Thank you for your efforts debunking the birthers, CNN. Now if you could only get it right….
I’m referring to the recent article, Debunking the birther claim, on the CNN web site — pretty good stuff, but not all. Zeroing on the offending section:
“Most scholars, including me, believe that natural born citizenship extends further, to all of those who obtain citizenship at birth by law,” writes Gabriel “Jack” Chin in a CNN.com opinion piece. “If this argument is right, then even if Obama had been born overseas, he is still a natural born citizen, because he obtained citizenship at birth through his mother who unquestionably was a U.S. citizen.”
Who am I to criticize a mainstream scholar of constitutional law like Prof. Jack Chin, author of the seminal presidential eligibility paper in the Michigan Law Review? I couldn’t touch his credentials on constitutional law, but his error is on citizenship law.
You see, in Obama’s birth year of 1961 there were age and residence requirements placed on US citizen mothers married to foreign nationals in order to be able to pass their citizenship on to their foreign-born children at birth. Ann Dunham did not meet those requirements. (There is a whole other argument about whether Dunham was legally married to bigamist Obama Sr. that must also be considered.) Here are the specific requirements published by the US State Department:
Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock:
A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) of the INA provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child’s birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen, is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship.
Ann Dunham, mother at age 18, did not have 5 years residence after age 14 and could not pass on her citizenship (assuming she was married). The rules for unmarried mothers differ:
Birth Abroad Out-of-Wedlock to a U.S. Citizen Mother:
A person born abroad out-of-wedlock to a U.S. citizen mother may acquire U.S. citizenship under Section 309(c) of the INA if the mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of the person’s birth and if the mother was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year prior to the person’s birth. The mother must be genetically related to the person in order to transmit U.S. citizenship.
In future, CNN, pretty please check your facts better.
Update:
I received a nice email from Dr. Chin. He said that the President would likely be regarded as having been born in wedlock even if the marriage was void or voidable. Chin wrote:
I did not realize how how young his mother was. Under the law at the time, his mother would have to have lived in the United States for 10 years, five of which were after age 14. She was 18 when she had him, so he did not meet the requirement. Had the President been born overseas, he probably would not have been born a citizen. This law was changed in 1986.
Read more:
- State Department Foreign Affairs Manual (see section on Voidable and Void Marriages)
I doubt that a pre-Civil Rights law that cannot pass Equal Protection muster would be applied retroactively today.
Well written. I hope you get a response.
Well, like the facts that even if President Obama were ineligible, in all likelihood he didn’t know about it (certainly there’s no evidence of fraud) and even if incontrovertible evidence existed, the SCOTUS would be reluctant to overturn a lawful election (they certainly wouldn’t overturn the election if there was no fraud [let alone no evidence of fraud whatsoever]) it just adds another layer of idiocy and duplicity to the birthers…
I wonder if the 5-year clause would pass SCOTUS muster. Penalizing a teenager for giving birth the one time she wanders over to Canada to shop? Doesn’t seem like it was meant to apply to lifelong US residents on vacation. It makes no sense. I’d like to see the hearings on that bill.
http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/flores-villar-v-united-states/
Plain English Issue: Children born overseas who have one U.S.-citizen parent can obtain U.S. citizenship if the citizen parent had been physically present in the U.S. for a certain period of time before the child’s birth. If the citizen parent is the father, the period is five years; if it is the mother, the period is one year. Does this differentiation amount to unconstitutional gender-based discrimination? (Kagan, J., recused).
Ann Dunham was not legally married to BHO Sr. Hawaii, nor any state, does not recognize bigamous marriages.
But Kenya does (I think). As long as we are letting Kenyan law decide who is and who is not eligible to be U.S. President, I think we ought to let them decide who is and who is not married too.
Dr. C, why do you doubt that Stanley Ann was married to Obama Sr?
The state of Hawaii vouches for it, remember divorce papers.
NC1, why do you accept it?
The State of Hawaii vouches for the fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. So, why do you believe them when they say that Stanley Ann Dunham was legally married to Barack Hussein Obama? Especially, when you consider that Obama has a previous wife, who he never divorced, and Hawaii had laws against bigamy?
I guess someone like you who makes up their mind and then looks to confirm their bias doesn’t understand the concept of looking at the facts BEFORE making up one’s mind. Since Doc is objective, he doesn’t try to force conclusions one way or another – in general, a bigamist’s marriage is not legitimate (lets assume we’re at least 3 states away from Utah…). This fact doesn’t change if I decide I’d like a different conclusion. However, the case of President Obama’s parents is complicated by the interaction of the laws of 3 countries: the US, Kenya, and the UK – in short, it’s far from clear what a court would rule here and Doc does the intellectually honest thing and mentions that it’s an issue without taking sides. I know that impartiality is a foreign concept to birthers, but if you hope to pretend to be intellectually honest, you need to know what intellectual honesty looks like…
1. Did the State of Hawaii release a copy of the original birth certificate to the public?
Divorce papers have been released. When the long form birth certificate is released, confirming the official story, I will believe it.
2. Are you arguing that Obama’s parents lied to the State of Hawaii to get married?
Think about the similarities between two issues presented to the State of Hawaii.
* possibly fraudulent marriage registration
* possibly fraudulent Hawaii home birth registration.
Well written Dr. C. A point we have to consider is that professors and legal scholars are people too and therefore can have their own political point of view. I was really dismayed to see in that article by Chin you linked to in the Michigan Law Review that Chin takes the *opposite* view in regards to McCain. How very convenient he now says Obama should be eligible with only one citizen parent while McCain was not with two citizen parents, and moreover completely ignores the specifics of the law under which one citizen parent would confer citizenship.
So you have a constitutional scholar leaving out important facts required to understand the case in information put out to the public. And we have a spokesman for the Hawaii Attorney General putting out incorrect information on the law in Hawaii that someone couldn’t get a copy of their own original long form birth certificate, when the law actually says the opposite.
In both cases these people should know better but they put out information to the public that is incorrect that also happens to back Obama.
Now do you get the idea why some would get the opinion there is a conspiratorial intent behind this?
Bob
This CNN article is very badly written.
Another important fact is that under the conditions Dr.C mentions if Obama was not born on U.S. soil then he would not be even be a citizen.
Then in that case not only would he be ineligible, we would have as President someone who is not even a citizen of the United States.
Bob
I agree. A 2008 election should be run under 2008 laws. Under current law, only 1 year of residency after 14 is required.
In the end, while the courts clearly have jurisdiction over ordinary citizenship cases it is questionable whether they would get involved in determinations of presidential eligibility. That is a matter where Congress has tthe final word. Legally, Obama is eligible, regardless of what I, Doc, Prof Chin or anyone else says, because Congress declared him to be.
Since President Obama was certainly born in the United States, I do not consider this an important fact.
I won’t defend Chin for getting the facts wrong in the CNN piece, but that is all it was, a mistake. The Michigan Law Review article argues that McCain was not a citizen at birth by virtue of his two citizen parents BECAUSE THAT WAS NOT THE LAW AT THE TIME. Others argue that the British Common law makes such a person a citizen in absence of a law to that effect (See Ludlum v Ludlum in New York) or that a law passed AFTER McCain was born made him a citizen at birth retroactively.
