I first wrote about this WorldNetDaily poll two years ago. WND asked its readers to respond to the following question:
Under what circumstances will the truth about Obama’s birth finally be revealed?
It turns out that only 1% (22 out of 3382) anticipated this eventual outcome: “He finally steps up to the plate, and releases his long-form, hospital birth certificate.” President Obama did indeed release his long-form, hospital birth certificate in April of last year. Only 1% gave a second correct answer: “Get over it. He’s already disclosed the truth that he was born in Hawaii.”
As I wrote back in 2010, the most bizarre aspect of the poll is the by far most popular (43%) answer: “The truth is already out there, that he is hiding information precluding him from being eligible for the presidency.” What they are saying is that they are convinced by evidence that they don’t have. I am reminded of a quote from the Bible: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”1 By that definition, the birther movement is a faith based system.
Another popular response (15%) says that the new Congress will take over and issue a conclusion. So far there is no indication that the new Congress elected in 2010 will address the issue.
Another minority response (5%) said “A civil lawsuit will finally see success.” I think it likely that one or more civil suits will reach a decision on the merits this year. Whether WND readers will call them “successes” remains to be seen.
Read more:
1Hebrews 11:1
“Polls? Nah… they’re for strippers and cross country skiers”
– S. Palin
Thanks for another great laugh, Doc! The most popular answer … isn’t even an answer to the question asked! LOL! … to paraphrase: “Q: How will this hidden truth be revealed? A: The truth is, the truth is a hidden.”
You mean they failed to anticipate an eligibility review? Can they get partial credit for the second half of “When he’s indicted and proof will be demanded by a court”?
I would say that “He’ll address America in a heartfelt discussion to come clean no matter what the truth is” is also correct, as his irritation/amusement appeared to be heartfelt. Amazingly, that choice got 0%.
I haven’t checked WND in a long time. This makes me want to. Stop taker the nuts word for what they’re posting over there …. must …. resist … the stupid …. [insert Herculanean trial of willpower here]
JOHN 9:29 “We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.” (NASB ©1995)
Do you guys realize that the birthers actually got a new phrase introduced into the our general conversations about birth certificates, namely the “long form” birth certificate??
You all do realize that there is no such thing as a “long form” birther certificate. Dept. of Health officials in Hawaii said this early on. The quote I remember is “there is no long form or short form – there is the birth certificate that is issued today for the state of Hawaii.”
But nooooooooo – once the President showed his birth certificate (COLB – certificate of live birth), the birthers started talking about a “long form” and people, they meant it literally. They wanted a long piece of paper rather than that half sheet thing which they talked themselves into a frenzy by screeching IT’S A FRAUD!!!!
Bottom line: this long form business was just another “move the goal post” moment in birtherworld, because the minute they got this “long form,” what did they say: IT’S A FRAUD!!!!!!
Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s-Matthew 22:21
I’m not saying Romney hasn’t rendered every penny that the law and elemental fairness demand he give to Caesar, but it sure would be nice if he released his returns like every candidate since Nixon.
This isn’t going away. He’s hiiding something. Typical of a Boston pol (and Red Sox fan).
was that a typo, JayHG? If so, it was an AWESOME one! I can see it already, post-Obama birthers demanding “long form birther certificates” of each other to prove their authentic birther cred. “Dude, I was birthin’ when the Usurper was actually in office! O.B. all the way, cracka, I ain’ playin’. Ain’ no latter day Quisling like you. Check it out … my long form birther certificate, signed by Haskins himself, at the original Summit….”
teehee.
Busy having them forged into PDFs perhaps…
we should have called it the “so long!” form….if there ever was one. lol
I believe that smrstrauss might appreciate a little help from some constitutional experts over at http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7466841558189356289&postID=909525113481608842&page=1&token=1325799991696
What a ridiculous comment. The whole White House press corps got to look it it, the AP scanned it and NBC News correspondent Savannah Guthrie took a photo.
Ah yes, you come across the other eligibility problem in history, that of Jesus. The Messiah, according to Holy Writ, must be born in Bethlehem, but there were persistent stories that Jesus was born in Nazareth, and that the journey to Bethlehem recounted in Luke Chapter 2 was a fabrication of the early Christian community. Various inconsistencies in the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are cited.
The vital records community have been using the term “long form” for decades. The birthers may have gotten the term originally from the Wikipedia article on birth certificates.
Hawaii says that there is no “long form” but they were actually saying “we only issue one kind of certified copy” so there was no reason to designate a short and a long one. That’s not true in other states.
> By that definition, the birther movement is a faith based system.
Remember I’ve always said conspiracy theories are basically religions.
that fake press conference ?? so what… kim jong il told his subjects he directed “gone with the wind”.
there never was an original, if it existed we would have seen it by now. he’s a firework.
once you and frankie fogbow recreate that “scan” we may have something, today we have dreams and stories and hope but no change.
sorry doc, i call them as i see them.
there is just too much sabotage and subterfuge for this america. by the way, are you a real doctor ?
authority based, now legal in at least one state.
I have in essence already re-created the scan of the White House PDF. Not having a Mac or an original copy of the long-form that’s as far as I can go.
You should keep in mind that conspiracy theorists, by the very nature of their delusions, see sabotage and subterfuge where there is none. Of course seeing it everywhere leads one to look for it everywhere, and compounds the misconception of reality. Your comment basically defines you as a conspiracy theorist.
And no, I am not a “real doctor” just like my last name is not really “Conspiracy.” I never claimed to be.
> authority based, now legal in at least one state.
Way to go to tax exemption. 😉
Sweden recognises new file-sharing religion Kopimism
(excerpt) A “church” whose central tenet is the right to file-share has been formally recognised by the Swedish government.
