Free Republic

There are three facts about Internet blog stories that you need to know: Plagiarism is rampant on the Internet. You cannot always believe what you see and read.When you see the word, "EXCLUSIVE," in the title, it does not mean that the story was the first one or even the only one. You can imagine my chagrin when I read the following headline in the Atlasshruggs blog: ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: FINAL REPORT ON OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE INWhat this headline, and the story it trumpets, confirm is that all three of the "facts" listed above are validated...

Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but yesterday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate -- actually a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB -- claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: "a horribly forgery," according to the analysis published on the popular Atlas Shrugs blog. (photos and close-ups, with detailed report) The purported birth certificate was published by the left wing Daily Kos blog on June 12 in response to unconfirmed reports that...

Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate -- actually a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB -- claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: "a horribly forgery," according to the analysis published on the popular right-wing Atlas Shrugs blog. The purported birth certificate was published by the left wing Daily Kos blog on June 12 in response to unconfirmed reports that Obama was not in...

Wikipedia used to have "Obama, Jr." and now has changed to "Obama II" in the wake of the COLB. (hat tip Larwyn). Over at JOM Is there anything in Obama's books? I notice that the NYT back in 1990 referred to both father and son as simply "Barack Obama." An excerpt from a noteworthy 2007 Obama speech: There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim...

  This bombshell was made by Atlas reader techdude in the comment section (oh and btw, techdude, send the screenshots): As a real forensic computer investigator (board certified, investigated thousands of cases, access to a full forensic computer lab, yadda yadda...) I decided to jump into the fray over the fake vs real discussion a week ago when a friend of mine challenged me to see what I could find (since according to him, the document was clearly a real one). He is what one would call a slightly rabid Obama supporter – he even has the tattoo to prove...

  Techdude embellishes upon his previous expert analysis on Obama's birth certificate and gives us his impeccable credentials and they are freakin scary. No, no seriously.  I am honored to be the recipient of this most excellent and enormously entertaining and  informative exegesis. Not only is techdude brilliant and unequivocally expert in the field of forensic digital forgery examination but his wildly funny. How great is that? There is nothing Atlas finds sexier than witty and wise. I am running his remarks completely unedited.Adam's Apple (the fruit of knowledge) fasten your seat belts [emphasis mine] I would like to address...

Recovering a true copy of Obama’s birth certificate IS important to the general public, because he is being interviewed by us for the most important job in the world, the President of the United States. Unfortunately major networks or newspapers are not covering this story, because if they can keep you from learning new information about Obama, the better chance their candidate will win. This type of media, elitist attitude assumes that the average American fed their propaganda, spoon by spoon, are more or less too dumb to see the clear bias in their reporting. Ha! Welcome to the internet,...

How does the pro-terrorist group Code Pink infiltrate closed events where the U.S. Secret Service is in charge of security? One way is with fake press credentials made by a diarist at the Daily Kos.Code Pink has made a habit of infiltrating events and getting close to officials under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service.Yesterday Code Pink member Desiree Farooz rushed the stage and came dangerously close to President Bush at Monticello. The weekend before she rushed John McCain. Last fall she got close enough to Condoleeza Rice to place her hands around the Secrtary of State's head.At the...

I had not caught up until today with this apparent controversy over whether the Hawaii birth certificate proffered by Obama's campaign is a forgery and whether there are legitimate questions about whether he was born in the United States — if he wasn't, he almost certainly would not be qualified under the Constitution and relevant immigration statutes to be president. Our Jim Geraghty seemed to pooh-pooh the birth certificate controversy about a week ago, but according to the above cited report (at a site called DougRoss@Journal) and a new one from Israeli Insider, there are new developments, and the Obama...

Blogger admits Hawaii birth certificate forgery, subverting Obama claims By Israel Insider staff July 3, 2008 Bookmark to del.icio.usDigg This Story A crop from the image for which opendna aka Jay McKinnon takes credit (see context in reproduction below). Posted on Photobucket and in comments attached to the Daily Kos blog post where the purported Obama birth certificate appears Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fake Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine by the Barack Obama campaign, and appearing on the same Daily...

This is an issue that isn't going away for the Obama campaign and unless they address it in an effort to put it to bed, it will become one of those "distractions" the candidate really hates: A few weeks ago, a diary entry at Daily Kos published several documents purporting to be Obama's birth certificate. One of those documents is now a confirmed forgery, ferreted out by the website Israeli Insider: Jay McKinnon, a self-described Department of Homeland Security-trained document specialist, has implicated himself in the production of fake Hawaii birth certificate images similar to the one endorsed as genuine...

