Blogger admits Hawaii birth certificate forgery, subverting Obama claims (Uh-oh)

Israel Insider ^ | 3 July 2008 | Reuven Koret

[SE Mom]

Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fraudulent Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same blog entry where the supposedly authentic document appears.

The evidence of forgery and manipulation of images of official documents, triggered by Israel Insider's revelation of the collection of Hawaii birth certificate images on the Photobucket site and the detective work of independent investigative journalists and imaging professionals in the three weeks since the publication of the images, implicate the Daily Kos, an extreme left blog site, and the Obama campaign, in misleading the public with official-looking but manipulated document images of doubtful provenance.

The perceived unreliability of the image has provoked petitions and widespread demands for Obama to submit for objective inspection the paper versions of the "birth certificate" he claimed in his book Dreams from My Father was in his possession, as well as the paper version of the Certificate of Live Birth for which the image on the Daily Kos and the Obama "Fight the Smears" website was supposedly generated.

Without a valid birth certificate, Obama cannot prove he fulfills the "natural born citizen" requirement of the Constitution, throwing into doubt his eligibility to run for President.

McKinnon, who says he is 25-30 years old, operates a website called OpenDNA.com and uses the OpenDNA screen name on various web sites and blogs, including his comments and diary on The Daily Kos. In recent years he has divided his time between Long Beach, California and Vancouver, British Columbia. He is a Democratic political activist, frequent contributor to the left wing Daily Kos blog, and a fervent Barack Obama supporter.

[David]

Title 8 SEction 1401 (f) a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States;

Assuming the speculation is correct, Obama would qualify above.

No. To qualify under (f), his parentage must be "unknown"--Obama is known to be the child of Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr.

[P-Marlowe]

1409. Children born out of wedlock

When was that amendment passed?

If the amendment was made after Obama's birth, then he might be considered a "Citizen at birth," if he was born in Kenya, but he would not be a Natural Born Citizen.

In order to be a "Natural Born Citizen" you must have been born a Citizen and not made a citizen by legislative fiat. Congress does have the power to make anyone a citizen, or even a "citizen at birth", but they do not have the power to make a "Natural Born Citizen" out of a person who was not a citizen at the time of his birth.

[Spunky]

"If this wasn't to go into effect for people born before 1986, why would the military proviso be referenced with such an old date?"

That's just it. It was a MILITARY provision. Obama's parents were not military.

[DrC]

You said "Note that (g) itself states: "This proviso shall be applicable to persons born on or after December 24, 1952, to the same extent as if it had become effective in its present form on that date;""
IANAL either, but note that earlier in (g) it states "Provided, That any periods of honorable service in the Armed Forces of the United States, or...."
I think the operative word in what you have quoted is proviso. I'm pretty sure it references only the portion of paragraph (g) that begins with "Provided." See http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86757.pdf if you care to read more than you ever wanted to know on this topic.

[Gondring]

"Natural born citizen" is not defined, and, in fact, as written--without a hyphen--it means a "born citizen" who is natural. With a hyphen, if we assume one, it could mean someone who was not of woman born...thus preventing Macduff!

But when you look at the British meaning, it refers to citizens by birth, and it makes sense that those who are not "natural-born" would be those who are "natural-ized"...clearly, even this layman can see that he would not require naturalization, and falls under the "by birth" section of 8 USC 1401.

[P-Marlowe]

§ 1409. Children born out of wedlock

My research shows that that amendment was adopted in 1986 and therefore it was not in effect in 1961 and thus while it would make a person a citizen at birth, it would not make a person a "Natural Born" Citizen.

Thus while it would make Obama a Citizen, it would not give him "Natural Born" status. It would simply give him "Ex-Post Facto Legislatively Mandated Citizenship at Birth" status.

[mkjessup]

muawiyah ~ Oh, yeah, I did that BEFORE the law said anything about it. In another license bureau I could have put in “Martian” and they’d have accepted it.
mkjessup ~ So what do you and your Martian Overlords plan to do with us Earthlings?
Please don't eat us.

If they start with the fat ones, I'm doomed...

Point the Martians in the direction of the ones that are fatter than you. LOL

[Gondring]

Have you read it all? The military proviso just allows military people to count the years in the military toward the total.

B. Obama's mother didn't need credit for those years, anyway, so the military proviso isn't needed to help in meeting the 2-year/5-year/14-year-old requirement.

[dalight]

In preparing a response to your post, I researched your other recent posts and see you do have many posts in a thread about the question of whether Obama was born in US or Kenya. So I am pulling from all to highlight the places where you need to provide sources.

Its just a plain weakness of FR that it doesn't have a topical memory so that items of interest can be more easily accessed. We end up needing to repeat over and over in threads links to make these connections.

You said:

Initially, I attempted to follow the practice of citing references on the collateral issues however the volume of legal issues began to build up so I attempted to focus on them and stopped looking for references on the collateral questions

Well.. you have made quite a few statements that need backtracks to substantiate that have nothing to do with questions of law per se...

I am going to for the moment step away from the whole McCain isn't a natural citizen and such and the McCaskill bill that you haven't cited a source that actually contains language that helps Obama. Frankly, even without links you have provided enough substantial citations for your opinion for one to consider it regardless of what one takes away.