I can’t see the Supreme Court ruling on Obama’s eligibility (which is, as you say, a matter for Congress), but I could see the court define “natural born citizen” in the process of striking down the Nebraska birther bill, should it become law.
What I read suggests that Ann Dunham was unaware of the second marriage when she married Obama Sr. It is also plausible that Obama Sr., from a country where bigamous marriages was legal, was unaware of the Hawaiian law against bigamy. So no one need have lied. I mean, when I got married, no one asked me if I were already married. It didn’t come up.
No the current law today is that mothers giving birth in 1961 had to have 5 years residency after age 14 to pass on citizenship.
What about Mrs C? She never asked?
I’m not up on what the Nebraska bill says. I think laws such as the Louisiana one that specify what must be in a birth certificate would be struck down on Full Faith annd Credit without getting into eligibility at all.
I consider that possibility because public information from reputable sources say Obama Sr. was already married. Indeed, I know of no one who doubts Obama Sr. was a bigamist.
I see where you are trying to go with this: if the divorce is bogus, so is the birth certificate. However that is a false analogy.
The marriage certificate (presuming we had one) shows that someone authorized to perform the wedding did so in Hawaii. The person who performed the ceremony and signed the certificate is not attesting that the marriage was legal, only that it happened.
By the same token the birth certificate shows that a child was born, attended by someone who signed a form, and that the event happened in Hawaii. That person is not attesting as to whether the child was legitimate, only that the birth happened in Hawaii.
In both cases, independent of the truth of the applicants in the wedding or the informant in the birth, there was independent attestation that the “event” happened.
She says she doesn’t remember being asked.
Unless unmarried. As was pointed out yesterday the Flores-Villar case which was argued before the Supreme Court in November gets into this subject, though it concerns gender discrimination. The decison may shed some light on the question.
I will note that Obama’s Solicitor General argued against granting citizenship, So, if you believe in grand conspiracies, that strongly suggests Obama KNOWS he was born in the US.
The Nebraska bill requires the candidate to certify that his or her parents were US citizens when the Candidate was born.
And there is that little problem of a ban on ex post facto laws in the Constitution, don’t forget.
I was asked that very question in both Arizona and Australia. So, YMMV on that one.
When I read that I thought, “gee, that’s already been decided in Nguyen v. Immigration and Naturalization Service” but I see it’s being revisited. Thanks for the link.
This is interesting. The ACLU presented an amicus brief in Flores-Villar, in which they say:
Not only but also, when the celebrant asks ‘If any one can show just cause why they may not be lawfully joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.’, do you really think they are asking for a report on how close Dustin Hoffman is to finding the right chapel?
“The Nebraska bill requires the candidate to certify that his or her parents were US citizens when the Candidate was born.”
I think we can all agree Obama has NBC rights simply because he was born in Hawaii.
This bill quoted above would be tantamount to removing this right.
Any woman with a fertile one-night-stand who then gave birth in the US wouldn’t have a child eligible to be elected Pres or VP.
I don’t think it would pass constitutional muster.
But if it ever became a true issue, you can be sure it will be coined in the media as “The bastard bill” and be hotly countered by the right.
You’re welcome. I think it has something for people on all sides of the argument. The Vattelists will like the brief from the Immigration Reform Law Institute. While their argument doesn’t seem to exclude Obama as a citizen of the US as his father was in the US with the permission of the US government, their legal argument–if accepted–would make it impossible for US born children of illegal immigrants to have US citizenship because their parents weren’t here with the permission of the US government.
I haven’t looked at every page of all the briefs, but have noted, as you have, that there are passages on natural born citizenship. Unfortunately, one of the briefs said Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Canada. I wondered how I missed that fact. Turns out I didn’t. Their source was Jill Pryor’s well known article on natural born citizenship. I looked at Pryor’s article again, and it says Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. was born in Canada. I was disappointed they made that error.
I used to think ex post facto laws were completely prohibited, too, but there was a SCOTUS case Calder v. Bull (1798) that ruled that the prohibition only applies to criminal law and not civil law. I think that would allow for retroactive citizenship laws, but I’m not a lawyer, so I could be wrong about that.
I agree with Dr. C that Ann Dunham was likely unaware of bigamy so if any fraud occurred, it would solely have been on the part of Obama Sr.
It appears that Obama Sr. was married to Kezia Aoko in a “customary marriage” which is a legally accepted form of polygamous marriage in Kenya. Surprisingly, Kenya also has laws against bigamy. Their bigamy has to do with the type of marriage, though, not the number of wives. You commit bigamy when you have a polygamous customary marriage and a monogamous statutory marriage. You can have either multiple wives in a polygamous marriage or one statutory wife in a monogamous marriage, but you can’t combine both forms of marriage. So, I think it’s fair to argue that Obama Sr. committed bigamy according to the laws of Kenya unless he dissolved his marriage with Kezia before marrying Dunham.
According to US law, a customary marriage is considered a legal marriage in the US if it’s recognized “by the civil authorities in the place where the marriage was performed.” In the case of a legally recognized polygamous marriage, the US would accept the first polygamous wife as the legal wife, but not the second or third wife. The only thing that is unclear is whether or not the civil authorities in Kenya in 1961 recognized Obama Sr.’s marriage to Kezia. If they did, Obama Sr. committed bigamy by both Kenyan and U.S. law. If they did not, the marriage to Dunham was legal and not bigamous.
Interesting, thanks. This was heard in November, waiting for decision.
Doc: ” Who am I to criticize a mainstream scholar of constitutional law like Prof. Jack Chin, author of the seminal presidential eligibility paper in the Michigan Law Review? I couldn’t touch his credentials on constitutional law, but his error is on citizenship law.”
There is another law professor out there, Eugene Volokh, who went on the record on this question back in 2008. His views support the Doc, and disagree with Chin’s.
http://volokh.com/2008/12/01/correction-about-natural-born-citizen-law/
“So, as I now read 8 U.S.C. § 1401, ‘a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States’ before Nov. 14, 1986 is a natural-born citizen only if the citizen parent “was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years” — the same rule that was in place in the early 1960s. See also United States v. Flores-Villar, 497 F. Supp. 2d 1160, 1162–64 (S.D. Cal. 2007) (taking the same view and concluding the change from ten years/five years to five years/two years only applied to people born after 1986), aff’d, 536 F.3d 990 (9th Cir. 2008) (so assuming but not discussing it in detail); Rico-Ibarra v. Mukasey, 281 Fed. Appx. 694, 695 n.1 (9th Cir. 2008) (not precedential).”
This was posted on December 1, 2008, at The Volokh Conspiracy, a libertarian legal blog with a stable of law professor posters. It is as far from a pro-Obama site as anyone can get. Volokh is a completely mainstream scholar of constitutional law, just like Jack Chin, with top credentials on constitutional law, and his view is inconsistent with Chin’s is on citizenship law. In Chin’s defense, this is a devilishly complex issue, and Volokh himself admits he initially made an initial mistake in his conclusion. I hope Chin will restudy the matter.