The Church of Kopimism claims that “kopyacting” – sharing information through copying – is akin to a religious service.
(source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16424659)
(Oh the delusion…!)
If you believe birtherism is now legal in “at least one state”, that implies you believe it to be illegal, or at least of undefined legality, somewhere. Please expand on that.
If birtherism is authority-based …. what authority? The self? The id? Are you appealing to a higher power here?
How many thousands of people in press, government, and the courts are “in on it” now? How deep is the rabbit hole?
all of them.
not birtherism potter, that’s legal everywhere. it’s a legal case now in georgia, didn’t you hear ?
in essence, and don’t have the right equipment… seriously ? that savannah guthrie story is a hoot..
we’re all conspiracy theorists here doc.
i am real disappointed your last name isn’t conspiracy though, i guess you heard i’m not really bernadine ayers, there is a berardine dohrn married to bill ayers, but i’m not them.
Just trying to encourage you to aim for a higher level of clarity, sir … oh, sorry, “bernadine”.
The birther’s misinterpretation and resultant glee over the eligibility review in GA is charming.
Did you overlook my second question? From what authority does birtherism spring?
You’re playing with words and ignoring the substance of what I did. Your comment about Guthrie hints of not even knowing the story, but I might be wrong there.
Before you waste any more time, perhaps you might read what I did in my scanning experiment and deal with it substantially instead of flinging vacuous remarks.
What Frank did:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/08/how-optimization-creates-layers-video/
What I did:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/07/the-doc-got-layers/
In the future, I’m just going to delete your fluff critical remarks like this one. They’re a waste of my time and the community’s time.
Then give up now. You have no chance of overcoming such a deep and committed conspiracy involving everyone in all three branches of government, all state governments, and the entire media.
You. Have. Lost.
Hudson: That’s it man, game over man, game over! What the %$@# are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?
Burke: Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don’t we try that?
(Aliens, 1986)
You do realize that if everyone in the country is part of the “conspiracy”, it’s not a conspiracy anymore, it’s public policy and the will of the people.
Your mocking tone and the fake, melodramatic concerns from your first posts here and continuing now is why you get mocked in return, scott.
You could at least admit that you are not to be taken seriously. Your sporadic posts give me the impression you’re just bored and that you really, really like pushing people’s buttons for little reason other than to get the attention you desperately crave.
“that fake press conference ?? so what… kim jong il told his subjects he directed ‘gone with the wind’.”
Do you have any idea how incredibly idiotic an unsubstantiated statement and non-sequitur like that comes across?
That’s a rhetorical question, scott. Of course you do.
“there never was an original”
Accusing a multitude of state officials of wrongdoing without any credible evidence is despicable.
Would you like to be accused of a crime solely based on someone’s suspicions and rumors?
If you can, try to think carefully about that for awhile. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where you are being accused of a serious crime. How would you like to be treated? What kind of evidence would you consider valid? How would you try to counter lies spread about you across the internet? Would you even care?
Those are not rhetorical questions.
yes they are,
mock away my little majority pejorative opponent..
obama could stop this today.
.
as long as this site trolls the internet, that makes you fair game, doc can pull my plug anytime. my beliefs are just as important as yours (maybe not here).
remember it’s people like me that make it possible to put up with people like you.
yes. the “majority will”… i get it.
when i said all of them, i didn’t mean everyone in the whole country, i meant everyone that’s involved.
there is a lot more investigating being done and to be done in hawaii.
There is definitely a lot to be said to support that. More like the Cult variety…
Either this is your lame attempt at humor, or you really are that far gone.
Think about it. If “all of them” or even “the vast majority of them” are “in on it”…then the “conspiracy” is the “status quo” and you can’t “win” no matter what.
Or as a sane person would say, what you call a “conspiracy” is simply the “reality” and the prevailing “rule of law”… *sigh*
No we’re not.
You have to actually buy into a “conspiracy” to be a conspiracy theorist. Merely investigating, following and debunking one is simply being a skeptic or a realist. Sorry.
Which is the definition of Trolling…
Exactly!
see now we’re doing something. i will analyize your’s and epi’s work.
as i said doc, you’re all over the web, so this is a semi private club till you give me the boot. but i don’t think you will. i can tell you that at political forum, the moderator debated and deleted, and i got banned. if you edit me me for asking questions about stuff you publish on the internet, people will wonder why, they’re just ideas, i don’t use foul language (here), no offense to you personally.
look, i didn’t come expecting for you guys to like me or my friends or my website. this is your site. but we have a chance to exchange on this “dead issue”, so why not take it.??
i have my own ideas about guthrie, but i’ll bet i have more friends/information in the whitehouse briefing room/press office than do you amigo. and senator obama is a democrat.
i just read that the new short form is now called the long form…:
“However, we were pleasantly surprised that Duncan’s application produced several certified copies of Hawaii’s new short form birth certificate (which they now absurdly call their “long form”).”
http://obamareleaseyourrecords.blogspot.com/2012/01/update-on-lawsuit-filed-against-hawaii.html
bernadine,
calling it like you see it, does not preclude you from being wrong.
Don’t you mean “everyone except me?”
Some say that 99.99999% of Birthers on sites like WND are parody trolls and ratf*ckers. It could be true.
It’s an administrative hearing where the Judge will likely take judicial notice of the COLB and refer the case back to the SOS with a finding that President Obama is an NBC.
Why didn’t you do that 5 months ago when Jerome was dismissing it at WND? The “now” is your getting last years news.
Sounds like a vague and insubstantial posture on your part. Smells a little of eau de troll.
I’m not aware what your beliefs are. Mostly I see attempts to get people’s goat and make yourself, whether you get banned, or listened to, or insulted, to be the center of the discussion and not the substance of certain theories about Barack Obama.
