Posted on 07/28/2009 5:29:21 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial number on his birth certificate is 010641. Baby Barack’s birth was not heralded, as some of his partisans have suggested, by a star in the east, but it was heralded by the Honolulu Star, as well as the Honolulu Advertiser, each of which published birth announcements for young Mr. Obama.
Much foolishness has become attached to the question of President Obama’s place of birth, and a few misguided souls among the Right have indulged it. The myth that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president represents the hunt for a magic bullet that will make all the unpleasant complications of his election and presidency disappear. We are used to seeing conspiracy theories from the Left, for instance among the one in three Democrats who believe that 9/11 was an inside job conducted with the foreknowledge of the Bush administration. We’ve seen everything under the sun blamed on Dick Cheney and Halliburton, and Rosie O’Donnell has given us much mirth with her metallurgical expertise, while Andrew Sullivan has beclowned himself and tarnished the good name of The Atlantic with his investigation into the “real” parentage of Trig Palin. Most notable, the Iraq War summoned the craziness in a big way, and there are those who still shudder over their espressos at the mention of the Carlyle Group. And there is a fair amount of crossover between those fixated on Obama’s birth certificate and the 9/11 “truthers” — lawyer Phil Berg, for instance, is a player in both worlds. There is nothing that President Obama’s coterie would enjoy more than to see the responsible Right become a mirror image of the loopy Left circa 2003.
The birth-certificate business is not a uniquely conservative phenomenon; the allegation that Obama was born in Kenya seems to have originated with a Hillary Clinton supporter at a blog called The Blue State. Either way, this fantasy is not particularly widespread within the conservative movement, but it has attracted enough interest that it needs to be addressed.
The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.
If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy. Given that fact, we are loath even to engage the fanciful notion that President Obama was born elsewhere, contrary to the information on his birth certificate, but we note for the record that his mother was a native of Kansas, whose residents have been citizens of the United States for a very long time, and whose children are citizens of the United States as well.
The attention paid to President Obama’s place of birth is not unprecedented. In fact, it may be the only thing President Obama has in common with Pres. Chester Arthur, whose opponents whispered that he had been born in Canada. A number of unsuccessful presidential candidates—George Romney, Barry Goldwater, and Lowell Weicker among them—actually were born outside of the United States (in Mexico, the Arizona Territory, and Paris, respectively) to American parents and thereby into American citizenship. If the conspiracy theorists have evidence that President Obama went through the naturalization process, let them show it. But there is no such evidence, because this theory is based on unreality, as two minutes’ examining the claims of its proponents reveals. The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is that a lack of evidence for the theory is taken as yet more evidence for the theory. Indeed, the maddening thing about dealing with conspiracy hobbyists of this or any sort is the ever-shifting nature of their argument and their alleged evidence: Never mind the birth certificate, his step-grandmother said he was born in Kenya! (No, she didn’t.)
One of the unfortunate consequences of this red-herring discussion is that there are plenty of questions about Obama’s background and history that we would like to have answered. In spite of two books of memoirs, there remain murky areas in his biography. And when it comes to those college transcripts, count us among those who’d love to know whether Dr. Bailout ever took an advanced economics class and how he performed in it.
Barack Obama may prefer European-style socialized health care. He may consider himself a citizen of the Earth and sometimes address his audiences as “people of the world,” as though he were born not in another country but on another planet. Like Bruce Springsteen, he has a lot of bad political ideas; but he was born in the U.S.A.
But here is the most important thing and you need to accept it: the American people have already made the issue moot - dwelling on the matter will not change the outcome, no matter how much we may wish it were so.
The Constitution is far more threatened by Obama’s policies than by the vague circumstances of his life and birth. That is where we must expend our energies, rather than on chasing after elusive documentation that the Left and their news media accomplices are using to distract us and make us look foolish.
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By the way, why should you care, or any of us care what the liberal brain dead media and the liberal establishment thinks of us? Do you want to hear what I and others think of them?
And while we’re at it you said: “the American people have already made the issue moot”
Shall we just sit down and not oppose Obambi - at all...cause you know, the American people have already made opposing him (at all) moot - you know, the elections and all?