Did I just lose some brain matter, or did the Obama's Fact Check website, aka "Fight the Smears," retract the "Here is his birth certificate" statement? I could swear that this statement used to precede the image . Am I wrong? Did anyone else note the change? The way the page is now, there is no lead-in line to the image. BTW, I have a new post today explaining the possible reasons for blacking out certificate number.

UPDATE 6/26: Janice Okubo, in response to an Israeli Insider question on Tuesday, would not confirm nor deny whether she had told a St. Petersburg Times reporter whether she had said the birth certificate was "real", citing the statutory stipulation that "Hawaii state law (HRS §338-18) prevents disclosure of information contained in vital statistics records except to those people who have a direct and tangible interest in the record as defined by statute." This would, however, seem to negate the propriety of any disclosure by her of confidential information. Jim Geraghty of The National Review Online, following up on this...

SUMMARY: Since we published Obama's birth certificate, questions about its authenticity have been frequent and fierce. After reviewing the evidence, we're confident in our rulings. It started as a whisper, a trickle of nagging doubt. “As a concerned citizen, I’m wondering if there isn’t something fishy going on with the Obama certificate.” “I have serious doubts about the purported 'birth certificate’ you were sent.” “Something doesn’t smell right.” Soon, e-mails and blog posts were flying. As the pace quickened, the tone sharpened. “You should be apologizing ... for your misinformation regarding BO bogus birth certificate, that you claimed was genuine!”...

Daily Kos posted a copy of Obama's "Birth Certificate." A blogger with experience in graphics and printing shows that the document was clearly produced using a graphics program. Why doesn't Obama tell Hawaii to give one directly to Fox News and put this issue to bed? It would take 5 minutes.

Cindi Cook had it all planned out. Her teenage son would graduate from his Hall County high school, go to college, then settle down and start a family. Then came the pregnancy. It was spring 2007 and, according to court testimony, Cook had no interest in her 16-year-old son's girlfriend, also 16, having their baby. Cook "began to pressure until the young lady relented and agreed to have an abortion," DeKalb County solicitor general Robert James said Wednesday. Displeased that the baby would ruin her son's chances of going to college, Cook "searched for a clinic that did not require...

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. -- A Hall County mother has been sentenced to a year in jail after taking desperate measures to keep her son's teenage girlfriend from having his baby. Officials said Cindi Cook, 44, found the Northside Women's Clinic for a 16-year-old girl. Cook paid for the abortion and signed a parental notification form saying she was the girl's mother. "This is reprehensible conduct and it will not be tolerated," said DeKalb County Solicitor General Robert James. James told WSB-TV Channel 2 he had never seen a case like the one involving Cook. "It's terrible when one parent takes...

There are a few things in this world that thieves need to keep in mind in order to run a successful criminal operation. For example, don't take the cash you just stole from one bank to another bank down the street to have it deposited into your account. Don't steal someone's MacBook and take it to the Apple Store Genius Bar the next day to get help with OS X. And finally, don't steal a drivers' license printer from the DMV, only to call up the manufacturer the next day looking for drivers. That's one tip that 33-year-old Missouri resident...

Osama Bin Laden's widely reported video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- To his bosses at Pilgrim's Pride, he was Juan Jose Rodriguez -- it said so on the birth certificate and Social Security card he presented when the southwestern Arkansas chicken plant hired him six years ago. At his De Queen, Ark., home, he was Joel Garibay-Urbina -- with a wife, three kids and a mortgage under his own name. And to police officers responding to a domestic violence call, he was just the latest illegal immigrant to have two identities after an arrest. "We've arrested them and they offer an Arkansas identification card, and they give...

Russian tried fake $100 bill By Susan Nolan snolan@seacoastonline.com June 29, 2007 6:00 AM PORTSMOUTH, NH — A Russian man attempted to pass off a phony $100 bill at the New Hampshire State Liquor store shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday, according to the store manager, who said a cashier discovered the bill was bogus. No arrest was made, according to police, but the incident was the talk of the store because Russians are known to be staying in the city ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's scheduled visit with President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, on Sunday. Liquor store manager Mike...