Pat on the back to Doc.
Trump: I won’t do anything to help Obama
Written by CAA National on April 21, 2011, 12:34 PM
JENNIFER JACOBS
New York businessman Donald Trump vowed Wednesday that he won’t do anything that would help President Barack Obama get re-elected – even if that means sitting out of the 2012 election himself.
“I will not do anything to enhance the chances of Barack Obama being president, and that includes running as an independent,” he said by telephone.
Trump, a reality TV show host and real estate mogul, said he’s not ruling out an independent bid if he were to fail to secure the Republican nomination, but he’d pursue it only if he were guaranteed to win.
“So the only way I would run as an independent would be if the polls show I couldn’t lose,” he said. “But even that scares me, because anything can happen.”
Some Iowa Republicans grew worried when they heard Trump say earlier this month that he’d consider running anyway if the Republicans don’t choose him as their candidate.
Rick Halvorsen, chairman of the Warren County Republicans, said: “There’s some in our fold that are a little nervous he’ll split the vote and hand the vote to Barack Obama. He’s either doing it to make history or he’s doing it to help Obama.”
Trump, referring to the potential for splitting the GOP vote, said: “I’m worried about that also, to be honest with you.”
He also said, “If I ran as an independent and didn’t win, Barack Obama would win by a landslide because I would take almost all these votes away from the Republicans.”
Drake University political science professor Dennis Goldford said Trump might be overestimating his ability to play the role of spoiler. To be a spoiler, he must be able to capture a significant number of votes in a critical election, such as Ross Perot in 1992 or Ralph Nader in Florida in 2000.
http://conservativeactionalerts.com/blog_post/show/2431
The only reason THAT part was added is because McCain was born in Panama and would therefore not qualify otherwise.
Speaking of which. How ironic that the raised bar the crazies are trying to use as some sort of leverage against Obama actually means Obama qualifies while McCain absolutely positively does not. How insanely stupid does one have to be to try make this an issue to support their delusions?
Do you know if Hawaii recognizes the Putative Spouse doctrine? If they do, she could still get a legal divorce even though her marriage was void ab initio.
That’s presuming their loyalty is to the Republic party. Besides, many people consider McCain to be a RINO. Then there are those who are troubled that McCain has an adopted Bangladeshi daughter. Back in 2000 the Bush campaign suggested McCain had an out of wedlock black daughter; and, according to some published sources, it actually worked in getting Bush the nomination instead of McCain. If a person is opposed to miscegenation, they don’t want McCain in the White House any more than Obama.
Oops. Republican party.
The divorce papers weren’t “released,” any more than George W. Bush’s college records were “released.” Divorce proceedings are sealed and are not available tor public scrutiny. Some investigator dug up the divorce papers, probably from someone who works at the law firm which represented Obama’s mother. If you don’t believe me, try ordering a copy of the divorce file from the Hawaii court and see how far you get.
Incidentally, those divorce papers have not been certified or otherwise verified to be genuine. I believe that they are genuine, but they would be inadmissible without proper certification.
They were married. The fact of the marriage is not at issue. The question is whether the marriage was legal, since Obama Sr. already was married in Kenya. But legal or not, the marriage took place. Stanley Ann could not have gotten a divorce without first establishing that there had been a marriage.
Stanley Ann almost certainly did not know about the bigamy, or she could have gotten an annulment instead of a divorce.
So lets just play a what if game:
In some alternative Universe baby Barack is born in Kenya, to his mom and his bigamist dad. Mom goes to the U.S. consulate and shows her baby and they consider the child a citizen- and issue her a passport showing both her child and herself.
If at any point in the process, if the State Department recognized Barack Obama as a citizen, and there was no fraud involved, I am betting that regardless of the argument points of who the father was married to, that Barack Obama would still be considered a citizen. The State Department decides who is a citizen, and if 50 years later it was determined that they made that conclusion in error, I bet the decision would still stand.
It’s required in California when filing a marriage license. You can look up one in an image search engine.
I was married in California. The clerk at the recorder office asked if either of us had been married before. The marriage license form has a space for the number of previous marriages and a check box for how any previous marriage ended (death, divorce, or annulment).
Sorry – the check box was for how the last marriage (if any) ended.
Not everyone is fully certain of that. That’s why this site exits.
Bob
Actually, that’s not quite true — if you file an action for divorce, you have to SAY that you were married, but the courts don’t check to see if in fact a person is married. It’s not really an issue because no one would go through the expense & hassle of getting a divorce if they didn’t believe they were married, and most people who believe they are married are, in fact, married — but certainly it is a possible that a person can be mistaken in that belief. (That is, the marriage was a sham).
However, we know that Barack Obama Sr. married Ann Dunham from Hawaii index data. See: https://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/doh-hawaii-releases-publically-available-index-data/
Good find!
True, but the larger majority of politicians, world leaders, the UN, judges, US citizens and major media does.
The rest need help understanding laws and facts.
That IS why this site is here. You’re right.
Thanks for that info and for that link. The fact that you only have to SAY you were married is a key fact. It has been argued that since a date for the marriage is given in the divorce decree that must mean they were married then. However if all you have to do is say you were married during the divorce hearings most likely the date of the marriage is not checked either.
In that regard, here’s the index data that was on that NBC page:
Note that they do not give any dates here. So we still do not know when they were married. Anyone know if in the usual indexes the date of the marriage is printed?
Bob
There are records from the U of Hawaii that show Ann Dunham enrolled during fall semester and Obama Sr. continuously enrolled, year round.
So what’s the point of narrowing the date of marriage?
In any case, it’s unlikely that she was mistaken about the date. Women tend to remember their anniversaries.
I’m afraid that Professor Chin is correct and that Dr. C has misread the law. First, if there were an age requirement then the statute would have to have codified it. But it clearly doesn’t. So there is no intent to discriminate on the basis of age, since age is not mentioned. Second, the requirement calls for five years of residence after the age of 14 – but Ann Durham did not have five years of life after age 14 at all (because she was too young) – and therefore the residency restriction did not apply to her. In other words, if you can read the law in one of two ways, you must read it in the way that most favors the individual to whom it might apply.
If Professor Chin is correct, then how do you explain Flores-Villar v. United States which is awaiting a SCOTUS decision. The respondent’s brief says, “DHS denied petitioner’s
application (and his administrative appeal) because it was physically impossible for petitioner’s father, who was 16 years old when petitioner was born, to have been
present in the United States for five years after his fourteenth birthday, but prior to petitioner’s birth….” If what you said is correct, then the physical presence requirement (not residence as you said) does not apply to Flores-Villar either.