I agree that alynskyite radical marxists, are trying to ‘overwhelm’ the system. But asking for legitimate personal documents for our highest elected official is not ‘foolish’ - especially when they have absolutely no answers...if you ask me, it keeps them on the run, and creates doubts in the minds of EVERYONE related to BO’s true legitimacy.
We certainly see proof before our eyes that his admin is not the most transparent government - or whatever he claimed.
It is easily possible to keep up the pressure on this front, while doing so on the other fronts.
It amazes me how meticulously my documents, particularly my BC, have been scrutinized for jobs I’ve had. It seemed like overkill at the time. I had to have every single thing perfectly in order for HR to approve me for a job in which I could never kill or ruin a life, even on my worst day. Yet this guy just waltzed in unscrutinized for the most important job in the world: protecting 300 million citizens.
Obsession with the Constitution gets in the way of the Democrat/Republican agenda. When you don’t want to do something, any excuse will do. Now we can let people with one foreigner parent be Prez, so it will be two. Good work Republicans.
Who knows - maybe some of the "deep cover" trolls are in on this...
Okay,I won’t make anymore comments until you and others drive out a sitting POTUS.
Birthers are smart - they can multi-task
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Hear, hear! While we’re at it let’s examine how bizarre Hawaii’s citizenship laws were and are! Perhaps they need a little updating...
Barack, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do! (ala Ricky Ricardo.)
“If a certain piece of paper is a copy of an original certificate, call it that: a “copy of the certificate.” (I’m speaking to the bureaucrats here, not to you.)”
Well, I think this certification form is an all purpose
form for many uses.
As I said, the “Certificate of live birth” is photocopied onto
this new 8x10 form (”certification of vital records”), so it contains ALL of the information and signatures of my original. Nothing is redacted, as it is an exact photocopy of the hospital form from 1944.
LONG, BUT PLEASE READ, IT CLARIFIES 14TH AMENDMENT
http://federalistblog.us/2008/11/natural-born_citizen_defined.html
Fourteenth Amendment
Whatever might had been the correct understanding of “natural-born citizen” prior to 1866, the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment certainly changes the view because for the first time we have a written national rule declaring who are citizens through birth or naturalization. Who may be born citizens is conditional upon being born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States - a condition not required under the common law. The legislative definition of “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was defined as “Not owing allegiance to anybody else.”
This national rule prevents us from interpreting natural-born citizen under common law rules because it eliminates the possibility of a child being born with more than one allegiance.
The primary author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob M. Howard, said the “word jurisdiction, as here employed, ought to be construed so as to imply a full and complete jurisdiction on the part of the United States, coextensive in all respects with the constitutional power of the United States, whether exercised by Congress, by the executive, or by the judicial department; that is to say, the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.”
United States Attorney General, George Williams, whom was a U.S. Senator aligned with Radical Republicans during the drafting of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, ruled in 1873 the word “jurisdiction” under the Fourteenth Amendment “must be understood to mean absolute and complete jurisdiction, such as the United States had over its citizens before the adoption of this amendment.” He added, “Political and military rights and duties” do not pertain to anyone else.
Essentially then, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means the same jurisdiction the United States exercises over its own citizens, i.e., only citizens of the United States come within its operation since citizens of the United States do not owe allegiance to some other nation at the same time they do the United States. This makes a great deal of sense for the time because there was a great deal of controversy over conflicts arising from double allegiances. In fact, Congress issued a joint congressional report on June 22, 1874 that said the “United States have not recognized a double allegiance.”
Just as a person cannot be naturalized and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States while owing allegiance to another nation, neither can anyone born. Why would “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” be any different with persons born since this jurisdiction equally applies to persons born or naturalized? In other words, the words do not exempt persons born from the same allegiance requirements of persons naturalized.
It is worth noting that wives and children were never naturalized separately but became naturalized through the father/husband.
Because “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” requires not owing allegiance to any other nation, and because the nation does not recognize double allegiances that can be created at common law, narrows the possibilities to what “natural-born citizen” can mean.
Natural-Born Citizen Defined
One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature - laws the founders recognized and embraced.
Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”
The advantages of Natural Law is competing allegiances between nations are avoided, or at least with those nations whose custom is to not make citizens of other countries citizens without their consent. Any alternations or conflicts due to a child’s natural citizenship are strictly a creature of local municipal law. In the year 1866, the United States for the first time adopted a local municipal law under Sec. 1992 of U.S. Revised Statutes that read: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are declared to be citizens of the United States.”