The head of a Mexican forgery ring was convinced he could make phony documents that illegal aliens could use to indicate fraudulently that they were eligible for a new amnesty, says a government affidavit recounting wiretapped phone calls the man made. Julio Leija-Sanchez, who ran a $3 million-a-year forgery operation before he was arrested in April, was expecting Congress to pass a legalization program, which he called "amnesty," and said he could forge documents to fool the U.S. government into thinking illegal aliens were in the country in time to qualify for amnesty, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)...

5-year term for investigator in forgery case - "I believe that the death penalty is illegal...It is barbaric and an atrocity...Any acts I committed are out of a firm belief against the state killing these people." Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau Tuesday, May 1, 2007 (05-01) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- A former criminal defense investigator accused of forging statements from jurors, witnesses and others in death penalty cases pleaded guilty to four charges Monday and accepted a five-year prison sentence. Kathleen Culhane, 40, said outside a Sacramento courtroom that she filed incorrect documents on behalf of five condemned inmates because...

Excerpt - SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Apple Computer Inc. cleared Chief Executive Steve Jobs and the rest of its current management of misconduct involving stock option grants, despite Jobs' awareness of favorable grant dates. The company said Friday it has "complete confidence" in the executive team, though it also acknowledged the backdating of thousands of option grants and restated past earnings due to the results of its probe of options practices. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing its probe, Apple said Jobs was aware of, or recommended the selection of, some favorable grant dates but...

JOIN THE BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION SING-ALONG FOR DAN RATHER Dan Rather was born on Oct. 31, 1931 in Wharton, TX. He had a long and storied career in the news business. It suddenly ended when the activists from the website FreeRepublic.com exposed his presentation of forged documents in an attempt to affect the 2004 presidential election. Thanks to the FReepers, Dan was retired early. Now, let's sing Happy Birthday to him. Rather still refuses to admit that the documents he presented were forged because we haven't proven that to his satisfaction. Apparently, he does not believe he has the responsibility...

The NY times published a photo the other day which looked like they had airbrushed out a "microphone" which significantly changed the meaning of the photo. I wrote the following letter to their corrections department. The NY Times responded by sending me the photographers explanation which follows in the body of the comment below. "Dear editor: I think you owe your readers a correction and an apology for the altered picture on August 27, 2006 at http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/27/world/27morale2.html which suggestively led your readers to believe that it showed a "stripper" beginning her "strip" to entertain our troops. That is a misrepresentation....

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terror group that started war on Israel July 12, trusts in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hezbollah insists the text, which has twice proven to be an 1895 forgery by Tsarist officials in Paris, is the transcript of the First Zionist Congress in Basle Switzerland in 1897. So potent is this blood libel--and so well matched to Hezbollah's lethal designs--that the terror group collaborated with Iran to produce a Protocols television series for its Al Manar TV. Broadcast in Lebanon during Ramadan in October 2003, the programs were then aired in Iran in 2004. Among...

Frank Wynne tells the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren, the Dutch artist whose ‘Vermeer' made him a folk hero I've always loved a forger. It's difficult not to feel a surge of joy at the thought of an eminent critic waxing lyrical over the glories of a "17th-century masterpiece" on which the paint is barely dry. If the pinnacle of Western art is arguably Leonardo da Vinci, his shadow self in the pantheon of forgers is Han van Meegeren. In May 1945, shortly after the liberation of Holland, two officers arrived at the studio of van Meegeren, then just...

Restaurant operators believe they might face steep fines and labor shortages that could cripple at worst – and disrupt at best– their livelihoods under immigration regulations proposed in House and Senate bills. ... That's why the restaurant association supports the Senate bill, which would provide a new guest worker program and give an estimated 12 million immigrants a shot at citizenship ... However, of the 12.5 million restaurant employees in the nation, 635,000 could be undocumented immigrants, with roughly 5,500 of those in Orange County, based on some federal estimates. The Pew Hispanic Center also estimates that one-fourth of all...

China has frozen North Korea's account at the Macao branch of the People's Bank of China, Yonhap News reported Monday. A former ranking U.S. official made the revelation to a lawmaker of South Korea's opposition Grand National Party, according to Yonhap.

COOKEVILLE -- Eight Hispanic men arrested last month with a batch of fake payroll checks, fake ID's, and a large wad of cash went to court this week, and four have now been released from the Putnam jail. All eight are in the United States illegally, but federal immigration authorities are currently planning to deport only three of the eight, while one is to be turned over to authorities in Illinois, where he is wanted on another charge. The eight men were arrested by Cookeville Police on April 7 after thousands of dollars in fake Perdue Farms payroll checks had...