“look, i didn’t come expecting for you guys to like me or my friends or my website”
Whew. Big relief.
No, it was a mistake and I didn’t see it until just now when you pointed it out. It IS awesome!! And the rest of what you said is AWESOME too………….too funny!!!! I swear birthers are an endless source of amusement for me sometimes.
I mean yes, it was a typo…..
You misspelled President. You’re welcome.
Which actually was my point……….that Hawaii says they have one kind of birth certificate and in Hawaii, there is no long form or short form, there’s what the state of Hawaii issues as it’s birth certificate.
But you can’t tell that to a birther………they want the paper to be at least 8.5 X 11 or it’s no go….FRAUD!!!!
So was that sarcasm or do you really think there is no long form? Perhaps you believe there is no ‘long form’ in Hawaii? Perhaps you don’t believe Hawaii is part of the US?
Perhaps you should let the State Department know there is no such thing as a ‘long form’ birth certificate. I’m going to assume your ‘birther certificate’ was a typo.
When I applied for my passport some years ago, I received a letter from the State Department saying that my COLB was insufficient and I would need to submit this mysterious ‘long form’ that you seem to think is such a new term.
Like Obama I was born in 1961. My COLB looks identical to him, as does the ‘long form’ that I had to get in order to get my passport. Could just be a Texas thing, but we’ve had ‘long forms’ here in Texas for many years. Even my mother who was born in 1943 has a COLB and mysterious ‘long form’.
Because “natural born citizen” is stamped on his birth certificate?
I’m not at all sure what the birth certificate has to do with whether or not he is a NBC. Most likely the judge will not need to see the birth certificate at all since Obama freely admits his father was a British citizen at the time of his birth and that he was born with dual citizenship. What more could the birth certificate possibly tell the judge?
Actually, I don’t think it’s a matter of liking or befriending you. This site is strictly a ‘group think’ site. They don’t cotton much to discussing anything. They only like to agree with each other. But I would bet that if you hand around long enough, one or several will get irritated enough to berate you and call you all sorts of names.
Now….Dr. C says he doesn’t tolerate such behavior – but I’ve witnessed differently. 🙂
That is simply because they only really have ONE official form that they issue for BCs. That has been true for well over a decade.
So in a sense, it is their current “long form”. Long form/short form… when there is only ONE form that they produce, it all means the same thing..
Sally Hlll,
You do understand the difference between a group that thinks and group-think, right?
Natural Born Citizen is not stamped on the birth certificate. As I understand things, there are 2 groups of U. S citizens: Natural Born, and Naturalized. A Naturalized Citizen has gone through a process of Naturalization, something the President has not done. That only leaves him being a Natural Born Citizen ( being born in America. Specifically, Hawaii; a different state than your home state of Texas, and as such has different rules about B.C’s. A Hawaii COLB can be used to obtain a passport.).
I am responding to your previous 3 posts without reference, and I do apologize for not doing a line by line run down, but you know what you wrote.
Please, if I am wrong, let me know. Also, if having a Kenyan father disqualifies one from being a Natural Born Citizen, when one is born in America could you please cite a viable source.
Thank-you.
Yeah, we went over that whole situation with you a few years back, when you were trolling under the moniker of “Scott Brown”.
As simply explained to you, yes, your TX thing has nothing to do with other states or how HI works at all. But you know that. You’ve been told that.
You’re not knew to this story or the answers and have been at this for years, so stop playing coy. You know darn well that HI only issues ONE official BC form – the COLB. That has been true for well over a decade.
So whether you want to refer to it as their “short form” or their current “long form”…doesn’t matter. It is all the same thing – their ONLY official form. End of Story.
…But then you’ve never been much of an honest broker on these types of topics, have you? Yeah, I recall quite well your little “act” during the whole explanation of your “personal experience”. And yes, don’t think that I and others here haven’t forgotten that you INTENTIONALLY MADE UP LIES AND STORIES about your past and those situations as part of your whole Concern Trolling schtick and you were CAUGHT and OUTTED on doing so.
So please stop Concern Trolling and thinking you can ressurect these long dead and resolved issues that you know darn well the answers to already…
Give it a rest, Concern Troll.
You know darn well that BCs don’t have “Natural Born Citizen” stamped on them. Mine doesn’t. Yours doesn’t. So don’t come across stupid with nonsense quips like that.
Of course, several years ago, you were all about being unsure of the “HI BC” thing…now I see you’re trying to Troll the shifted goalposts to the deVattelist crap.
Sorry, but another nonsense dead-end road for you dead-enders there.
You also know that ALL the Constitution requires is 3 things for President: NBC, over Age 35 and 14 years residency.
You also know darn well that the BC answers 2 of those 3 criteria by telling us: WHERE they were BORN and WHEN, which gives us the age.
You also know darn well that someone born on US soil, which HONOLULU, HI most certainly and unquestionably is, is BORN in the US.
That ALONE makes Obama NBC.
No requirements about citizenship or heritage of the parents. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
End of Story.
*waah* Says the Obvious Troll with a long and sordid history of being caught openly lying and making up stories here.
Sorry, but somehow lots of posters, including quite a few anti-Obama conservatives, post regularly here without problem or incident and are able to garnish quite a bit of respect and thoughtful discussion.
You just have sour grapes because you are just a dishonest Concern Troll and always have been here and simply evoke the types of response that shameless and unsupportable lies deserve. You didn’t receive any treatment other than what you brought upon yourself and rightly earned.
It really is quite simple. Those that seem to be able to come here with honest intentions and have adult conversation and are able to produce evidence to back up their positions all do just fine. And that includes a variety of different people with different posting styles, views and interestes – whether political, ideological or religious.
Only the Trolls and shameless scam artists and smear merchants seem to have a problem here….
