Free Republic

“... in the first 5 minutes of the next Arpaio/Zullo presser, it will proven beyond any doubt that it is a forgery.”
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Or, if not, certainly the one after that.

“The potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.”
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Right! Remember how COL Lind cited Baker in the Lakin case, leading Birthers to complain that she was denying discovery for fear of embarrassing the President?

“Would such a forgery be an impeacheable offence?”
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I believe it would. Apparently, the members of the House Judiciary Committee have not been persuaded that there is sufficient evidence of a forgery to warrant hearings on the subject.

What exactly do you mean by “pixelated”?
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I was wondering that too. BZ, can you explain it clearly? Then those who see it differently might be able to respond.

“Ayn Rand was more libertarian than conservative. I suspect this is why she’s not more popular in conservative circles.”
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She also had low regard for religion, and that too alienates many conservatives.

“it is considered an assumed renunciation”
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No, that’s not right. There are no “assumed renunciations” of citizenship under U.S. law:

“ELEMENTS OF RENUNCIATION

A person wishing to renounce his or her U.S. citizenship must voluntarily and with intent to relinquish U.S. citizenship:

1. appear in person before a U.S. consular or diplomatic officer,
2. in a foreign country (normally at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate); and
3. sign an oath of renunciation”

(from the State Department — http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html )

What you may be thinking of is the fact that it is much easier for a U.S. citizen born abroad to document his or her citizenship by obtaining a Consular Report of Birth Abroad (CRBA), and those can only be obtained by age 18.

However, failure to obtain one certainly does not result in loss of citizenship, it just complicates the paperwork required if and when proof of U.S. citizenship is required.

“the holder of dual citizenship can certainly choose to renounce the one he does not actually want.”
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Certainly. My point, though, was that choosing to renounce one’s (foreign) citizenship may not result in an actual renunciation if the other country doesn’t permit it.

That leads to the odd but valid conclusion that any country can declare anyone in the world to be their citizen at any time, and there may be nothing the person can do about it.

Of course, if they ever try to exercise jurisdiction over that person against his or her will, they can expect to find themselves facing a very formidable enemy.

But every country is the ultimate decision maker on the question of who its citizens are.

“Should one of them ever seek the office of POTUS, that one would simply need to renounce his or her Caymanian citizenship.”
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Actually, I’m not sure that’s true. While most countries permit their citizens to renounce their citizenship (and I trust that the Caymanians do), “[s]ome countries” (at least according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renunciation_of_citizenship) “may not allow or do not recognize renunciation of citizenship or establish administrative procedures that are essentially impossible to complete.”

Since we would not want a foreign government’s laws to have the power to block an otherwise eligible Presidential candidate, I doubt that actual renunciation of foreign citizenship is required.

LOL, how many times can you play the same transparent game?

Making up entertaining straw men so that you can knock them down is cute but pointless, since you’re still exactly where you started.

You have absolutely no evidence. And no matter how cute you think your little fantasy stories are, they do nothing to change the fact that your own claims are based on nothing but pure, unadulterated speculation.

“Maybe you should stick to the facts.”
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Maybe you should tell us the name of the independent, impartial judge — you know, the decision-maker in a position of authority — who examined the evidence and concluded that “the BC that was posted on the White House web site is a proven forgery.”

If you can’t, you’re use of the word “proven” is, at the very least, delightfully idiosyncratic.

“The agency assistant did NOT say she failed to fact check the FACT of Obama’s Kenyan birth. She said she fact checked it & it checked out. Reread the assistant’s statement. Someone kindly posted it upthread. Show me where she says she did NOT fact check the item. In point of fact, the statement says just the opposite.”
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In fact, she said neither — she did not say that she failed to check it and she did not say that it checked out.

What she said was,

“This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.”

All she said was that it was “a fact checking error.” Any speculation about the nature of the error is simply that, speculation.

“I only deal with facts, you are the one making presumptions.”
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And you define the term “fact” very loosely so that you can include “facts” like “the BC that was posted on the White House web site is a proven forgery.”

As long as you are the judge and jury evaluating your own facts, I guess you’re just infallible!

“Concealed evidence that has been hidden by a literal vast left-wing criminal conspiracy COULD YET be legally discovered”
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Yes, of course. We don’t know what hasn’t been discovered.

But I’m encouraged by your recognition of the fact that the current crop of birther evidence, from “there were no laser printers in 1961!” to “there are layers on the PDF!”, is not going anywhere.

“I agree that what you presume is immaterial, but I never mentioned anything about what I presumed.”
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Nor is there any need to. The law is the law, and your presumptions are your presumptions.

It’s clear what the law says. I couldn’t care less what your presumptions are.

“Presumed to be authentic by you maybe, but the fact is...”
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LOL, what you and I presume is immaterial.

I was speaking of federal law in general and the Federal Rules of Evidence in particular. They tell us that documents like birth certificates are legally presumed to be authentic unless proven to be forged in a court of competent authority.

And “proven to be forged” doesn’t mean proven to your satisfaction or to mine. It has a legal definition.