I’m afraid you are the one who is wrong. I refer you to the case of Flores-Villar v. United States where citizenship transmission from a 16-year-old father was refused exactly for this reason The case is being appealed under an Equal Projection argument, but not because it “does not apply.”
http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=108409
Wow – it’s a good thing (for the birthers) that birthers can’t understand legal subtleties like that…
Oops – guess I commented too quickly. I assume you meant ‘the citizenship of a CHILD OF A 16-year old father’, by the way…
The Obama-Dunham divorce documents state: “On page two:
“The libellant and libellee were married in Wailuku, Maui, State of Hawaii, on February 2, 1961 by a person duly authorized to perform marriage ceremonies and ever since then have been and are husband and wife.”
And On page 3 it states “One child, Barack Hussein Obama II” was born “as issue of said marriage” on Aug 4, 1961.”
You can read the divorce papers at the scribd.com website.
Since both parties stipulated to the date of their marriage, there was no need to check the accuracy of the date but a marriage record should be on file since there is an index file for that particular marriage.
More precisely, McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone.
Doc C. Do you believe that it makes a difference as to whether McCain was born in Colon, Panama (as that forged birth certificate for him said) or Coco Solo Naval Hospital in the Panama Canal Zone?
I suppose the argument would be since the person spent 100% of their life after 14 at home in the uS, then we have a case of agism -discrimination against the young.
But what if a 30-year old decided to run for president, because the doctor just told him or her that (s)he has only four more tears to live?
One of the theories going around for why Obama won’t release the original long form birth certificate is that at the time he was born Dunham and Obama Sr. weren’t married.
Obama Sr. already had a wife and child in Kenya remember. He might not have wanted his name on an official document naming him as the father or perhaps he doubted he was the father.
However, the argument against that theory is that if the original long form birth certificate did not list him as the father then that should be reflected on the COLB that has been released. However, I found a scenario possible within Hawaii state law and probably the law in other states where it could happen. According to Hawaii state law if there is a change in the acknowledged paternity of a child or if the parents later get married after the child is born then an entirely new birth certificate is drawn up to replace the old one. And the old one is sealed under a court order. In that case, the COLB would only reflect the information on the new birth certificate.
Bob
Then it is possible they were not married when Obama was born.
Bob
Doc C., you believe more likely than not that is the case?
Bob
Then the COLB would say that it was AMENDED. It does NOT. FAIL again, Bob.
Why do you persist in having to invent new tabloid rumors? You are nothing but a sad and obsessed disgrunted smear merchant. Have you no shame? You certainly have no honor.
How bad at math and simple timelines are you Bob???
MARRIED: Feb 2, 1961
OBAMA Jr. Born: Aug 4, 1961
OBAMA’S MOTHER FILES FOR DIVORCE: 1964
So NO, it was NOT possible that they weren’t still considered married at the time of his birth. The marriage happened BEFORE the birth and the DIVORCE happend a FEW YEARS LATER.
Heck, NONE of this is even NEW info. It was published and discussed by major NEWS publishers before he even won the Democratic Primary in 2008.
Case in point: TIME MAGAZINE on 04/09/2008: “The Story of Barack Obama’s Mother”
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1729524-3,00.html
(Hey look Donald Trump – Abercrombie is interviewed and quoted way back in 2008 talking about the wedding…so yeah, its been well known for a long time that he was a close family friend)
But I digress…back to the article and let’s move forward to the divorce:
So there. And ALL of this was provided and reported on WAY back in early 2008. Before he won the Primaries. Before he won the election.
Nothing new here. All that is new is all the LIES, MYTHS and CONCERN TROLLING that you pathetic disgruntled folks have made up since then…
Anything is possible. Plausible is quite something else. Based on what we do know, the answer appears to be possible but not plausible.
But since it is possible that you are a troll, how do you suggest we determine the plausibility of said hypothesis? Replace troll with your favorite miscreant and you may understand where such logic may lead.
Actually, it is NOT possible at all under the timeline.
The argument can only be made that going forward, some court could look into the issue of his other marriage in Kenya in terms of US bigamy laws, and RETROACTIVELY decide that the US marriage was null and void as a result.
The argument cannot reasonably be made that this US marriage didn’t happen and that between the time the US marriage occured and the US divorce was granted that Obama Jr. was born. The dates of all three events are known in the timeline and the BIRTH is sqarely in the middle.
They were married three months after Ann Dunham became pregnant.
Is there something wrong with that? The majority of women with children I know in Philly are not married, nor did they marry the child’s father. One photographer I know, who was once a photo magazine editor-in-chief, never married his son’s mother. A model I know has two children by two different boyfriends. She has no intention of marriage to either.
Are you the guardian of the public’s morals?
No, that’s the point I was making. It was considered so important for protecting the privacy of the child, that the law in Hawaii, and probably in most states, is that no notations of amendments are put on future printings on the birth certificate.
Bob
My wife and I lived together for 3 years, before we married. My mother lived in the house, too.
These are modern times. I suggest you read “The Namesake.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Namesake
I was making the point that the date for the marriage was coming from the divorce decree, a date which is supplied by them and not checked. The actual marriage records have not been released.
Bob
Link please.
Their not being married when he was born would not be much of a problem, especially since they did get married at some point according to the index of vital records released. But not having Obama Sr.’s name on the original birth certificate filed at birth or even someone else’s name as the father clearly would be something he wouldn’t want released publicly.
Bob
For the case where the acknowledged paternity is changed:
§338-17.7 Establishment of new certificates of birth, when. (a) The department of health shall establish, in the following circumstances, a new certificate of birth for a person born in this State who already has a birth certificate filed with the department and who is referred to below as the “birth registrant”:
(1) Upon receipt of an affidavit of paternity, a court order establishing paternity, or a certificate of marriage establishing the marriage of the natural parents to each other, together with a request from the birth registrant, or the birth registrant’s parent or other person having legal custody of the birth registrant, that a new birth certificate be prepared because previously recorded information has been altered pursuant to law;
(2) Upon receipt of a certified copy of a final order, judgment, or decree of a court of competent jurisdiction that determined the nonexistence of a parent and child relationship between a person identified as a parent on the birth certificate on file and the birth registrant;
(3) Upon receipt of a certified copy of a final adoption decree, or of an abstract of the decree, pursuant to sections 338-20 and 578-14;
(4) Upon receipt of an affidavit of a physician that the physician has examined the birth registrant and has determined the following:
(A) The birth registrant’s sex designation was entered incorrectly on the birth registrant’s birth certificate; or
(B) The birth registrant has had a sex change operation and the sex designation on the birth registrant’s birth certificate is no longer correct; provided that the director of health may further investigate and require additional information that the director deems necessary; or
(5) Upon request of a law enforcement agency certifying that a new birth certificate showing different information would provide for the safety of the birth registrant; provided that the new birth certificate shall contain information requested by the law enforcement agency, shall be assigned a new number and filed accordingly, and shall not substitute for the birth registrant’s original birth certificate, which shall remain in place.