BINGO! Well summarized and well said! 🙂
I’m not yo mama.
All birth certificates include the place of birth, which is the criteria for a natural born citizen of the United States. (To be 100% precise one also needs to know if the person is born to an ambassador’s family or a visiting head of state.) Birth certificates also have a date of birth from which one gets age, another presidential eligibility requirement. The only thing a President needs to be eligible that is not on a birth certificate is his years of residence in the US.
Thanks for your question.
I suppose you thought that sounded snappy but it’s primarily not true.
Any forum can develop consensus where people with one point of view will gang up on others and the others leave, resulting in one prevailing viewpoint.
I see a little of that here, but not much. It’s always a danger and I watch out for it. There are several questions over the years where folks differ and they’re still here (e.g., question about whether someone can be NBC and be born overseas).
If some viewpoint gets expressed that’s contrary to published fact, I try to point that out and when folks spout without any supporting facts I try to nudge them to re-think. There are anti-birther factoids out there that I have to correct from time to time — but nothing compared to what’s in a birther’s head.
Certainly most folks here think the birthers are living a fantasy, but then most folks think the sun will rise tomorrow too. It’s not group-think when a consensus is well-supported by the facts.
Generally speaking states are moving from certified copies of original documents to computer printed forms from databases created from original documents. In the industry, folks would say that they are moving from long forms to short forms; however the birthers have so maligned the term “short form” that it’s becoming disused and the big example is Hawaii.
But yes, it is a Texas thing. There was a rash of fraudulent registrations of illegal immigrants by a group of Texas midwives. Typically the computer-generated (short) form doesn’t say if the birth was in a hospital and who filed the registration. They have the same problem in Southern California. Without information from the original, the Department of State can’t tell if the person’s birth registration came from one of those midwives. Essentially what the Department of State requires is related to the integrity of the process in the state that issues the certificate. Obviously, DoS considers the Hawaii process OK, since they don’t require original documents from there.
The Certification of Live Birth Obama released in 2008 was 8.5 x 11. The flaw in that document, the thing that made it unacceptable to the birthers, is that it said rather plainly that Obama was born in Honolulu.
The same can be said for the long form PDF file. It’s certainly a forgery because of a serious mistake on the form: it says the place of birth is Honolulu.
Yeah, but he’s probably not going to resign.
ROTFL…
I’ve seen images of several Pennsylvania birth certificates. Those only list the county of birth. Also – the entire island of Oahu is technically the City and County of Honolulu, but most people think of different areas of Oahu as “towns”.
Of course the tricky thing will be if someone born of US citizen parents while overseas is going to make an interesting case if one should ever run for President again (like George Romney). I think the State Dept has issued a new policy that multiple copies of the Consular Report of Birth Abroad can now be requested (might be useful if there are simultaneous needs) although they still charge $50 for each copy.
From what I read, the issue with the California abstract of birth wasn’t necessarily midwife-attended births, but that it had been too easy to forge. I don’t even think it had an embossed or multicolored seal, although some people had used them to get US passports in the past. They were about a third the size of an 8.5×11 sheet. California stopped issuing them around 2001. Here’s a site with an image of what the form looked like, but with the primary information blotted out:
http://thumbsnap.com/f/FmVqGhkL
Some California counties that previously issued the Certified Abstract of Birth will replace them (possibly for free) with a Certificate of Live Birth. That’s the “long form” document with some sort of image representation of the original birth certificate. Here’s what Santa Clara County has to say:
http://www.sccgov.org/portal/site/rec/agencyarticle?path=%2Fv7%2FCounty%20Clerk-Recorder%20%28DEP%29%2FFAQs&contentId=3d8280615554c010VgnVCMP230004adc4a92____
Also – a lot of passport acceptance locations have their own websites that discuss details about getting passports that the State Dept doesn’t necessarily publish. Here’s a county library in Wisconsin that does passport acceptance:
http://www.mcpl.us/services/passports/faqs/
What is acceptable proof of U.S. Citizenship? — You must provide an ORIGINAL copy of your CERTIFIED BIRTH CERTIFICATE (no photocopies). The California Certified Abstract of Birth and the Texas Certified Abstract of Birth are NOT ACCEPTED by the U.S. State Department. You may NOT submit a Hospital Birth Record.
i did, i was trying to be polite. frank found that video ? his response to mara zebest was much better, with some detail.
i saw that a few minutes after he posted it at scribed. that’s when he told me (indirectly) whom he really was. i’m still trying to figure out who(m) he is here.
i don’t think obama did himself any favors by producing a second birth certificate, whatever it’s called. he should have stood with what he had. that was a busy week as i recall. things got more confusing after that, in my opinion.
why did he produce a second “document”.. because of trump ? c’mon…
anyway it was good to see a nice picture of orly for a change, and on a major media outlet no less, on foxnews lat night.
let’s just see which way the national “groupthink” goes this month. but you guys are hanging in there too, i respect that.
all i’ve ever wanted is for people to google “obama birth certificate”.
in the end, we’re not birthers or anti birthers… we are the united states of america.
(words, just words ?? …. was that plagiarism ?)
Well if you find out, don’t post it here cause I don’t allow that kind of thing. I personally don’t know that Frank has ever posted here. My interest is in what people have to say, not who they are.
i appreciate that.
why all of the sudden interest in what age obama went to indonesia ?, everyone’s talking about it. i remember long coversations with wong and sfjeff saying that hugo chavez could declare obama ineligible by making him a venezuela citizen or something.
one said he was an indonesian citizen till twenty three, one said he never was.
and then you thought he moved there at five, is there is some citizen time limit connected with being six. why is there so much confusion about all of this ?? we’re you just quoting the washington post ?
did he go there when he was two ? what does his book say ? i’ve forgotten what the remnick book says. please straighten this out.
