I'd like to start with a hard copy of the COLB.
What you say may be true, that Obama sends any documents straight to a judge, without letting the other side see anything. I don't know how a courtroom procedure works where one side is not allowed to cross-examine the evidence, but as we know from recent Obama decisions, the rules are different for him.
-PJ
“I’d like to start with a hard copy of the COLB.”
“What you say may be true, that Obama sends any documents straight to a judge, without letting the other side see anything.”
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Courts always want the shortest chain of custody of evidence. I seriously doubt that in some hypothetical case a judge would order Obama to go to Hawaii, get a COLB, and present it to the court. Either Obama orders it from Hawaii to be sent directly to the court, or the court skips Obama entirely and orders it direct from Hawaii.
Impeaching the physical document itself would be completely futile. You need to impeach the information asserted on the document. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a birther but I have been telling the birthers for a long time how they might actually succeed instead of chasing the will o’ the wisp. For instance:
You can impeach the COLB by demonstrating that the information on COLB’s does not necessarily match the information on the primary document. Birthers have been arguing that foreign born persons have COLB’s that give place of birth as Hawaii, while the primary document states elsewhere. Bringing forth one such person would create SOME doubt. (Maybe it’s just a bureaucratic glitch.) Bringing forth two is a stronger doubt. Ten people, and I think any court would conclude that COLB’s are not reliable and the primary document must be examined. But so far, even with all the recent hullabaloo about the birthers, not one such person has been brought forward.
Another line of attack would be to impeach the information on Obama’s COLB. There are many possibilities. One is that international airlines make out passenger manifests. How long do they keep them? Dunno. But apparently neither does any birther. An August 9, 1961 BOAC passenger manifest for a flight from Nairobi to Cairo with the names “Mr. & Mrs. Barack Obama & infant” would powerfully impeach Obama’s COLB. Most of the birthers have the subtlety of a belligerent drunk, so I’ll suggest how to start:
Phone call to British Airways (successors to BOAC): “Hello, British Airways? I’m researching the history of international air travel. Could you direct me to your archivist? Gee, thanks!”
“Hello, BOAC archivist? I’m researching the history of international air travel. Could I make an appointment to view the archives? Gee, thanks!”
That phone call could be worth more than the millions of birther thread comments that have been posted on FreeRepublic.