(b) When a new certificate of birth is established under this section, it shall be substituted for the original certificate of birth. Thereafter, the original certificate and the evidence supporting the preparation of the new certificate shall be sealed and filed. Such sealed document shall be opened only by an order of a court of record. [L 1973, c 39, §1; am L 1975, c 66, §2(3); am L 1979, c 130, §1 and c 203, §1; am L 1982, c 4, §1; am L 1983, c 65, §1; am L 1984, c 167, §1; am L 1993, c 131, §2]
Rules of Court
Adoption, new birth certificate, see HFCR rule 112.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/vol06_ch0321-0344/hrs0338/hrs_0338-0017_0007.htm
And in a related scenario where the parents were not originally married but got married later see here:
§338-21 Children born to parents not married to each other. (a) All children born to parents not married to each other, irrespective of the marriage of either natural parent to another, (1) on the marriage of the natural parents with each other, (2) on the voluntary, written acknowledgments of paternity under oath signed by the natural father and the natural mother, or (3) on establishment of the parent and child relationship under chapter 584, are entitled to the same rights as those born to parents married to each other and shall take the name so stipulated by their parents or, if the parents do not agree on the name, shall take the name specified by a court of competent jurisdiction to be the name that is in the best interests of the child. The original certificate of birth shall contain the name so stipulated. The child or children or the parents thereof may petition the department of health to issue a new original certificate of birth, and not a duplicate of the original certificate that has been amended, altered, or modified, in the new name of the child, and the department shall issue the new original certificate of birth. As used in this section “name” includes the first name, middle name, or last name.
(b) The evidence upon which the new original certificate is made, and the superseded original certificate shall be sealed and filed and may be opened only upon order of a court of record.
(c) If the child’s natural parents marry each other and desire to change the child’s name, the child’s name may be changed and a new original certificate of birth prepared.
(d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the power of the courts to order the department to prepare new certificates of birth under section 584-23. [L 1949, c 327, §25; RL 1955, §57-24; am L Sp 1959 2d, c 1, §19; am L 1967, c 6, §2; HRS §338-21; am L 1975, c 66, §2(4); am L 1980, c 153, §5; am L 1983, c 65, §2; am L 1986, c 287, §1; am L 1987, c 100, §2; am L 1988, c 141, §27; am L 1993, c 131, §3]
Attorney General Opinions
Department of health’s preparation of a new birth certificate pursuant to paternity orders. Att. Gen. Op. 87-6.
Case Notes
Legitimacy or illegitimacy fixed at birth and cannot be changed by subsequent legislation. 3 H. 459; 4 H. 548. Prior to amendment of Act 71, L 1907, children of adulterous intercourse not legitimated by subsequent marriage of parents. 4 H. 292; 17 H. 45, 415, aff’d 210 U.S. 149.
Child begotten and born out of wedlock even though legitimated by statute on marriage of parents, is not “lawfully begotten child” within meaning of will. 14 H. 271.
Legitimation by subsequent marriage. 29 H. 258, aff’d 16 F.2d 273.
Presumption of legitimacy is not conclusive, but rebuttable. 30 H. 574. Evidence to rebut presumption. 49 H. 273, 414 P.2d 925.
Effect of legitimation on necessity of father’s consent to adoption of child. 52 H. 395, 477 P.2d 780.
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/hrscurrent/vol06_ch0321-0344/HRS0338/HRS_0338-0021.htm
Bob
Wow… you truly are a desperate conspiracy nut. You are sheer proof that NO amount of evidence on anything involving Obama is EVER enough for you…unless it turns up something you can use against him.
So…you “doubt” the marriage dates that are listed on the Divorce Decree for that specific marriage??? On what rational basis? And if you say the Marriage Records, would you doubt the dates on those too? Would you demand to question the person who married them? Then would you doubt their testimony if they confirmed it and demand to research that person’s back history too?
Bottom line, you folks and your ENDLESS requirements of levels of proof upon proof upon proof and verification of verifications is a JOKE!
This is paranoia and denial to the level of INSANITY.
Ahh… keep plucking that chicken, Bob!
Again, you desperate and pathetic birthers have to go off on completely meaningless side tangents of utter inanity!
So, tell me Bob. Under your stupid and completely unsupported speculative scenario, where “somehow” despite ALL existing info, there is some secret, mysterious different “father” involved… WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THAT MAKE TO QUALIFICATIONS AS NBC???
HINT: NONE!!!!
Still born in Honolulu, HI. Therefore, STILL NBC. Sucks to be you.
Furthermore, in your ridiculous fictional scenario of some other Birth father… just HOW is that Obama Jr.’s FAULT exactly???
HINT: It would NOT be. Such a crazy scenario result would only mean that HE too had been unknowingly operating under different assumptions all along.
Again: Absolutely NO impact on his eligibility as POTUS nor any impact on his ability to do his job as POTUS.
You are truly a rabid dog chasing your tail and wasting your time on utterly irrelevant nonsense.
The information on the COLB, by definition, corresponds to the original birth certificate.
If the COLB has the name Barack Obama as the father, then obviously the original birth certificate bears that information.
I’d note that it is highly implausable that our President would have been named “Barack Hussein Obama II” if his mother did not either believe Barack Obama Sr. to be the father or want him to believe that, and in either case she would have provided his name as the father on the birth certificate. (In case you don’t know, they don’t do paternity tests for birth certificates – they jut put down whatever name the mother gives them. One does not resolve disputes over paternity by looking at birth certificates, as they are highly unreliable for that purpose)
No, the marriage certificate would show the date it was actually filed with the court. In the divorce decree it is merely stated by the persons when they were married and it is not even checked beforehand or afterwards that they were actually married.
Most importantly, this would not be the only time she got a key date wrong in an official document. In the released documents relating to her passport applications per the FOIA request, she gives two different dates for her marriage to Lolo Soetoro:
Oops! Obama mama passport ‘destroyed’
State Dept. claims records gone for Stanley Ann Dunham prior to 1968
Posted: August 01, 201
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=186677
Bob
But you already have agreed that they were married.
Make up your mind.
Why don’t you come out plainly and just call the Presidents mother a whore? That’s what you think and at least that would be honest.
How do you know that it is not checked? Have you ever gotten divorced in Hawaii? What is your expertise in how Hawaii handles divorces?
Try this on for size. The birth information which the Health Bureau released to the Honolulu newspapers within a week of Obama’s birth lists his parents as “Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama.”
http://whatreallyhappened.com/IMAGES/obama-1961-birth-announcement-from-honolulu-advertiser0000.gif
Do you believe that somebody at the Health Bureau just made that up? Or is it more likely that the birth announcement appears that way because Barack H. Obama is listed on the original birth certificate as the father?
Rickey, this is the internet. Someone named “Robert Clark” knows more about Hawaiian law than the state Attorney General, who has practised law in Hawaii for 35 years, who founded a law firm in Honolulu and who has been President of the Hawaiian Bar Association http://hawaii.gov/ag/main/about_us/ag_bio. So does a guy from Chattanooga, TN who was disbarred for an aboslutely staggering record of professional malfeasance and incompetence. No matter, their opinion is just as valid as the AG’s, as expressed through his officiial, uncotradicted spokesperson.