That’s the ultimate joke of it all … no, Obama couldn’t stop this today. It isn’t in Obama’s hands, it’s in his deranged opponents heads! They don’t want to accept him as President, and have concocted a slew of fantasies to cling to, to shield themselves from reality with. One such is birtherism. It isn’t about his birth certificate, his grades, his SSN, his utility bills, it’s about his job title. All of the rest is a charade.
Even if he—completely improbably—suddenly felt very, very bad for this handful of nutters out there, bad enough to resign just to put there minds at ease (that’s right, let’s put enabling the mental problems of a tiny minority ahead of the common good of an entire country), it wouldn’t end. The nuts would continue to hound the man (just as they will in his post-presidency) no matter what course he follows.
And if the birthers are bad now, how irritating would they be if they felt they were vindicated? Pity the target of their next obsession.
No, enabling nuts is not the right course. Forcing them to tackle their fears head on is a better start. Is that FEMA camp ready yet? The one with Obama wallpaper on all the walls and a looping feed of the inauguration playing in every room?
No mystery there. Martha Trowbridge has been publishing a fantasy biography of Obama at “The Terrible Truth” web site. It includes a claim that Obama went to Indonesia at age 2 and lived with Indonesian President Suharto. Mario Apuzzo has been publicizing the Trowbridge story. The whole thing is ludicrous but I thought I’d shoot a hole in it.
http://terribletruth.wordpress.com/
I tend to think that the whole exercise is to throw so much feces into the fan that something will stick, or that a general frustration over all the conflicting stories will lead someone to think “I don’t know anything about Obama.” In fact, we know a lot about Obama’s early life, far more than usual for a sitting president.
the malcolm x theory ? that’s pretty wild., even for me… i’m more interested in the sunahar;s brother story and the treatment he seems to be getting from hawaii. are you planning to address that subject ?
there are bound to be more outrageous representations. do you think it’s so much more attention because he’s the first multi racial president. would a woman or a jewish white or gay president have gotten the same scrutiny ?
this seems like the same response as “he can’t legally get the long form”.
then, he can only get it with a “special permission waiver”.
i suspect he could have a public viewing, we could have trump, you guys could get geraldo… whatever they say goes…
The State of California has such huge backlog issuing birth certificates that people went to county offices to get them and the county certificates were not uniform. This has been a problem in the past with literally thousands of jurisdictions issuing birth certificates and few security standards in place. Various state modernization projects over the past decade have worked to clean up the mess. Some states have remarkably secure paper with features such as thermal link, watermarks, microprinting, color gradients and stuff even I don’t know about.
For the record, I have always opposed that view and written often on the blog that the long form could be obtained through some special procedure. This is another example of the absence of “group think” here.
That is all the sad, pathetic retread of long dead and debunked stories rising from the grave again is about.
The scam artists and liars out there simply want to sling a lot of poo and sow doubts. It is nothing but a bunch of dishonest people with no integrity and low morals thinking that life is a game and they can just casually go around and smear others and hope that *somehow* changes to swinging an election in their favor.
Both lame and reprehensibe behaviors.
Hey, Fox News Channel and RW radio has already provided the 24×7 ODS fest ever since the guy got elected last time. Anybody who’s susceptible to the hate train has been already riding it hard for the past several years. Most of the bottom-of-the-barrel stuff they are trying to trot out again this time failed miserably the first several times around… why they think years later it will somehow get any more “traction”…
…who can fathom the minds of idiots after all. Expect them to continue to circle jerk all year around, in permanent cluelessness that they are only talking to themselves…
I think that court case is a worthy topic for this blog. It might not get covered until the actual case goes to court, like many of the other court coverage cases here.
I’m not sure what type of bad “treatment” you are referring to, Scott.
You mean the poor duped brother, who the birthers have been been shamelessly scaring and manipulating for some time, first claiming that they were investigating “mysterious infant deaths”… that brother?
I’m not sure what type of inappropriate treatment you are referring to. In terms of documents they have and were required to provide to him under the law, they’ve done that – he asked for a copy of her BC and they gave him the COLB right away.
The problem is that Haskins has been filling his head with bogeyman rot, so now he’s all worked up about problems that don’t exist.
The hospitals he went to told him they didn’t have the records. That is a very reasonable and valid answer, as hospitals have no requirement to keep 40+ year old detailed records on patients, particularly those that died soon after birth.
“NO” and “we don’t have that” are valid answers.
The DOH gave him the BC info he requested, in the ONLY format that they release such things anymore. Nothing new here. That’s been their rules, form and process for well over a decade. The whole point of allowing for consideration of extraordinary exceptions is that they are that – exceptions and require a heck of a lot of justification to be considered. Otherwise, what is the point of having rules about everybody gets the standard format in the first place?
There is nothing special or urgent this poor manipulated guy has as a reason for why the official COLB is not good enough for him. He’s just being used by shameless Dean Haskins and Miki Booth.
There’s also nothing surprising in the BC number being a little different than the other known names either – all the rest were born at one hospital, she was born at a different one.
So no, he hasn’t been treated improperly nor unfairly. He’s been provided with the available data he is entitled to in the manner and format that such things are given out. He’s not entitled to any special treatment anything more than that.
There is no contradiction in those two statements. Do you really have that poor of a grasp of how official rules and standards work and why and why they need to be maintained under all ordinary circumstances to protect fairness for all? Do you really have that poor of a grasp that in order to do anything different than the standard rules, it requires extraordinary justification to make an exception?
There is nothing difficult in grasping these concepts, Scott…
bernadineayers: “i’m more interested in the sunahar;s brother story and the treatment he seems to be getting from hawaii. are you planning to address that subject ?”