Under the law, the BCs are presumed to be authentic and under the law they have not been proven to be forgeries.

I expect that their status in your mind is different, but their legal status is indisputable.

"That’s why he and his lawyers gave the judge the one fingered salute when they all failed to show up after the judge ordered them to. Did they get so much as a slap on the wrist? No. Did the case proceed? No. Was anything at all done? No."
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That is such a crock that I've done some research for you. Feel free to do your own and see if you find anything different.

"they all failed to show up after the judge ordered them to"

No, that's not true.

In the Georgia ballot challenge case, Farrar v. Obama, the President's attorneys declined to appear on the grounds that the hearing was scheduled in error, because the the Court had no jurisdiction over the issues in question. The judge, ALJ Malihi, didn't like hearing that, but he did not issue a court order requiring anyone to appear.

"Did they get so much as a slap on the wrist? No."

Well, Malihi is his ruling rebuked them for not attending:

"By deciding this matter on the merits, the Court in no way condones the conduct or legal scholarship of Defendant's attorney, Mr. Jablonski."

"Did the case proceed? No."

No, that's not true. The case certainly did proceed. You can see the proceedings on YouTube, and you can read Malihi's ruling online.

"Was anything at all done? No."

Oh, I wouldn't say that. ALJ Malihi listened to the evidence that purported to prove that the BC was a forgery, and issued a rather scathing ruling (quoted in part):

"The Court finds the testimony of the witnesses, as well as the exhibits tendered, to be of little, if any, probabtive value, and thus wholly insufficient to support Plaintiffs' allegations ... None of the testifying witnesses provided persuasive testimony. Moreover, the Court finds that none of the written submissions tendered by Plaintiffs have probative value. Given the unstaisfactory evidence presented by the Plaintiffs, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs' claims are not persuasive."

and concluding:

"President Barack Obama is eligible as a candidate for the presidential primary election under O.C.G.A. § 21-2-5(b)."

Of course, the plaintiffs didn't like that one bit, so they appealed to the Superior Court of Fulton County. And do you know what the Superior Court said?

"Based upon Georgia law and governing precedent, the Court finds it has no authority to exercise jurisdiction over the Democratic Party of Georgia's selection of the names(s) to be included in the Presidential Preference Primary or to examine the qualifications of those individuals. Therefore, these actions should be DISMISSED in accordance with O.C.G.A. § 9-11-12(b)."

In other words, the President's attorney was correct -- the hearing never should have been held in the first place, as the Court had no jurisdiction.

Trial court ruling: http://www.scribd.com/doc/80422088/2012-02-03-Decision-From-Malahi-GEORGIA-ALJ-Obama-is-NBC

Superior Court ruling: http://www.scribd.com/doc/83539865/GA-2012-03-02-ORDER-Dismissing-Farrar-Swensson-Powell-And-Welden-Complaints

“But you’re avoiding the fact that BCs can be and are forged.”
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LOL, not a bit! Of course BCs can be forged.

But they are presumed to be authentic unless proven to be forged in a court of competent authority. That certainly hasn’t happened yet, but feel free to keep trying.

(Oh, and you are apparently referring to the hearing before ALJ Malihi in Georgia. Why don’t you review your facts? You’ve got a whole bunch of them wrong. And since that was not one of the venues in which a Letter of Verification was submitted, it is completely irrelevant to the question I raised. Why don’t you read it again and see if you can answer it? You might learn something.)

“So, where did the literary agent get the information?”
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What an odd question! Are you suggesting that I have knowledge of where the information came from? I don’t, and I never suggested that I did.

It sounds to me like you are asking me to speculate on where it came from. But my speculation is legally worthless, and so is yours.

There have been claims that the information must have come from Obama himself, but as far as I know there is no evidence to support it. Therefore, as I have said repeatedly, such a conclusion is based purely on speculation. I have no desire to throw my specluation onto the pile.

Have you got any evidence?

“Sun Yat Sen’s is domestic.”
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Yes, that’s right, and his Hawaiian birth certificate would be admissible into evidence.

It would then have had to be weighed against the evidence that he was born in Cuiheng, Xiangshan County, Guangdong Province, and a judge would have to decide which documentation was correct.

Similarly, any document saying that Obama was born in Hawaii could be challenged using any persuasive evidence you had that he was born elsewhere. So, for example, if you wanted to introduce one of the Kenyan birth certificates against the Letter of Verification, you would be free to do that.

Of course, that wasn’t done, and I think you know why.

“Zullo and Arpaio are going to Congress...”
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And I agree that this is the right approach. The Congress certainly has Constitutional powers in this regard that are lacking to other branches of government.

On the other hand, there’s still the issue of the strength of your evidence. You didn’t convince enough of the voting population to tip the balance in either Presidential election, you didn’t convince the Congress to call into question the vote of the Electoral College (not a single objection was filed either time), you haven’t gotten a single judge to rule in your favor, and Congress has to date shown no interest in investigating further.

But I agree. If you can persuade a significant number of members of Congress that the situation demands an investigation, an investigation there will be.