Rep. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))
Bingham subscribed to the same view as most everyone in Congress at the time that in order to be born a citizen of the United States one must be born within the allegiance of the Nation. Bingham had explained that to be born within the allegiance of the United States the parents, or more precisely, the father, must not owe allegiance to some other foreign sovereignty (remember the U.S. abandoned England’s “natural allegiance” doctrine). This of course, explains why emphasis of not owing allegiance to anyone else was the affect of being subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, James F. Wilson of Iowa, added on March 1, 1866: “We must depend on the general law relating to subjects and citizens recognized by all nations for a definition, and that must lead us to the conclusion that every person born in the United States is a natural-born citizen of such States, except … children born on our soil to temporary sojourners or representatives of foreign Governments.” The phrase “temporary sojourners” referred to those in the country for purposes of work, visiting or business and who had no intention of taking the steps to become citizens, or incapable by law.
The constitutional requirement for the President of the United States to be a natural-born citizen had one purpose according to St. George Tucker:
That provision in the constitution which requires that the president shall be a native-born citizen (unless he were a citizen of the United States when the constitution was adopted,) is a happy means of security against foreign influence, which, wherever it is capable of being exerted, is to he dreaded more than the plague. The admission of foreigners into our councils, consequently, cannot be too much guarded against; their total exclusion from a station to which foreign nations have been accustomed to, attach ideas of sovereign power, sacredness of character, and hereditary right, is a measure of the most consummate policy and wisdom. … The title of king, prince, emperor, or czar, without the smallest addition to his powers, would have rendered him a member of the fraternity of crowned heads: their common cause has more than once threatened the desolation of Europe. To have added a member to this sacred family in America, would have invited and perpetuated among us all the evils of Pandora’s Box.
Charles Pinckney in 1800 said the presidential eligibility clause was designed “to insure … attachment to the country.” President Washington warned a “passionate attachment of one nation for another, produces a variety of evils,” and goes on to say:
Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation, of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill- will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld.
And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearance of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
What better way to insure attachment to the country then to require the President to have inherited his American citizenship through his American father and not through a foreign father. Any child can be born anywhere in the country and removed by their father to be raised in his native country. The risks would be for the child to return in later life to reside in this country bringing with him foreign influences and intrigues, thus, making such a citizen indistinguishable from a naturalized citizen.
Therefore, we can say with confidence that a natural-born citizen of the United States means those persons born whose father the United States already has an established jurisdiction over, i.e., born to father’s who are themselves citizens of the United States. A person who had been born under a double allegiance cannot be said to be a natural-born citizen of the United States because such status is not recognized (only in fiction of law). A child born to an American mother and alien father could be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father.
UPDATE:
I came across this interesting speech by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Langdon Cheves, in February of 1814:
The children have a natural attachment to the society in which they are born: being obliged to acknowledge the protection it has granted to their fathers, they are obliged to it in a great measure for their birth and education. … We have just observed that they have a right to enter into the society of which their fathers were members. But every man born free, the son of a citizen, arrived at years of discretion, may examine whether it be convenient for him to join in the society for which he was destined by his birth.
Cheves is obviously drawing on the works of Emer de Vattel, Law of Nations. Not something you would expect from the Speaker of the House of a Nation that supposedly adopted England’s common law.
UPDATE II:
Rep. A. Smyth (VA), House of Representatives, December 1820:
When we apply the term “citizens” to the inhabitants of States, it means those who are members of the political community. The civil law determined the condition of the son by that of the father. A man whose father was not a citizen was allowed to be a perpetual inhabitant, but not a citizen, unless citizenship was conferred on him.
Rep. Bingham commenting on Section 1992 said it means “every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.” (Cong. Globe, 39th, 1st Sess., 1291 (1866))
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THIS WOULD MEAN THAT CHILDREN BORN TO ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE NOT US CITIZENS!!!
And is it not curious that (to my knowledge) not one person has come forward for those puff interviews about “I knew him back when . . .” Either those people have been threatened, or those people don’t exist because his published past doesn’t really exist. The only other option is that he was so forgettable and had so little presence that he NEVER registered on anyone’s radar. Professors, students, friends—he must have been invisible to them all!
