on a candidate before they were allowed to run for president.
at least before THIS president.
what gets me is this: the entire GOP during the election....NO ONE thought to check his credentials??????
NO ONE????!!!
Has Barack Obama personally certified that the released COLB is legitimate? If not, forget your checkmate.
The long form certificate is much more important than the COLB. I don't mind the forgery issue being used to force release of the long form, but since Obama might have a perfectly legitimate Hawaiian COLB even if he was born in Kenya, it is a mistake to make forgery the entire issue.
Much of the factcheck.org piece addresses the issue of forgery. The apparent point of the piece is to convince people that if the COLB is not a forgery, there is no reason to demand release of the long form. Wrong.
Here is an FR post of mine from last November:
Would you want to be the DNC official demanding that Obama produce documents that he did not want to produce? What position would that procure for you in the Obama Administration? Let someone else handle it.
Would you want to be the journalist explaining to a liberal editor that you wanted to do a story that might deprive the world of its Obamessiah? Your MSM colleagues would regard that as blasphemy, lèse majesté, or both. Let someone else handle it.`
Would you want to be the FBI or CIA official calling for the investigation of a black presidential candidate, with the certainty that your racist investigation would leak to the New York Times? Talk about a career ending idea! Let someone else handle it.
So now it is up to the courts.
~~~~
Isn't it fascinating how he somehow left out Obama's alleged British citizen father ? Eriz Zorn is a snarky, Chicago lefty and a doofus!
As soon as I saw your name I knew you were the one who came up with the idea.
Glad you responded because you deserve the credit for the idea.
I think it’s a great idea and until I get around to ordering some, I’ll just write it on the post-its myself. Nothing like the “personal touch”!
“It would destroy the GOP at this point..”
This issue, regardless of how it turns out, is not going to ‘destroy’ the GOP. The GOP has not even bit on this story. Get real.
That's even better.
The foreign press are far better at covering
the real stories here than ours alleged
journalists. Sic ‘em!
And/or perhaps more so, wasn't it Nancy Pelosi who was responsible for 'vetting' 0's kredentials? (and still is)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.