Similarly, a poker player and a DWI attorney who hadn’t heard of Vattel before late 2008, know more about him than a French lawyer who has studied his works for years and also lived for many years in the US. These 2 savants know more about presidential eligibility than the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and more thann law professors who have written textbooks on the subject. The internet has empowered them to quote mine so they can pick the 5 words that seem to support their “case” out of a sea of verbiage.
Pretty soon, we will get rid of all the doctors and surgeons, since anyone with a Google connection can do neurosurgery. We will all board airplanes piloted by some guy who spent 30 minutes fooling around on Flight Simulator. And, Doc, who cares if you have spent much of career in the filed of vital records? I’m sure Sharon Rondeau and Dr Kate know more than you about the subject. After all, they once did a Google search on it.
Depends on what you mean by “original.”
Chapter 8B, section 3.3 of the Public Health Regulations says:
However, returning from the Bizarro planed back to Earth, the Obama’s were married and Obama Sr’s name was on the certificate, ’cause that’s what they do for married people.
I don’t think a President or anyone else is obligated to disclose that kind of information and even less so to rebut an unfounded theory put forward by people trying to smear him.
I said before it consider it most likely he was born in Hawaii. But I’m stuck on that point he won’t release the original birth certificate that was filed at birth. It just makes no sense that he won’t release it. It would contain utterly harmless information.
So I’m forced to consider what possible information on there he would want to keep secret. There’s not much else on there that’s not already on the COLB that has been released. By comparison to the Nordyke twins long form birth certificate, it would have the mother’s and father’s birth place, either the state or country. It would have the hospital where born. It would have the delivery doctors signature.
We already know where the mother and father were born so there should be nothing of concern there.There also is nothing controversial about the hospital or delivery doctor.
Well then perhaps there is something on there that is different than on the released COLB. That’s not supposed to happen. The COLB is supposed to reflect what’s on the original birth certificate. The only time that happens and there is *not* a notation on the COLB reflective of the change is if there is a change of paternity or legitimacy or if there was an adoption involved.
Bob
This has been asked many, many times before, but if President Obama were somehow able to make public the information you have requested, would you vote for him?
So are you suggesting that the conspiracy to get an ineligible Obama into the White House extended all the way back to the 1980’s when they cleaned out copies of routine passport applications? Are you suggesting that the Department of State is lying when they report that those records were destroyed? Or you just trying to use innuendo to create some vague negative view of Obama?
I guess if that’s the only horse you have to ride, you have to ride it. Given the newspaper birth announcements, a change in paternity would seem to be ruled out. In fact, I think we can reasonably rule out any embarrassing information on the birth certificate.
That forces us to look for other reasons, such as forcing dissension among the Republican Party. Obama is a fan of Lincoln — look at how Lincoln handled the attempt by Salmon P. Chase to run against Lincoln’s second term. Lincoln knew of the secret coup attempt from within his own cabinet, but patiently allowed his opponents to undo themselves.
Yes, I didn’t know this for sure before, despite the fact that they had a divorce decree, because the fact they are really married isn’t checked. But the fact they did get married at some point is revealed in the release of the vital records index over that 5 year period.
However, here is a key point. The Post and Email were making a big deal out of the fact, they said, that a news reporter was told by the Hawaii health dept. you could get an index of a single year. But then when the Post and Email tried to purchase that single year index for 1961 they were told they couldn’t do that; it had to be for a 5 year period.
I didn’t see what was the relevance of all that because we already had the newspaper announcements whose source was also the Hawaii health dept. that showed Obama was born in 1961.
But it might have a relevance to the Dunham-Obama Sr.marriage date question. Perhaps they weren’t actually married in 1961 but a later year. Note that we already do have a case where Dunham gave a marriage date one year off than it really was, in the passport application about her marriage to Lolo Soetoro. So this would not be so far out of the question to imagine this could be the case.
Then having those single year vital records indexes would be useful for confirming Dunham and Obama Sr. really were married in 1961.
Probably not. It would take too great a transformation in his economic policy viewpoint. There is going to be an argument about this but he is almost the perfect example of the “tax and spend” liberal. Bill Clinton did raise taxes but he also cut spending. The result of that is that he left office with a budget surplus.
At this point of the Obama administration even if he raises taxes to a realistic extent you would still have these humongous deficits because of the unbridled spending he promoted.
If Obama suddenly turned his economic viewpoint into that of Bill and Hillary Clinton I suppose I could vote for him, but that’s not likely to happen.
Bob
Why don’t you pony up the funds to buy those indexes. You could also take a trip to Honolulu and ask to look at the index books. Get back to us on what you find.
Maybe your mommy won’t let you cross the street by yourself yet.
My understanding about what the Post and Email were complaining about is the Hawaii health department claims you are not allowed to buy the 1 year indexes. You have to buy the 5 year indexes, which would not allow you to pin down when an event occurred closer to within 5 years. The Post and Email claims the Hawaii DOH told a reporter they could get the 1 year indexes but at some point they changed their mind.
Doc. C., do you know what the law is in Hawaii about the release of these indexes?
Bob
What if Barack Obama Sr put under “Occupation” “Communist, Muslim Terrorist”, rather than “Student”?
First I am not convinced it would be trivial to release them, given Hawaii’s policy. I don’t want to redo the whole discussion over this issue. Suffice it to say, while getting them released might not be impossible (in the sense of violating the fundamental laws of the universe) more would be involved than simply ordering a form like was done with the COLB. Perhaps, quite a bit more.
Second, while politicians do calculate political advantage in deciding their actions, they are also human beings. I try to look at this as if it were me. Let’s say I were at DMV trying to register my car. 42 guys in the line ahead of me simply sign a form and get their plates. They show no driver’s license, no bill of sale, nothing. I come to the window with my pen ready to sign just like they did. They ask me for driver’s license and bill of sale While I understand that may be reasonable my first thought is “Why are they asking me when they didn’t ask the other 42? Seems odd”. Nevertheless, I have those papers and show them. But then they tell me that isn’t good enough. I need the bill of sale from when the guy I bought the car from bought it. Now maybe I could take the trouble and go back and find the guy I bought the car from and see if he has that. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. But I think it’s human nature to bristle at being treated differently from the other 42.
Then why is it that Americans’ tax burden the lowest it’s ever been in your lifetime? (If you’re rich you get to keep more than six times as much money as you did under Ike… and his 90% marginal tax rate. The middle class is also at historical lows for taxation, but the rich have gotten [by far] the biggest benefits…)
No, I’m not doing that. It’s plausible that as a space saving measure those older documents were disposed of.
However, what’s the progress on your FOIA? Could you write them to speed it up?
Bob
Bob,
Economic circumstances (the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression) REQUIRED increased spending to combat. If half of the Stimulus wasn’t wasted on the least stimulative form spending (tax cuts) and if every dime of the most stimulative form spending (food stamps) wasn’t fought against tooth and nail by the Republicans then our country would be in much better shape.
What a naive fool you are – look up bureaucracy, onionhead.
