First, even after the election people were still trying to define what a "Natural Born Citizen" is, and whether there is a third class of citizenship between Natural Born and naturalized for people who are born citizens but aren't "Natural Born Citizens". Now maybe it isn't defined in US law because the only two jobs it matters for are president and vice president and Congress never considered that someone might toe that line. Does a Natural Born citizen have to be born inside United States territory to two citizen parents (the most restrictive definition I saw which would have even eliminated McCain)? Is anyone born in the United States to anyone Natural Born based on the fact that they were born a citizen according to the current interpretation of the 14th amendment (least restrictive definition I saw)? Can a Natural Born citizen have a dual citizenship at birth, or does that eliminate him from the Natural Born category?
Second, the method of getting a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth remained fuzzy (although I might have missed the definitive answer). How long after the birth could you apply for one? What documentary evidence did it take to get one? Is a mother's claim sufficient?
Next, the aim of the investigation seemed scatter-shot. Was the attempt to prove that Barack Obama was born outside of the country? Was it to prove that he gave up his citizenship when his stepfather brought him to Indonesia?(with a followup question of whether a parent can give up a child's US citizenship, or if it can't be given up until he's 18 years old?) Was it to prove that he was born with a dual citizenship and therefore might be unable to be President? We never hit one solid reason why he wasn't eligible, instead we threw up a lot of "well, it could be this" choices.
Also there seemed to be a tenacity on holding onto evidence which didn't matter anymore. My primary point on that were the people who tried to prove that the originally published COLB was a forgery (as opposed to an official document produced by the State of Hawaii). A lot of Freepers made a big deal about white borders around the text on the first COLB posted. However it was pretty clear to me those were artifacts from having a JPEG image that was compressed way too much and trying to compare it to a less compressed "official" version. When I said so some were questioning whether I was a troll.
A lot of Freepers made a big deal about white borders around the text on the first COLB posted. However it was pretty clear to me those were artifacts from having a JPEG image that was compressed way too much and trying to compare it to a less compressed “official” version.
***Is it possible it was clear to you but not to others? How can we avoid such discordance in the future? There was a lot of other evidence besides white borders that suggested the CoLBs offered were forgeries. Did you overlook that other evidence? Did you debunk Polarik’s 160 page report on Factcheck’s CoLB? If so, I missed that. Where is it?
When I said so some were questioning whether I was a troll.
***There was troll activity even back then. Let’s assume, for a moment, that there really were trolls operating on CoLB threads. How can you differentiate yourself from them? Can you see that this is in the best interest of both sides — guys like you whom I presume would want to differentiate, and guys like me who would want to identify & isolate trolls? We needed a definition of troll, and we needed to be able to match up what freepers were doing with respect to the definition. Today there’s still no definition for ordinary freepers, and the mods seem to operate with an extracurricular definition.