Posted on 11/29/2008 3:47:31 PM PST by Deepest End
Yikes!
Can’t have the fox guarding the hen house.
You just said in a handful of words what took me pages to say. ;)
nufsed
Excellent description and analogy fightinJAG.
So, in your opinion how is this remedied? Is a SCOTUS decision inevitable? What if they don’t hear it?
And if SCOTUS does hear one of the cases we’re familiar with, will that invariably address the accountability issue?
Or can eligibility issue of a particular candidate, in this case the President Elect, be viewed as a singular matter without addressing the verification process?
sorry post 46 meant to go to fightinJAG
We’re in new territory here. Can’t remember anyone using fraud to run for president. Except liberal positions of course.
In more ways than we imagine I'm afraid
The DNC failed to verify Obama’s eligibility, and reaped millions of dollars in donations. I wonder! Could the DNC be prosecuted under either state or federal RICO acts?
You said: “someone is going to have to show a judge evidence that Obama wasn’t born in Honolulu, like an alternate birth certificate from Mobassa, Kenya or Indonesia. Thus far no one has produced such evidence or even a sworn affidavit to that effect.”
Well, Berg’s filing actually does include affidavit from someone attesting he interviewed paternal grandmother and she said twice she was there for birth in Mombassa. I’m not a lawyer: even though it’s a sworn affidavit, perhaps it is tantamount to hearsay evidence, hence invalid. Unfortunately, grandmother doesn’t speak English, so the best you could get would be a translator’s affidavit attesting to what questions were asked and her replies. Is that too regarded as hearsay?
You also said: “Hawaii Revised Statutes (338-13(b]) require that if there is writing in the “evidence of delayed filing or alteration” space on the long form Certificate of Live Birth, that would also appear on the short form Certificate of Live Birth.”
Strictly speaking, this could be the motivation behind forged COLBs. If Polarik’s analysis is correct, someone has taken extraordinary and repeated (and, I believe, felonious) efforts to fabricate the appearance of a legitimate COLB—i.e., not only throwing up an altered digital image, but also forged copies of photos of the same COLB. I concur with you that it’s hard to dodge the fact that 2 different newspapers in August 1961 printed notices of this birth—which squares with an 8/8/61 registrar filing date and perhaps 8/4/61 birth date as well.
Yet if BHO were indeed born in Honolulu, who could possibly justify resorting to felonious activity to create an altered copy of a perfectly legitimate document? Something is quite puzzling here. If some alteration were noted on short-form COLB, this would have raised a lot of questions/demand to see the long form Certificate. So someone on the campaign staff might have opted to press the Easy button on the presumption no one could possibly be paying attention enough to reveal the forgery.
Notwithstanding his stonewalling on BC, in many ways Obama has been an unusually open book (certainly for a politician) in terms of essentially acknowledging he was born to a teen mom whose shotgun bigamous marriage to a less than exemplary model of a father culminated in being dragged hither and yon, raised more by grandparents than his mother and indulging in both hard and soft illegal drugs in high school. So in that context, it’s truly hard to imagine what on the long form certificate could possibly be embarrassing enough to warrant criminal activity? If parents were listed as unmarried, or father was listed as Unknown (or even Frank Davis), would this somehow have jeopardized Obama’s shot at the presidency? Similarly, Obama has very consciously CHOSEN to litigate what should be a simple matter to resolve, apparently spending $1 million in the process.
It COULD just be a giant game of Gotcha! in which Obama’s lawyers, if forced to show up at SC, pull out the real long form certificate, roll their eyes and essentially write off those raising questions as lunatics. But if that were the explanation, can Obama really count on a sympathetic response from either Supremes or the public? The Court might dismiss the case, but any justice, individually or collectively, could pen a very sharply worded rebuke to Obama saying that as a lawyer, his ethics and training should have guided him to resolve this matter expeditiously and efficiently and that his failure to do so had squandered vast amounts of resources (his own and taxpayers) unnecessarily. Why would Obama deliberately risk a black eye during a honeymoon period that to all appearances is likely to be shorter than usual?
The birth allegedly took place in Honolulu on the 4th of August. It was registered with the state Health Dapartment according to Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth on the 7th of August. The birth announcement was taken from the “Health Bureau Statistics” (which it says at the top of the Honolulu Advertiser’s Births, Marriages, Deaths section) to be listed in the paper on Sunday, August 13th.
Yes. That sounds right.
Obama is a constitutional lawyer. He knows and his attorneys know that Hawaii law is very clear. No one gets access to a vital record without the express permission of those with a tangible interest in the document. Until the present time, “tangible interest” has meant the person named on the certificate, their immediate family or persons that the person named on the certificate designates to view the vital record.
It could conceivably take years of litigation to expand the definition of “tangible interest” to the American people or a candidate’s political opponents. Thus far, the Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled that Andy Martin, an American citizen did not have standing to demand release of Obama’s birth certificate and the US District Court in Philadelphia has ruled that Phillip Berg, an American citizen also does not have standing. The US Supreme Court will soon decide whether or not to review the Berg decision.