Translation: I not only don’t have the balls to call Obamas Mom a whore straight out, I also dont have the balls to call Obama a socialist
Translation: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HAVE AN ARGUMENT
Translation IT WASN:T BUSH’S FAULT OK!! Stop saying that or I’m gonna cry.
Translation PLEASE gave an argument on this as I haven’t managed to get you guys at each other throat on the eligibility issue and I’ve made myself look like a Pig. So please have an argument on this as I HAVE NOTHING LEFT!! *SOB*
Sorry fella, you are still a liar and a moron.
Bobbie,
Does it shame you that an admitted foreigner like Suranis knows more about the US economy and government than you do?
You’re just going to confuse this self absorbed, clueless twit with facts. He’s an avowed enemy of the President whose bigotry blinds him from reality.
After all, this numb nuts is still citing the seditious P & E and the birther baiting WND as if they are credible sources.
s’rry.
Yeah isn’t it true that Exxon mobil made 19 billion in profit, payed no taxes whatsoever and actually getting a tax rebate of 156 million.
And General Electric Made 26 million on profit in the last 5 years, and received a 4.1 billion tax rebate from the IRS. And cut its US workforce by a fifth in the past 9 years;
You try arguing that those should receive a tax CUT. Please. I’ll have the popcorn and the baseball batwith a nail ready
Speed them up? That’s like asking a mountain to uproot itself and jump into the ocean.
Actually, I wrote them just this morning.
I trust you will keep us informed on the response.
Bob
Like these twits: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSqkdcT25ss
I trust you will keep us informed on the response from the Kenya embassy. You will ask them about BHO Sr., right?
Embassy of Kenya
2249 R Street Northwest
Washington D.C., DC 20008-4028
(202) 387-6102
Yep, I’ll keep you informed …
Bob 😉
I saw in prior post you are from Philly. Were you born in Pennsylvania?
If so perhaps you can perform the experiment. Whatever4 said by asking the appropriate question he was able to get a copy of his original long form birth certificate from PA. Or at least he was able to order it. He was told it would take 6 to 8 weeks.
My guess is he made his reason for asking for the original because he needed it for genealogical research on his own family background. Could you try that to see if you could get a copy of the original long form BC filed at birth?
Bob
From that most conservative of pollsters, Scott Rasmussen of rasmussenreports.com
“Most Voters Blame Bush Recession for state of the Economy”
Tuesday, April 19, 2011 Email to a Friend ShareThis.Advertisement
Most voters still blame the nation’s economic problems on the George W. Bush years, but they also continue to trust their own economic judgment more than that of President Obama.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters say the nation’s current economic problems are due to the recession which began under the Bush administration. Thirty-nine percent (39%), however, believe Obama’s policies are to blame.
In surveys since May 2009, 47% to 62% of voters have blamed the nation’s economic woes on the recession that began under Bush. In those same surveys, 27% to 48% have blamed he policies of the current president.
Consistent with past findings, 86% of Democrats blame the recession which began under the Bush administration, while 73% of Republicans blame Obama’s policies. Among voters not affiliated with either political party, 52% say the problems started under Bush, while 32% point their finger at Obama.
Bobbie,
Just admit that President Obama is eligible and I will look into obtaining a copy of my Michigan BC (and what form it is available in). Furthermore, this will give you all sorts of evidence of nefarious doings, because I can GUARANTEE that I will not be allowed to get a photocopy of my original BC (or even be allowed to view it) and that both any copy I can obtain as well as the copy that I have used all of my life contain false information which can be proven to be false in a court of law. Everything I just said is both accurate and honest.
I’m a triple New Yorker: New York County, NYC, NYS. I used the abstract to get a passport. I don’t know, nor do I care, about any other BC formats.
The only time I get into a technical discussion about formats is 6x7cm, versus 4×5 – can the casual viewer tell a difference.
Slarty my man, if I did that there will be no reason to ask to do the experiment in the first place.
I’m puzzled by that last part you say though. What do you mean by that?
Bob
Marriage certificates are not filed with courts.
Although it is possible to get married by a judge, marriage itself is not handled via the court system.
As other have noted, the date of Obama’s parent marriage is irrelevant in any case.
Since Obama has made no special effort whatsoever to conceal anything, why do you assume that there is anything on the birth certificate that he wants kept secret?
Would you conclude that Obama’s mother really didn’t die of cancer because he has not arranged for her body to be exhumed and publicly examined since becoming President?
Obama requested that Hawaii send him a birth certificate, using their forms to request the normal, typical, regular certified document that is given to anyone of Hawaiian birth who requests the same. During his campaign, he posted a scanned copy of the birth certificate on the internet, and made paper copy available to Factcheck.org and several news organizations for inspection. Factcheck chose to photograph it, front and back, and post multiple images on its web site.
That’s it. Nothing “secret”, nothing “concealed”.
Which is why birther twits are so incredibly pathetic.
He’s fishing for dirt. Anything to discredit the President and spread fear, uncertainty and doubt. Birthers like to spin information like giddy children. Give them a doctor’s name, a photograph or another historical document and they will invent another conspiracy to add to their list of paranoid delusions.
Birthers have no intention on supporting or voting for the President but they enjoy whining ad nauseam because that’s their tactic. They love to throw up smokescreens about the law and the Constitution while hypocritically demanding laws be broken or rules rewritten to satisfy their repugnant agenda. They love to move the goalposts when caught in a lie because they mistakenly believe everyone else is just as slow witted and delusional.
Birthers like him are playing an endless, childish game and he’s stupid enough to think his opinion or his inane requests are either relevant, rational or deserve anything more than to be derided and laughed off.
Robert, I have 6 different reasons on why Obama won’t release it, and none of them actually involve him hiding anything.
1. He doesn’t actually have the document. Hawaii Attorney General’s Office has said that he can’t be released one. And nobody has actually been able to provide a certified copy that doesn’t have significant issues on possibilities of being photoshopped. The two that I’ve seen are one that has absolutely no seal, no certification or anything else (Danae’s), and one where an uncertified copy with the exact same redaction was posted a month before (2 days after it was certified). I’ll take the AG’s interpretation of the law over a bunch of people that cannot read a simple statute.
2. There have been 74 Birther lawsuits. Not one of them would have gone away if he had released it. Every single one of those lawsuits included arguments that he was ineligible on other grounds other than his place of birth. Whether that be some crazy theory that Vattel was more influential than 400 years of English Common Law to a bunch of trained English Lawyers that they’d use a term that didn’t appear in Vattel’s works until a English translation came out 10 years after the constitution was ratified, or whether that be that he somehow lost his citizenship when he was 6-years-old because of the actions of his parents, flying in the face of 70+ years of American Juris Prudence. So, he would have spent the exact same money fighting these lawsuits whether or not he released the birth certificate.
