Posted on 07/28/2009 5:29:21 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack’s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.
Much foolishness has become attached to the question of President Obama’s place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration. We’ve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie O’Donnell has given us much mirth with her metallurgical expertise, while Andrew Sullivan has beclowned himself and tarnished the good name of The Atlantic with his investigation into the “real” parentage of Trig Palin. Most notable, the Iraq War summoned the craziness in a big way, and there are those who still shudder over their espressos at the mention of the Carlyle Group. And there is a fair amount of crossover between those fixated on Obama’s birth certificate and the 9/11 “truthers” — lawyer Phil Berg, for instance, is a player in both worlds. There is nothing that President Obama’s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003.
The birth-certificate business is not a uniquely conservative phenomenon; the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya seems to have originated with a Hillary Clinton supporter at a blog called The Blue State. Either way, this fantasy is not particularly widespread within the conservative movement, but it has attracted enough interest that it needs to be addressed.
The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.
If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.
The attention paid to President Obama’s place of birth is not unprecedented. In fact, it may be the only thing President Obama has in common with Pres. Chester Arthur, whose opponents whispered that he had been born in Canada. A number of unsuccessful presidential candidates—George Romney, Barry Goldwater, and Lowell Weicker among them—actually were born outside of the United States (in Mexico, the Arizona Territory, and Paris, respectively) to American parents and thereby into American citizenship. If the conspiracy theorists have evidence that President Obama went through the naturalization process, let them show it. But there is no such evidence, because this theory is based on unreality, as two minutes’ examining the claims of its proponents reveals. The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is that a lack of evidence for the theory is taken as yet more evidence for the theory. Indeed, the maddening thing about dealing with conspiracy hobbyists of this or any sort is the ever-shifting nature of their argument and their alleged evidence: Never mind the birth certificate, his step-grandmother said he was born in Kenya! (No, she didn’t.)
One of the unfortunate consequences of this red-herring discussion is that there are plenty of questions about Obama’s background and history that we would like to have answered. In spite of two books of memoirs, there remain murky areas in his biography. And when it comes to those college transcripts, count us among those who’d love to know whether Dr. Bailout ever took an advanced economics class and how he performed in it.
Barack Obama may prefer European-style socialized health care. He may consider himself a citizen of the Earth and sometimes address his audiences as “people of the world,” as though he were born not in another country but on another planet. Like Bruce Springsteen, he has a lot of bad political ideas; but he was born in the U.S.A.
No, I don’t believe you’re correct. If Obama was born outside the U.S. and one of his parents was over 18 and a U.S. citizen he would be a natural born citizen. He could have been a dual citizen, but he still would be considered a natural born citizen.
So you are going to tell me that his Grandparents could not have placed the birth announcement? Only the parents? That has nothing to do with breaking into the newspaper. Grandparents place birth announcements all the time.
“Look at Palin. She keeps getting sued and the fact that she has to spend lots of money defending herself (she says so) doesn’t mean she is guilty.”
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Absolutely no comparison. Palin has been the target of frivolous ethics complaints that she had to DEFEND against. This is a request that Obama could easily comply with by RELEASING HIS LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE.
Excerpt from attorney Orly Taitz letter to Congress:
“There is plenty of evidence of Mr. Obama being born in Kenya and obtaining his Hawaiian birth certificate based on a statement of his grandparent only, who simply didn’t want to deal with immigration and not based on any records from any hospitals. Extensive searches in the State of Hawaii showed no birthing records for his mother [Stanley] Ann Dunham in any hospital in Hawaii.”
Why did he issue an executive order his first day in office sealing all his records, college, birth, everything!Excuse me but Obama didn't do that - and he can't. No POTUS could.
That World NUT Daily article that started this EO nonsense was complete bull. An EO only pertains to the Executive Branch of the government and how its administered / regulated(1). That EO was only for his Presidential papers, nothing else.
And as I recall Dubya issued a similar EO 'protecting' certain Clinton Admin documents, and that didn't sit well for those who wanted Bush 'to get' Clinton.
(1) Unless further acted upon by Congress.
This is exactly my case. Why spend this kind of money and effort on keeping a document from public view which a liberal organization has already produced a supposed copy of an authenticated document?
I don't care who you are you don't make an effort to hide what is supposed to be a matter of public record without a hidden agenda!
Personally, I think Obama is a NBC, but something is not right when a President feels it's necessary to hide his own Original Birth Records from public view.
“I read this and that the birth was listed in two newspapers
seems to end the argument.”
The New York Times recently made 7 factual errors in the Walter Cronkite obituary. What makes you willing to trust any newspaper without verification?
You’re very late, but welcome to the party anyway.
Others have pointed out that the newspaper announcement does NOT say where he was born and that the address is wrong. It doesn’t end there. There were twins, the Nordyke girls shown in the kindergarten picture, born that day but who’s announcement is missing. Look at the newspaper, notice that the list of announcements are one continuous list except where the advertisements are cut and pasted between some names. There is a line at each ad showing where they were inserted. No other birth has a cut and paste line except Hussein’s and the kid below. Why mess with the other kid’s? Because it would be too obvious if the column was too short and to have lines only on Hussein’s so the other kid was added to make up the room for the extra space when the twins’ might have/could be/looks suspicious was taken out. Now, there’s claims there are no originals of the newspaper just as there’s no originals of the long form bc and the only record missing from the kindergarten class which would have back up info is his. But sure, whatever, let’s just take his word for it and move on.