Lawsuits filed in several other states have also failed to force release of the original document, which would invalidate the Hawaii Vital Records confidentiality statutes.
I STILL maintain (and I am NOT a lawyer) that someone is going to have to show a judge, a jury or justices proof that Obama’s internet posted Certificate of Live Birth is indeed a forgery. Thus far no court has entertained that issue.
It is telling to me that neither the Bush Administration, through its Justice Department nor John Sidney McCain III or the Republican National Committee representing McCain-Palin have joined any lawsuits demanding release of Obama’s original Certificate of Live Birth.
It seems to me that the only other persons to receive electoral votes in the election, might have “standing” in these cases but they are choosing not be get involved.
“It could conceivably take years of litigation to expand the definition of “tangible interest” to the American people or a candidate’s political opponents.”
If this is truly what’s going on, AUDACITY doesn’t begin to describe it.
But:
a) notice that SC was able to work VERY quickly in 2000 when this was required to end weeks of uncertainty surrounding the Bush-Gore election;
b) prior to the actual election, voter “standing” WAS only hypothetical in that no one could demonstrate with CERTAINTY they would be harmed by his name on ballot etc. Perhaps a court has to wait until after electors cast ballots on 12/15 (or they are officially “received” by Congress in early January), but it seems like at SOME point in the process, voters have standing else we are no longer a government of the people.
c) as in the case of evidence that is classified or otherwise privileged, courts do have policies/procedures that would permit them to adjudicate without compromising an individual’s privacy. How the SC could do so while still giving the plaintiff an opportunity to challenge the authenticity of any document proffered is not clear.
d) finally, when rights collide, courts sometimes have to rule that the public’s right to know supersedes an individual’s right to privacy etc. 300+ million Americans surely have a right to know whether their president is constitutionally qualified for office. When weighed against this, Obama’s right to privacy pales in comparison. Indeed, given that a purported copy of short form has been released, the Obama already has waived any privacy interest in its contents.
e) Moreover, the public’s right to know probably could be satisfied with little or no sacrifice of Obama’s privacy (if indeed that is the motive explaining his bizarre handling of this matter). All that is needed is a mutually acceptable procedure whereby 1 or more trusted but discreet individuals (I’d say “former presidents” but some such individuals are neither trustworthy nor discreet, so perhaps a mutually agreed-upon panel of federal district judges could undertake this task) are given the opportunity to review versions of short and long form BC’s (provided directly by Hawaiian authorities, not by Obama or his campaign!) to ascertain whether there is any inconsistency between the two requiring explanation.
Alternatively, Obama could be asked to identify and justify specific fields on the long form BC whose disclosure would violate his privacy. If the panel given power to examine this concurred, then a redacted version of long form BC could be produced by State of Hawaii that could both be made publicly available and also subject to careful testing/scrutiny as to its authenticity by qualified forensic document specialists.
Forgot to add: for a candidate who ran on a platform of “Yes We Can!” Obama certainly has engaged in way too much “No We Can’t (or Won’t)” behavior. Any semblance of an unbiased MSM would have shamed/cajoled/ridiculed him into giving the public what it has every right to know without having to leap over the endless plethora of legal barriers his lawyers have scattered to slow things down.
If Obama really is constitutionally qualified to be president, how could a man so obviously fearful of “just words” on his BC possibly be entrusted to sit down with enemies of the US and negotiate anything that could be in our self-interest? If he’s NOT constitutionally qualified, it’s obviously problematic in a WHOLE host of ways if we opted to just look the other way. The Supreme Court knows this. They knew well the can of worms they were opening in 2000 in settling the FL recount, but they stepped up to the plate and did it anyway. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito do not strike me as more timid stuff than Rehnquist and O’Connor.
Excellent post.
Interesting speculations and alternatives! We’ll all know soon enough if the USSC will take any action on this matter.
Forgot to add: for a candidate who ran on a platform of “Yes We Can!” Obama certainly has engaged in way too much “No We Can’t (or Won’t)” behavior. Any semblance of an unbiased MSM would have shamed/cajoled/ridiculed him into giving the public what it has every right to know without having to leap over the endless plethora of legal barriers his lawyers have scattered to slow things down.
If Obama really is constitutionally qualified to be president, how could a man so obviously fearful of “just words” on his BC possibly be entrusted to sit down with enemies of the US and negotiate anything that could be in our self-interest? If he’s NOT constitutionally qualified, it’s obviously problematic in a WHOLE host of ways if we opted to just look the other way. The Supreme Court knows this. They knew well the can of worms they were opening in 2000 in settling the FL recount, but they stepped up to the plate and did it anyway. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito do not strike me as more timid stuff than Rehnquist and O’Connor.
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