Guess he suddenly became visible when he ran for Illinois senate.
He could completely remake the US system & our very way of life while we’re all obsessing about long form BC’s
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I disagree - I don’t obsess on this topic. But I think it’s legit - as opposed to Coulter and the National Review (which didn’t fact check their own article.)
I’m also VERY active in opposing socialism on all the other fronts...
I think having this issue alive, casts doubts on the transparency of Obama, and his idealistic followers are forced to defend that, instead of promoting his agenda. If you ask me, we are actually using their dumb Alinsky rulebook, in reverse...if you ask me.
I’m open to hearing another side of this.
There is a definition somewhere here of a natural born citizen that requires both parents to be US citizens.
Not according to the law in place at the time. Barrack's mother was 18 yrs old. For her to convey citizenship, since the father was not a citizen, she would have had to live withing the territory of the United States for 5 consecutive years after her 14th birthday. She did not meet that requirement.
No, they're not. There is the concept in accounting and record keeping in general of the "source document". The old "Certificate of Live Birth" was the source document of birth information in Hawaii as long as it was in use. This computer generated "Certification of Live Birth" is not a source document. The source document is an original piece of paper, or the computer storage device itself where the information was originally recorded.
The originally recorded birth information is from the "Certificate of Live Birth" for all Hawaiians born when that certificate was in use. Certified copies were supplied to individuals for personal use. I don't know if it is still in use, or if birth information is now entered directly into a computer. But for Obama, that's irrelevant since he was born when the typed "Certificate of Live Birth" was in use. And, two state officials say they have examined the original, or vault copy.
The state was correct to use one term for the older typed, original source document "Certificate of Live Birth", and a different term for the non-source document, computer generated "Certification of Live Birth" printout.
At this point I don't give a rats rear end about Hussein's BC, because even if these birther's suspicions are right, which they're not, they have to be living in a fantasy world if they think the Democrat controlled congress and the Obama worshiping media are going to be clamoring for Obama's impeachment. Can you honestly see Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid spearheading impeachment hearings to get to the truth about Obama's BC? I sure don't
We went down that road with Slick Willy and we got burned badly because the media was in the tank for Clinton, as they are for Obama, and they were able to paint Republicans and Ken Star as a bunch of self righteous pricks who wanted Clinton impeached over sex. If we couldn't get Clinton removed for lying to congress we sure as hell won't get Obama impeached over this birth certificate crap.
I want to see Obama's agenda fail, and want to see him and his merry band of socialist thieves run out of D.C. in 2010 and 2012 as much as the birthers do, but I'm afraid all this BC crap could hurt our chances of retaking congress and the White House, and sending Obama back to the slums of Chicago where he belongs.
And to all the birthers who will call me a RINO after reading my post, I'd rather be a RINO than a tin foil hat wearing loser who can't see the forest through the trees.
Maya Soetoro was born to Indonesian businessman Lolo Soetoro and American cultural anthropologist Ann Dunham and half-sister to the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. While living in Indonesia, she was home schooled by her mother and then attended Jakarta International School and returned to Hawaii and attended the private Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, graduating in 1988.
Besides being the First Sister Maya has a HawaiiaCertification of Live Birth despite be born in Jakarta Indonesia. Supposedly this certificate was used by the Daily Kos to forge an Obama version. Anyone find it odd that Maya, undisputedly born in Indonesia, would have the same type of document as Barack Obama to forge?
You should check out the rules for people who have COLB’s born “ABROAD” on .gov
My greater point is that the document issues ought not be our focus as conservatives - the chance for success is slim, given the media veil that protects The One like some science fiction "force field". Do not forget: this White House is acutely political, and knows how to manipulate its adversaries by misdirection and distraction. Accordingly, we need to beware of their tricks.
The President and an out-of-control Congress are proposing to nationalize huge sections of our economy, using now-familiar Alinskyite/Clowen-Piven tactics such as overwhelming the system, generating continual crisis, demonizing the opposition, and holding them to a standard of perfection. We need to fight not the tactics, but the ideas behind them, which requires the articulation of principles Americans just aren't hearing from their politicians any more (except for a certain ex-governor from Alaska, perhaps).
Our Constitution is indeed at risk - and its defense must be mounted directly by the public expression of the timeless ideas that first brought it into being.
False.
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