.
You mean Haskin’s slam dunk proof that Virginia Sunahara was born 8/4/1961 and died 8/5/1961. Haskin’s found proof that Virginia was born in a different hospital in a different city with a different BC number than Obama. And lo and behold, the death certificate had the BC number hand written, wow Slam Dunk. Click that pay pal.
Probably, yes. Something similar.
There are lots of bigots out there who would take issue to any “different” type of President than what they are used to and therefore be desperate to come up with any excuses and smears to not only try to take them down but also to explain them away…
To be eligible to be the POTUS, one must be born to parents that are/were both US citizens. His father was not. He is an illegal president plain and simple. Putting one’s past under lock and key is very odd behavior for a public figure. Couple that with habitually lying then there is cause for concern, What is far more laughable than any questions that birthers may pose is the belief that there exists two parties that actually represent two different approaches to governing. The parties are just two heads of same beast serving only to divide the people so as to keep us distracted as the rape us and lay waste to America. The white house is occupied by a traitor and both houses of congress are as well. Where Obama was born doesn’t change that reality one bit
You have to realize that not “everyone” is talking about any of this dreck.
It is simply the same small circle of people and websites that have always attracted the same like minded group of upset people, spreading these same stories over and over again amongst themselves.
It only seems like “buzz” or “everybody talking about it” because it is merely bouncing around the same small echo chamber it always has.
In the bigger and much broader world. Nope. Never gets any traction. This whole smear game and rumour mill just preaches to the converted. Swill for the same gullible masses to keep them endlessly riling themselves up. That’s all.
We just monitor and watch it happen.
hey david
“…were both US citizens”
constitution or legal case link for this please
I’ve hinted at it before, but my kid was born in a California city that issues its own birth certificates. I’ve even ordered copies from all three jurisdictions (city, county, state) that can issue them. I was also married in California, and the vital record security paper is the same for marriage certificates.
They’ve got most of those features now you mention. The state prescribes a standard set of requirements for vital documents issued by state and local agencies. It includes a specific engraved border with “State of California, Certification of Vital Record” at the top and “THIS DOCUMENT IS VOID ID ALTERED OR ERASED” at the bottom. It also includes the California state seal on the lower left and the seal of the issuing agency on the lower right. There are multiple suppliers for the paper (American Bank Note, Pacific Bank Note, Midwest Bank Note, etc) with each one having some minor variations. They all now have watermarks, although at the very least they say VITAL RECORD, while the security paper from the state repeats an watermark of the state seal. The also all use slightly different color-gradient backgrounds with VOID ghosts that faintly show up on B&W photocopies. Most agencies also have a sublimated background image of the government seal, but I don’t think it’s a requirement. They also have serial numbers for each sheet of security paper along with a bar code. The location of the serial number may vary though.
Here’s a public example – Suri Cruise’s birth certificate:
http://cdn.digitalcity.com/tmz_documents/cruise_bc_8_5.pdf
There was some controversy over it because it was certified by a nurse who wasn’t the attendant, and that a friend (can’t make out the name) was the informant. There were also some internet rumblings that it might not be legal since the preparer listed the attending physician’s license number when an L.A. County spokesman said that they should list the certifier’s license (if there is one). My kid’s BC was prepared and certified by a hospital administrator and the license number was also that of the doctor.
All the documents look somewhat different. All the BCs are obviously printed from scans, but they differ from ones that fill it from edge to edge or ones that are reduced and/or a little bit crooked. The one from the California Department of Public Health has the state file number, and the state maintains the original form in a vault somewhere. The location of the signature, the embossed deal, and the issue date vary with different agencies.
My marriage certificates were obtained at different times from the county clerk-recorder. I got our first one the day it was filed, and it looks like it was photocopied from the original onto the security paper before they had an opportunity to scan it. I hand delivered it for filing and the clerk asked me if we wanted a certified marriage certificate right away. It goes edge to edge and is razor sharp. I got a backup copy a few years later, and it was obviously from a scan, was heavily reduced such that it’s hard to read, and is crooked. Not only that, but the scan crops off a little of the standard text on the left. The state Dept of Public Health has the original now, but they only issue certified marriage certificates for certain years, which doesn’t include our marriage. They recommend that even if they can issue them, they take up to 6 months and recommend going to the county. I think the office has a priority for certified birth certificates, and say that they can take up to 6 weeks (my kid’s arrived in about three weeks).
It’s also a pain that the California Department of Public Health doesn’t have a public desk. They only accept applications by mail. Any application for an “authorized copy” requires that a notary witness the signature of someone authorized to receive a full copy rather than an “informational” one like the Suri Cruise BC that TMZ obtained. City and county public desks will accept IDs in person, which doesn’t require a notary charge.
I think the issue with the California abstract of birth wasn’t that it wasn’t a standard form, which it was. It was printed on multi-colored security paper with a color-gradient background. However, all the information was typically printed at the time it was issued, and I understand that some forgers produced templates to print it if they could manage to get some stolen security paper. The real biggie was that they didn’t include an embossed or multi-colored seal.
Doc, the “Nobody knows anything about Obama” meme violates the rules of elementary logic. Whoever says this claims to be speaking for everyone, including me.
A first cousin of my wife tried this during the Thanksgiving holiday, and I was only too happy to set him straight. There’s no way anyone (God excepted) can claim to know what other people know and don’t know. I happen to know a lot about the current president because I bestirred myself to learn, and I seached broadly rather than narrowly.
What you can infer when someone says no one knows anything about Obama is that the speaker is the one who doesn’t know, either because he/she has been too lazy/uninterested to search, or if they did make a good-faith search effort, their search skills obviously could use considerable sharpening.