WASHINGTON - Forgers are making tens of millions, and possibly billions, of dollars selling counterfeit Social Security cards, driver's licenses, immigrant registration cards and other papers to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. The dominant forgery-and-distribution network in the United States is allegedly controlled by the Castorena family, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say. Its members emigrated from Mexico in the late 1980s and have used their printing skills and business acumen to capture a big piece of the booming industry. Only trained experts can spot the fakes, and the Castorena Family Organization - or CFO, as officials call...

DOYLESTOWN, Pa. - A would-be home buyer with less than a dollar in her bank account pleaded guilty to fraud in what prosecutors said was an attempt to steal an entire house. Wendy Jean-Francois, 44, of Morrisville, pleaded guilty Monday in Bucks County Court to multiple counts of fraud, forgery and related charges. Prosecutors said Jean-Francois had 97 cents in her bank account when she sat down Oct. 5 at a settlement table at Rainbow Assurance, a mortgage title firm in Falls. She used two checks totaling $63,000 and a letter vouching for them, purportedly from a Wachovia Bank manager,...

CHARLOTTE — Illegal immigrants have used stolen or falsified Social Security numbers to get jobs with companies hired to build North Carolina roads, according to an investigation by The Charlotte Observer. The newspaper, for a story published Monday, examined a small sample of road contractors' payroll records from 2005, finding questionable Social Security numbers for one-third of the 85 workers involved. The newspaper then used two private databases and a federal Web site to find workers who had used numbers that belonged to other people or that hadn't been issued at all. Companies that hired those workers said they have...

wo federal agencies routinely collect evidence of employers who hire illegal immigrants, but they don't share it with law enforcement. The Social Security Administration and the IRS have the names and addresses of likely illegal workers and their employers. But privacy laws keep their files secret, except in rare criminal investigations. The agencies, however, don't even use the power they have when they detect discrepancies. The IRS doesn't fine the employers who repeatedly submit inaccurate data about their workers. Social Security does virtually nothing to alert citizens whose Social Security numbers are being used by others. The government gains from...

See for example this thread first. I'm surprised that it's not Bill or Hill who had that billion dollar bill The money was fake and this is my take Making change would just empty the till !

Identity theft and strong opinions go hand in hand. ID theft is rampant and is causing millions of dollars of damage every year -- or, it really isn't such a big problem, and few people are really hurt financially by it. Why such wide disparity? More importantly, what can a business owner, an IT manager, a software developer, a consumer or a risk manager do about stopping ID theft when the problem seems so poorly understood? This was the conundrum faced by attendees at a meeting in Chicago in June 2005. The FBI, Secret Service, Chicago Police Force, and the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT: RUSH: A lot of people thought that Hillary Clinton would not weigh in on the Cheney story because she had delayed for 30 hours the releasing of the Vince Foster suicide note. The people said, "Ah, she's not going to say, because if she joins the fray here, why, she's got her own little thing to explain." Wrong-o, folks. The mainstream media is not going to hold Hillary Clinton accountable. Hillary Clinton did weigh in on this yesterday, and nobody -- nobody -- is talking about Hillary Clinton's past problems with secrecy, Travel Office firings, FBI files that...

A red-faced auction house was forced to withdraw a letter it believed was written and signed by the late President Ronald Reagan while he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease after it discovered it was a forgery. The autographed letter was supposed to be auctioned off this month, but Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs in Greenwich, Conn., told CBSNews.com the letter was withdrawn after the forger came forward and admitted his handiwork. Originally it was believed Reagan wrote the note to a friend in February of 1998, about four years after he mostly disappeared from public view following his announcement...

Among the many temptations of the digital age, photo-manipulation has proved particularly troublesome for science, and scientific journals are beginning to respond. Some journal editors are considering adopting a test, in use at The Journal of Cell Biology, that could have caught the concocted images of the human embryonic stem cells made by Dr. Hwang Woo Suk. At The Journal of Cell Biology, the test has revealed extensive manipulation of photos. Since 2002, when the test was put in place, 25 percent of all accepted manuscripts have had one or more illustrations that were manipulated in ways that violate the...

While Sherri Myrum relaxed on a boat and fished the Gulkana River last June, a thief stole a box of bank checks from her mailbox off Summit Drive. The thief forged more than 100 checks during an estimated $8,000 shopping spree at various stores, including Fred Meyer, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Lowe's and Safeway. The thief even wrote checks at garage sales and spent $5 at a coffee shop. "I was so angry at these people," said Myrum, a registered nurse. "They could spend money like I couldn't." An increasing number of thefts from mailboxes have occurred since summer in sparsely...