3. He knows that the birthers would do the exact same thing that they did when he released his other document. They’d claim without any actual proof that it was a forgery, then they claim that it doesn’t matter as anybody could get one saying that they were born in Hawaii, and then they’d say that it doesn’t matter anyways, because Obama is ineligible to be President because of some other means. Birthers are vile, disgusting people who have no problem with suggesting that Obama murdered his grandmother to further their dilusion. Why should he believe that Birthers will keep to their word and put this all to rest if he releases just one more record? Have you seen the list of records the birthers want now? It includes his kindergarten records. Birthers have no interest in whether or not this President is actually valid. They use that as a pretense of opposing and attacking him. In reality, they’re looking for a fishing expidition to release information.
4. It would set a bad precedent. There are 1.3 million people living in Hawaii, so it also stands to argue that there would be about that many people who were born in Hawaii (I don’t have exact numbers). Obama, by releasing his birth certificate, would actually be saying that the Hawaiian Birth Certificate that any one of them get when they apply to Hawaii, is not actual proof of anything. Furthermore, all states have largely gone to birth certificates like this. So, he would actually be invalidating the birth certificates of anybody who’s gotten them. And doing all that for a group of people who have stooped to every new low to actually attack him.
5. He actually believes in the Constitution, when it says that the Judicial Branch must have a case or contraversy when it hears a case. And he also believes that the Judicial Branch does not qualify the President, that the Legislative Branch does and did so when they ratified the vote of the Electoral College. A case has a constitutional standing requirement, which cannot be waved by any side. In order for a case to be heard by a court, the court must have jurisdiction over it. And the cheapest way to fight a case is to get it dismissed at the first possible entity. So, he wants to uphold the constitution by requiring that the plaintiffs actually have standing to sue him.
6. There is not one vote to be gained out there, and by leaving it out there, he knows that the Republicans have to deal with it. Not one person who says that he’s not legitimate would turn around and vote for him if he caved into the Birthers. And furthermore, leaving it out there just forces the Republicans to pander to these lunatics in the primaries, which then gives him material to use against them in the General Elections.
All reasonable explainations of his behavior, Robert.
Oh, and Robert, as far as you’re concerned, then, the President is legitimate and has proven his legitimacy. The Burden of Proof in Citizenship Cases is Preponderance of the Evidence. That means is it more likely than not. Which means that if you were on a jury, knowing what you know now, you’d have to vote that the President is a Natural Born Citizen. Therefore, I expect your next post to say that you believe that Obama is a Natural Born Citizen.
In Robert Clark’s fevered imagination, the conversation between Obama and his staff when he decided to go into politics had to have gone something like this:
1. Your father was black and your mother was white. Okay, we can be up front about that.
2. Your father was from Africa and never became a U.S. citizen. Okay, we can tell the truth about that.
3. Your parents were divorced when you were three years old We can admit to that.
4. After the divorce, your mother married an Indonesian Muslim and you moved to Indonesia for a few years. We can be candid about that.
5. What this? Your mother and father didn’t get married until a year after your birth? That’s a damning fact that we have to cover up!
And I’ve noticed that Robert Clarkl still hasn’t told us how he knows that Hawaii does not verify that a marriage had taken place before the state will grant a divorce. Typical of a birther – they make things up, and when asked for documentation they change the subject.
As I wrote before, Trump has wrecked Romney, the only one who is electable. Pandering to the crazies in the primary has been disastrous: Nevada and Delaware are two good examples. So keep going guys.
Note to birthers: evolution is a lie. Tell your friends.
Please note an important update to this article.
Thank you for another example of what an honest, intelligent person does when they say something that isn’t quite right (and what we’re still waiting for a birther to do…).
So, now that we have Chin saying Obama wouldn’t have been a U.S. citizen if he were born overseas, how does that fit into the conspiracy?
While I’d like to know why Chin thinks Obama wouldn’t be a citizen even if the marriage was void, I’m satisfied with his answer. He wasn’t aware of Mrs. Obama’s age when she gave birth.
Obviously, it’s the original long form birth certificate that is still concealed.
Bob
The Atty. Gen. himself said it can be released with the Presidents consent. He would more about the matter than a “spokesman” for his office.
Bob
Bob, the AG never said that. He, according to the Governor, said that no further documentation could be released without Obama’s consent. He never said what could be released with the consent of Obama. And his office has directly said that Obama would not be able to get a copy.
You’re putting words into the Hawaii AG’s mouth. But we’ve told you this before, and yet you seem to either not realize what you’re doing, or are willfully ignorant of what he actually said because it doesn’t actually support your position.
Like I said, there are 6 reasons up there, none of which have to do with him hiding anything.
I don’t know that. I was going by the opinion of an Obama supporter on this forum who said this.
Bob
It is not “concealed”. It is simply not releasable. But you’ve repeatedly been told that, you disingenuous liar.
MORE IMPORTANTLY – It would NOT change in any way the info provided on the COLB, which comes from it and therefore would have NO impact on the issue of NBC.
It simply is IRRELEVANT.
We know the fields of info that exist on such a form. Just what in your fevered and diseased little mind are you hoping would be “dirt” that in any shape or form would make ANY difference whatsoever at all? Why and how. I’d love to hear your crazy theory here.
I didn’t mention it in the article, but Chin’s email said he was letting CNN know about the problem too. There are some of us, I hope myself included, who have a higher commitment to accuracy and fairness than we do to a political party or candidate.
Again you repeat this LIE, Bob.
You have been caught and called out on this repeatedly, yet you still REFUSE to show any evidence of such a statement. You have NOT shown any scrap of evidence that the AG ever said anything to that effect.
It’s nice how utterly unremarkable and expected this sort of behavior is from someone like Professor Chin (or yourself) and sad how non-existent it is amongst the birthers…
Kudos. As it should be.
Chins update pretty much dovetails whti what we found when we looked at the law at the time, that if Obama was born abroad he would not be an NBC.
It was nice of him to get back to you.
In that case the COLB would show a different filing date than August 8th. It would bear the filing date of the new certificate.
I’ll play your experiment if you’ll play mine.
Bob
I told you under what circumstances that I would do as you asked and you were unwilling to comply (which is fine). Now I told you what you’ve got to do if you’re curious about my comment. My offer stands: try to figure out what I meant and I will tell you if you can’t get it. If you don’t want to take me up on it, that is also fine.
Actually, no, according to this case:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18315786077770097942&q=%22certification+of+live+birth%22&hl=en&as_sdt=2,14
“The new birth certificate bears the same certificate number as the original, as well as the same receipt date…”
It will say “amended” though. Obama’s certification doesn’t say “amended,” so it wasn’t amended.
Sorry, I don’t have sufficient interest.
Bob
I have repeatedly.
Bob
BS. I’ve asked repeatedly and have NOT SEEN YOU PROVIDE A LINK YET.
If you claim you have, than it should be easy enough for you to just show it instead of talk about it.
Put up or shut up, Bob. Stop being so dishonest.
I handled more than 500 of them in Tennessee, and a few in Georgia, and the dates are not checked by anyone the court. Clerks offices do not check it, nor do judges. The system is set up to prohibit judges from checking much of anything — they consider what the competing parties present for them, and in a case such as Ann Dunham’s divorce, there was no other side taking part in the divorce….. but why in the world does this make any difference?