Dave Weigel has a great article up at Slate setting forth even further debunking of the lies surrounding the contention that Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States and thus ineligible to serve as President of the United States:
How did the citizenship rumor get started? Ironically, it began when the Obama campaign tried to debunk some other conspiracies. After Obama locked up the nomination in early June, low-level talk radio and blog chatter peddled rumors that Obama’s real middle name was Muhammad, that his father was not really Barack Obama, and that he was not really born in Hawaii. The campaign released a facsimile of Obama’s certificate of live birth. Requested from the state in 2007, the certificate reported that Obama was, indeed, born in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961.
The certificate was a bullet that didn’t put down the horse. Why, skeptics asked, release a new form from Hawaii instead of the original paper that Obama’s parents got in 1961—the one that Obama found in a box of his dad’s knickknacks in Dreams From My Father? They quickly came up with an explanation: The certificate was forged. Anonymous digital image experts with handles like Techdude and Polarik sprung from the woodwork to prove (shades of Rathergate!) that pixels, spacing, and indentation on the form indicated that the Obama campaign had created the certificate with Adobe Photoshop. The state of Hawaii’s official statement that the certificate was legitimate didn’t make a dent—after all, who is Registrar of Vital Statistics Alvin Onaka to argue with Techdude?
This “forgery” became an article of faith in the Obama conspiracy community. When a Hillary Clinton supporter found a birth announcement for Obama from the Aug. 13, 1961, edition of the Honolulu Advertiser, the theorists were unbowed: After all, the Obama family could have phoned that in from Kenya. When Pennsylvania lawyer Philip J. Berg filed the first birth-related injunction against Obama this August, asking that Obama be ruled “ineligible to run for United States Office of the President,” he alleged that the certificate had been proved a forgery by the “extensive Forensic testing” of anonymous experts and claimed that Obama’s campaign had simply inserted his name over that of his half-sister, Maya. That would have been quite a trick, as Maya Soetoro-Ng was actually born in Indonesia.
But what, you might ask about the supposed fact that Barack Obama’s Grandmother said she witnessed his birth in Kenya ?
Well, that’s not necessarily true either:
On Oct. 16, an Anabaptist minister named Ron McRae called Sarah Hussein Obama, the president-elect’s 86-year-old paternal step-grandmother, at her home in Kenya. Two translators were on the line when McRae asked if the elder Obama was “present” when the president-elect was born. One of the translators says “yes.” McRae contacted Berg and gave him a partial transcript of the call with a signed affidavit. He opted not to include the rest of the call, in which he asks the question more directly—”Was he born in Mombassa?”—and the translators, finally understanding him, tell him repeatedly that the president-elect was born in Hawaii.
And, as Weigel notes, this isn’t going to stop with one, or more, Supreme Court dismissals:
If Obama doesn’t submit to the investigation—and so far, Obama and Democratic National Committee lawyers have ignored or waited for dismissal of the lawsuits and complaints—Schultz will go ahead and send packages of the key anti-Obama complaints to every Electoral College voter. “They’re going to be warned that if they go ahead and cast their votes for Mr. Obama, then they’ve committed treason to the Constitution,” Schultz told me on Wednesday.
(…)
It won’t stop if the Electoral College votes for Obama, as the skeptics will try to get a congressman or senator to officially challenge the result. Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah was willing to believe that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams From My Father, so the skeptics might have a chance.
And if every vote certification goes off without a hitch and Obama is inaugurated on Jan. 20? Gary Kreep is ready for that.
“When Obama starts signing executive orders and legislation,” Kreep says, “I’ll be filing lawsuits unless and until he proves he’s an American citizen. Some judge, someday, is going to want this proved on the merits. You can run, but you can’t hide.”
And thus we witness the birth of the Obama Era version of the wacko fringe.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:20 am
[...] at Below The Beltway This entry was posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 and is filed under Barack. You can follow any [...]
December 5th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Great article! Its too bad that:
1) They wont release his birth certificate from hawaii
2) They wont release his university enrollement
3) His grandmother says she was there in Kenya when he was born
4) He wont reply to the supreme court.
Whats he hiding? Get a clue.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Gustav,
1. Yes he did, he released the same document that any person born in Hawaii would receive from the state.
2. What relevance is that to his citizenship ?
3. Read the article quoted above, the interview with her was selectively edited and left out the part where she specifically said he was born in Hawaii
4. I presume you are referring to the fact that he did not file a response to Philip Berg’s Petition for a Writ of Certiorari. Under the Rules of the Supreme Court of the United States, he is not required to file a response unless specifically ordered to, which didn’t happen in this case
December 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Two posts on the topic in a short period of time? Sounds like you’re more obsessed about it than anyone else.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Doug, I appreciate the debunking. Unfortunately, arguing with the likes of Gustav is less productive than trying to teach a pig to sing.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Mike,
I don’t care about Gustav — well, Hurricane Gustav maybe, but that’s another subject — what’s pissing me off is that otherwise rational people are starting to repeat this nonsense.
It’s black helicopters all over again
December 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
if obama was white nobody would ask these questions.
December 5th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
And John McCain was born in Panama.
December 5th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
And the sad fact is that nobody wants him to be President Simply becaus he’s black.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 am
Sorry Doug you are wrong. This has nothing to do with the COLB. The problem is people don’t know what the definition of “natural born citizen” is. They think if you are born in the US you are an NBC. Wrong. In 1758 a treatise was written by Emerich de Vattel called “The Law of Nations”. Under clause 212 “Citizens and Natives” it states …’The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens… Barack Obama has freely admitted his father was NOT a US citizen. Therefore Obama is ABSOLUTELY NOT a “natural born citizen”. He is therefore INELIGIBLE to be POTUS.
December 26th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I congratulate these fine upstanding American Citizens for their courage against all odds to defend the constitution of the U.S. Obama is not a Natural Born Citizen as the phrase was understood by the Framers of the Constitution. During that time it was well understood the meaning of natural born citizen – “The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.”. By law Obama at birth was a citizen of the U.S. And a citizen of the United Kingdom. The statutes defining him as a Citizen of the U.S. at birth were not intended to define the eligibility for President and do not include the term “natural born citizen” . At this time no court has ruled that the 14th Amendment and subsequent statutes were intended to clarify the meaning of “natural-born citizen”. Article X of the constitution says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It seems to me the authority(power) to determine the eligibility of the presidential candidate’s has not been delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor is it prohibited by it to the states, therefore it is reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. This seems to me to be sufficient authority for people of the United States to investigate and to determine the eligibility of a candidate for the presidency. So how can the Courts say that people don’t have standing?
January 12th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
I find this information continue to be sorely lacking:
As given in § 1401. Nationals and citizens of United States at birth
The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth:
Conditions are clearly given.
1. Only one parent has to be a natural-born citizen of the United States of
America in order for a child to be a natural-born citizen.
2. Obama’s mother was born in Kansas to natural-born citizen parents (one
would have sufficed but there were two).
3. If one parent is a natural-born citizen, the child is also a natural-born
citizen, no matter where the child is born, even the planet Jupiter!
I have never seen any definitive proof that Obama’s mother was NOT a natural born citizen. None. Ever.
Until that is proven, he is a citizen.
Case closed.