...Mary Mapes, the CBS producer fired over the journalistic fiasco involving President Bush's National Guard service, is the latest in a line of lonely crusaders, defending her work more than a year after it was widely discredited. Dan Rather may have apologized for the story, an independent panel may have denounced it and CBS News may have criticized her "disregard for journalistic standards," but Mapes argues in her new book that the critics are either politically motivated, cowardly or just plain wrong. In challenging those who have questioned her work -- including The Washington Post and this reporter, who is...

< MIDI - MORE THAN A FEELING She woke up one morning and her job was gone Suits in the boardroom said go away The docs were phony the FReepers showed For her and Dan it's a bad hair day (musical break) She was sent reeling...she tried to hurt Dubya Her dirty dealing...had been stopped, and she started to cry But watch Mary Mapes...still telling lies (musical break) So many people she had deceived Hatred of Bush made them blind with rage She's claiming that she...did nothing wrong And she is stuck on the same old page On the same...

Mary Mapes is madder than a rained-out rooster, as her former boss, Dan Rather, might say. Mapes, the CBS producer who lost her job over last year's "60 Minutes II" story about President Bush's National Guard service, resurfaces with a reconstruction of that incident that savages just about everyone associated with it: conservative bloggers, the mainstream media, CBS and its chief executive, Leslie Moonves, the Texas Air National Guard, even a few members of the Dallas Cowboys of the early 1970s. And that's just in the first 40 pages of Mapes's wonkishly named but compellingly told tale of a byzantine...

Joseph A. Wilson IV: The French ConnectionNovember 7th, 2005 There are an amazing number of French fingerprints all over the Plame-Wilson affair. While it is not easy to penetrate the dark fog of lies, there is a highly consistent pattern pointing to French government involvement with a Watergate-style assault on the American Presidency, fronted by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.In 2002 French intelligence forged the notorious document claiming that Saddam tried to obtain Niger uranium. The Italian middle man,Rocco Martino, later confessed to French involvement in open court. Rocco Martino might sound like a small-time mafia hood from the Sopranos. Actually,...

SAN DIEGO – An ex-Rancho Santa Fe man sought for failing to appear in court after a $65 million judgement was entered against him in a pornographic Web site dispute was ordered today to be extradited to San Jose. Stephen Michael Cohen, 57, had been living in Tijuana and was reportedly arrested yesterday by Mexican authorities when he tried to apply for a work permit. He was turned over to U.S. officials, who had an arrest warrant signed by a San Jose judge, and taken to San Diego. In San Diego, U.S. Magistrate Judge Leo Papas was poised to set...

Russo Martino, the man behind the forged documents indicating Saddam had purchased uranium from Niger, which Joseph A. Wilson falsely claimed he had seen and warned the Administration about, has come forward and admitted that he did this in the pay of France to undermine the British and American justification for the war in Iraq: The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, “Giacomo”. His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that...

One month after the ninth presidential elections in June, 2005, statistics have been released that not only confirm the widespread irregularities in the voting, but even corroborate the suspicions that the outcome of the elections would have been different if the rigging were prevented. During the first phase of the elections, people had noticed unlawful interventions in the elections process and had made their observations known. But few then suspected the extent of the manipulations and that they would actually be so gross as to alter the outcome of who got into the presidential palace. What Rafsanjani, Moin and even...

State Rep. Tom Prezelski Jr. is the suspect in a Tucson Police Department felony fraud investigation and had a financial crisis after taking office that included an arrest warrant for a bad check, an Arizona Daily Star investigation shows. A friend told police in May that Prezelski, 35, had stolen a blank check from her, made it out for more than $10,000 and forged her signature in June 2003, four months after he took office. That's around the same time the Democrat's Tucson home was being foreclosed upon. Four months later, he was accused of issuing a bad check, a...

They say all roads lead to Rome. Well, this one certainly does. It's a road that starts in Paris, at the door of Iranian arms dealer and Mossad double agent Manucher Ghorbanifar, a man known to the CIA as an "intelligence fabricator". It's a road that runs through Niger uranium mines, past a Genoan fascist organization operating as a parallel Italian intelligence network with ties to Rocco Martino, and down the streets of Milan, where a CIA operative, now considered a fugitive at large by Italian authorities, once operated. Ultimately, however, it is a road that does not end in...