It's an interesting strategy to make the voting public suspicious and mistrustful of his honesty, integrity and right to be President. Plus it seems to be impacting his ability to institute his agenda. Do you believe the number of birthers is increasing or decreasing the longer this goes on?
This is what the Obama Adminstration is all about-Revenge,
Redistribution,and Revenge!
I’ve decided I believe the many reports that there is no other form out there. He has nothing to show. Everyone can’t be in on the conspiracy. I choose to go with sanity whenever possible.
It’s easyh to believe this editorial was written by “The Editors”. It appears that different editors wrote different paragraphs and they never got together to compare.
When Hawaii issued birth certificates they notified the papers. In addition grandparents often notify newspapers of children born - even elsewhere - so other people in the area are made aware.
The key issue here is, Hawaii issued birth certificates to children not born in Hawaii. Look it up. It is a known fact. Only the long form certificate indicates where the child was actually born and if it was abroad or not. If Obama was not born in the US he did not qualify even for US citizenship much less being “natural born”. His mother was not in the US long enough after turning 14 to qualify her son. His father was not a US citizen at all.
Those are the facts of the matter.
Another interesting tidbit is the address given in the Obama's birth newspaper release doesn't match where any of the family lived. None of the neighbors have any recollection of a black kid living at that address at the time.
As the above article says - what the state of Hawaii issued is good enough for any purpose to prove his citizenship.
As the article above says: The grandmother never did say she witnessed his birth - you can read the actual transcript - the complete transcript - of the telephone call for yourself and you'll see she confirms he was born in hawaii.
The idea that Obama has spent millions hiding his certificate is false. The idea that he is shelling out money hand over fist is often used as an argument - but the attorneys have all done the work pro-bono (they are attorneys donating their time to the democratic party) or have been attorneys employed by the justice department. It isn't costing him a thing.
There are people who say even if he was born in Hawaii, he still isn't natural born - because hawaii was not a state (it was), because his mother had to live in the US first years after he was born (she doesn't), because his father was a british subject, because his mom wasn't yet 18 (she was). Head over to
www.usconstituion.net - and read for yourself what does and does not constitute a natural born citizen.
So why not just show the long form? Assuming he has it - I don't have mine, for instance - but I do have a "short form" that I requested when I joined the military a lifetime ago, The immediate answer that comes to my mind is that it works much better for Obama to have his opposition embroiled in our own little "9/11 Truther" - something that really doesn't stand a chance of doing any damage - but will keep us conservatives occupied. And if it does get blown up big - say next month - won't it be great for the Dems to have every news network do a special investigation and come up with the same damn stuff on national tv that any of us can just by going through google? Because you know they aren't going to dig any deeper - just a visit to fact check, urban legends.com, snopes, and a constitutional lawyer talking about what is and isn't a natural born citizen. We'd look like idiots, he'll seem that much shinier, and the dems will use the honey moon to roll over a few of our rinos who'll not want to be seen as being on the side of the "birthers." In the end, we'll just have gone a long way towards getting a few of his special projects passed - like tax hikes, socialized medicine, and re-criminalizing of wealth and success.
State [Hawaii] declares Obama birth certificate real, again
Wash Post | 7/27/09 | staff
Posted on 07/27/2009 7:03:39 PM PDT by pissant
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2302449/posts
Berg's case went all the way to the Supreme Court. To fight all those appeals and to manage all the the lawsuits across the country took and continues to take attorney time.
Well?...Maybe all those attorneys are donating their time, but that time still has a dollar value even if donated.
And...Anyone who has had a divorce, or knows someone who has had a divorce, can pull out a pocket calculator and figure out the value of the attorney time that has gone into to suppressing the release of Obama’s documents.
You must really think Americans are stupid.
Oh...By the way, U.S. attorneys showed up for Keyes case before Judge Carter in California ( about two weeks ago). Few Americans would think that U.S. attorneys are working for free. The taxpayer is paying them.
Is there a journalist anywhere with a MOLECULE of curiosity left? Why hasn’t a journalism student at some college in Hawaii taken a smidgen of initiative and gotten off his or her butt and gone to that dumpy apartment complex Obama had Grandma living in and interviewed her neighbors???? How about picking up a phone book and speaking with the relatives of the people who actually lived at the address listed in Obama’s birth announcement? Documents are all well and good, but nothing replaces old-fashioned reporting. But today’s journalists find doing more work than walking to the fax machine outrageous. They all have graduated from the Maynard G. Krebs School of Journalism.
And of course you ignore the fact that his father was NOT an American citizen. How do you define ‘natural born citizen’?
If you are from Wichita and you are in the service stationed in Germany and you have a child born, where would you post the birth announcement? Would you not post it in your home town?
The birth announcements are nothing more than information provided by the parents or the family. Interestingly the announcements do not note the place of birth, only the fact of it. The Long Form Birth Certificate would provide the information regarding the actual place of birth. Why haven't we seen that? How hard would it be for Obama to have that released?
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