David above sounds very much like my wife’s cousin. He opines that Mr. Obama “put his past under lock and key.” That sounds like he buys into the long discreditied rumor that Mr. Obama issued an executive order sealing his personal records. A capable researcher would find that the executive order giving rise to this rumor was identical in substance, and 95-plus percent identical in language, to an executive order issued by President Reagan 20 years earlier.
If he’s referring to the president’s birth records, Obama is the first chief executive to make public not one, but two, birth documents. Also, Mr. Obama wrote not one, but two, memoirs about his life, and both sold a lot of copies.
David, if you’d like to upgrade your search skills, I think I can help. Just drop me a line..
Nope, Under US v Wong Kim Ark and as confirmed in Ankeny v Daniels, birth on soil is sufficient to be a natural born citizen
It might be a useful exercise to look at what we know of Mr Obama’s opponent Mitt Romney:
It is claimed he was born in Detroit though he has never shown a birth certificate, unlike Mr Obama who has shown 2 versions of his.
The citizenship of Mr Romney’s parents is unknown, though irrelevant, just as that of Mr Obama’s is irrelevant (though Obama’s are known).
We know where Romney attended school, as we do for Obama. We don’t know either one’s grades.
We know little about what Romney did as a missionary in France. We know something of what Obama did in Indonesia.
We know a little about what Romney did at Bain Capital, though they are a private company and don;t have to disclose very much. It’s still debated, whether they net created jobs or destroyed them. We know a bit about Obama’s activities as a community organizer and as a law professor.
Mr Obama has writted a memoir, Mr Romney hasn’t as far as I know.
Romney has a public record as Governor of Massachusetts. Obama has a public record as an Illinois and US Senator and President.
Mr Obama has released his tax returns since 2000, Nr Romney has released none. So in the very critical area of finances we know more about Obama.
Overall, I would say that we know more about Obama than we do about Romney.
Back to the subject of California abstracts, I think I’ve previously linked to this article:
http://www.policemag.com/Blog/Gangs/Story/2010/08/False-Documents-and-Gangs.aspx
The California abstract form was quite insecure. It had a border (not sure it was engraved), but didn’t include an embossed seal. I’m sure a few unscrupulous county or state employees were bribed to provide blank forms even though they had serial numbers that might be used for controls on access and distribution. There were ID forging kits available and possibly people who had counterfeited the more simple security paper.
These days California birth certificates are printed on a full-sized sheet with serial numbers and bar codes. Once I had a clerk make a mistake pulling up the wrong record and printing it out on a sheet. He looked at the application, realized the mistake, then placed the mistake in a special pile. I think he probably had to account for the skipping of the serial number. I also have one receipt from the state for multiple copies of my kid’s birth certificate. The receipt includes the security paper serial number of each copy.
I also found an interesting document on birth certificate fraud from the DHHS Office of the Inspector General. I’m thinking Dr. C has probably seen this before:
http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-07-99-00570.pdf
Parts of the report almost seem like the blueprint for how California law changed in regards to providing full copies and the requirement for ID for people obtaining birth certificates. Previously California prohibited a request for ID to obtain birth certificates, and there was only one unrestricted form. However, birth certificates since 2001 and marriage licenses since about 2008 come in two flavors. There’s the “authorized” full copies available only to someone who has a “tangible interest” such as an immediate relative, the registrant, someone with power of attorney, law enforcement for a legitimate reason, etc. Then there’s the “informational” copy that anyone can order off the street, but carries a legend over the text that prevents it from being used for obtaining a driver license/passport/SSN/etc. and can’t be used to file an I-9 or used as proof of US citizenship on a Mexican/Carribean cruise (cruise lines still accept birth certificates along with a government issued ID). There are several images of these informational certificates on the internet, including those of Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes’s daughter, the illegitimate daughter of Prince Albert of Monaco, and former Utah Governor and current Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Jr. The last one was interesting because most of his bios list his place of birth as Palo Alto, CA, while his birth certificate states another county altogether (born in Redwood City, CA).
I think by the time of this report, California already used standardardized forms for both the abstracts and the long form, but the abstract was abysmally easy to counterfeit.
I’m thinking of what Hawaii does. They just use a simple patterned security paper that’s a lot like some personal/business check paper I’ve seen. I don’t know if it’s watermarked, but I’m thinking that the dyes of the paper are designed to bleed/smear if a solvent is applied to the paper to try to remove the ink and/or toner. All the printing is added. The information, headers, and border are printed with toner. The certification wording and signature come in one stamp, and the date of issue comes in another stamp. Over the years it looks like they’ve used variations on the paper color, the text (Certification vs Certificate, Date Filed vs Date Accepted), and the border pattern. I think they use pretty standard fonts, but the border patterns seems to be unique. I’m not sure how secure it is compared to what most states use (engraved border paper) but they seem to have multiple anti-counterfeit features.
It’s still unsettled law, although a consensus of Constitutional scholars seem to agree that jus soli is enough to be considered a “natural born citizen”.
I also don’t buy the whole thing about dual nationals at birth not being eligible. I believe that George Romney was considered a Mexican national at birth (they have a more complex definition of “citizen”) because they practice jus soli nationality. They also have a generous policy where the child of a Mexican national at birth is considered a Mexican national at birth, which would make Mitt Romney a Mexican national. Makes the head spin, doesn’t it?
It is the “Standard Form” perhaps.
The wonderful English language raises its beautiful head yet again.
Birthers will see “You must provide an ORIGINAL mumble CERTIFIED BIRTH CERTIFICATE (mumble)” and shout “SEE I TOLD YOU SO!”
They will ignore the phrasing indicating that the word “ORIGINAL” as used here means “(no photocopies)”.