Lets work our way through these others one at a time..

The only thing that admits of a response is the Vital Statistics point. The newspapers in Hawaii of the day published each day, births and deaths and marriages of the preceding 24 hours. Someone has gone through and looked at library editions of those newspapers for August 3, 1961 to learn that nowhere in the first week of August is there publication of the birth of this guy under any of the available names. His mother doesn't appear anywhere as a mother either.

This is interesting.. but without who the "someone" is or where this "fact" is published (Link).. its pretty empty.. I am sure you can understand.. anyone can write anything..

I assume there is some factual background behind the Israel news reports regarding the investigation and product thereof, Kenya birth records demonstrating that Obama was born there. I assume further that he will never be able to produce a provable Certificate of his birth in Hawaii although it should be recognized that the Hawaii birth records employees are probably Liberals who support Obama and who will participate in any reasonable effort to support his position.

This needs a link to the article(s) mentioned. The next may just be a restatement of the former.. but it reflects more "facts" of interest without the grounding of the sources.

there is a reported interview of the "grandmother" and two of his half-siblings that purports to claim they were present at his birth in Kenya; and there is the Wayne Madsen update reporting that three investigators hired to investigate Obama's background in Kenya have located official records of his birth in Kenya confirming that his birth occurred in that country.

Link(s) please!

I think thats about all. When you cite these facts and in some place you do them all at once.. just drop in the links and that will handle the back chatter.

[Gondring]

Even if it had info he didn’t want to release? I doubt it.

You might have faith in his sweet, giving character, but I don’t.

[Spunky]

§ 1409. Children born out of wedlock
(a) The provisions of paragraphs (c), (d), (e), and (g) of section 1401 of this title, and of paragraph (2) of section 1408 of this title, shall apply as of the date of birth to a person born out of wedlock if—

This is addressing a person born out of wedlock, but they still had to fit in the critia as put forth on the date of their birth. In 1961 the citizen parent had to live in the U.S. 10 years. Five of those before the age of 16 and 5 after the age of 16. Since Barack was born when his mother was 18, she had not met the critera of the 5 years after the age of 16.

[DrC]

You said “Notwithstanding the provision of subsection (a) of this section, a person born, after December 23, 1952, outside the United States and out of wedlock shall be held to have acquired at birth the nationality status of his mother, if the mother had the nationality of the United States at the time of such person’s birth, and if the mother had previously been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year.”

But note this only refers to NATIONALITY, not CITIZENSHIP.
“While most people and countries use the terms “citizenship” and “nationality” interchangeably, U.S. law differentiates between the two [see Section 101(a)(21)-(22) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA)]. Under current law all U.S. citizens are also U.S. nationals, but not all U.S. nationals are U.S. citizens.” http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86755.pdf

[Gondring]

I think the operative word in what you have quoted is proviso. I'm pretty sure it references only the portion of paragraph (g) that begins with "Provided."

Agreed. Although I think you're missing my point. That proviso would be totally irrelevant for even the people needing credit for military service if the whole thing truly referred to only post-1986 births.

[dalight]

iven how many electrons we've pushed back and forth about the validity of Obama's BC, the amount of careful high resolution examinations we've made and the hours we've discussing pixel counts, do you think the 20 seconds an overloaded examiner spends on a BC during the Passport issuing process would catch even a moderately good forgery every time?

Well, this "fake" is new and the guy who did it was pretty talented but it only holds for posting on the internet. The passport examiners won't take copies, electronic images or such. They want original embossed and stamped documents or you get no where.

Moreso, if Obama provided a "fake" BC for his passport.. he could quit worrying about eligibility to be president and instead start worrying about staying out of prison.

Now what is more likely, is that he does have a Hawaii birth certificate but that it has something they don't want out.. so that a passport could be issued without any big issue as the question is just citizenship or not, rather than the question of meeting a Constitutional test, so at the time.. it wasn't an issue.

[Gondring]

And perhaps that’s the operative clause in this case. He said he didn’t look into that detail.

Also, note that things are different whether the father or mother is the citizen. The law didn’t always consider that.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Gadhafi says this:

Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi: Obama...Should Be Proud of His African, Muslim Identity

Isn't this what Obama is trying to hide....?

[Gondring]

Congress does have the power to make anyone a citizen, or even a "citizen at birth", but they do not have the power to make a "Natural Born Citizen" out of a person who was not a citizen at the time of his birth.

And your basis for that claim is...?

Section 1401 deals with citizens by birth...and those citizens are natural-born citizens, as opposed to those who have to be naturalized.

[Gondring]

McKinnon probably didn’t even originate the image. I think he modified an already existing spoof.

[dalight]

Obviously this is a good thread .. all you need to do is look at the views and the number of posts.

As to letting this matter drop. Thats lame. If FR earns its place in the world, its by this sort of analysis and debate.

Yea, there are several folks who make themselves look silly and careless, but mixed in with that chatter is some really good scholarship and FReeping.. and its a joy to see a thread like this what ever the subject, because it digs at the truth.

Well done, and don't apologize for doing a great job.

[null and void]

Point the Martians in the direction of the ones that are fatter than you. LOL

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