I believe Hawaii is one of a few states where only state offices print birth certificates. At least they have a certain consistency where only a few samples need to be recorded for reference. The Obama long form is a “one off” that
Perhaps have a look at the DHHS Inspector General’s report on birth certificate fraud from 2000. The indicated that one of the problems with certain states was the inconsistency of the forms used when city or county offices issued certified copies of birth certificates in a manner that wasn’t prescribed by the state. The report noted one local government office that even printed certified birth certificates on plain white paper. There were several thousand offices that issued certified birth certificates and maybe about 17,000 different forms in circulation due to multiple form types (some states still can issue either an abstract or long form) and changes over the years.
Hawaii has standardized their form and hasn’t perpetually made changes just for the sake of making changes. I believe their abstract form has been around since at least the early 90s in much the same format it has today.
Yeah – but it’s not necessarily State Dept verbiage. “Original copy” is somewhat of an oxymoron, don’t you think?
If they were more specific about their meaning, the language would be, “must be a certified copy of a birth certificate on an official form. Photocopies of a certified copy are not accepted by the State Dept.”
Actually, Scientist, although we haven’t seen Romney’s transcripts, I have confirmed from BYU that he graduated with highest honors (they didn’t use the Latin term). I have read that he had a 3.97 average at BYU, and I have read several places that he was classs valedictorian. In his dual MBA.law school program at Harvard, Romney graduated in the top 5 percent, or maybe the top five numerically, in his MBA class, can’t recall which. His academic distinction in the law school I’m less sure of; I’ve read both magna cum laude and merely cum laude. Also that he scored 1,600 on his SAT,
So academically, top-drawer student.
Congrats, you just cemented your troll status with that incredible non-sequitar .. not that there were any doubts LOL
She is hurting that her side has once again shown itself to be totally incapable of filing any lawsuits of merit and she has returned to her useful state of denial.
Perhaps the batty buttercup bernadine babbles in a secret code.
“he can’t legally get the long form” is an anagram for “that melancholy, gentle flogger”.
O.K. Now it makes sense.
Well said!
Overall, I’d say that we know more about Obama’s birth and life story than almost any other modern president out there… it really is hard to come up with an example where we have as much evidence and data, as we do about Obama.
So yes, those twits who try the senseless “we don’t know anything about Obama” meme are just insinuating one of the most reality-contradicting whoppers that is out there. It is simply a stupid meme that only stupid people tell and only stupid people can buy into.
I think that would be a better way of phrasing it, yes.
No. The word ‘original’ in this context means the one you put onto the glass of the photocopier. Nothing more, nothing less. All the documents are ‘copies’, the first copy, used as the ‘mother’ in a photocopier is the ‘original copy’ in this context.
That is perfectly acceptable language, except that photocopies can be certified. Obama’s so-called ‘long form’ was photocopied onto an official form and was then certified.
So I think the language you are looking for is ‘uncertified copy’. That includes the hospital souvenir with the cute little feet prints as well as the unofficial photocopy of the official document.
Lie. You’re just plain telling lies trying desparately to make President Obama’s COLB worthless. Sorry, stupid birther………..not even a nice try. Just more stupid birther blather. Why don’t you guys come up with something new. Damn, you’re boring!
I’m just playing around with the ordinary meaning of words. You know – like “jumbo shrimp” as an oxymoron?
The hospital souvenir might actually be one supporting document (the State Dept calls it a secondary evidence of US citizenship) if a birth certificate was delayed and not signed by the attendant. Not sure about my kid’s though. There were a couple of mistakes, and someone (I kid you not) scratched out the mistakes and wrote above the scratch outs.
http://travel.state.gov/passport/get/secondary_evidence/secondary_evidence_4315.html
I’m just wondering what happens at an acceptance facility when someone comes in with lots of secondary evidence documents. I think they’re used to birth certificates, certificates of naturalization, and even a Consular Report of Birth Abroad. All of the standard documents (birth certificate, Report of Birth Abroad, naturalization certificate) that they accept can be replaced. A hospital souvenir can’t typically be replaced.
Every single word of what you typed there David is birther gobble-de-gook.
It is a Texas thing. Midwife fraud was the reason. Licensed midwives were getting paid to register children who weren’t born in Texas. The State Dept wants to see if the attendant was a midwife. The abstract doesn’t list this information. I know Dr. C said that they wanted to check for specific midwives, but apparently the State Dept has made requests for additional info even if the midwife isn’t on their list of fraudsters. Here are some articles on the subject:
Beyond the law: midwifery in Texas/Birth certificate fraud `a problem all over state
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1991_766056/beyond-the-law-midwifery-in-texas-birth-certificat.html
COLUMN ONE : Rio Grande Midwives Deliver Citizenship : A birth certificate scam sheds light on a thriving network of women who help Mexican mothers have babies in Texas. Under lax laws, they can declare the newborns Americans.
http://articles.latimes.com/1995-06-13/news/mn-12638_1_rio-grande
Birth certificate fraud booms at border/`Midwives offer access to U.S. citizenship
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1996_1382428/birth-certificate-fraud-booms-at-border-midwives-o.html
They Say They Were Born in the U.S.A. The State Department Says Prove It
An Old Scam Casts Doubt on the Citizenship Of Texans Delivered by Midwives
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121842058533028907.html
Still no passport if you were delivered by a midwife in Texas
http://www.consumertraveler.com/columns/still-no-passport-if-you-were-delivered-by-a-midwife-in-texas/
Delivered by a midwife in South Texas? No passport for you
http://www.consumertraveler.com/today/delivered-by-a-midwife-in-south-texas-could-mean-no-passport/
Class-action status sought against CBP in midwife lawsuit
http://www.themonitor.com/articles/midwife-34055-action-sought.html
Hawaii generally only issues the computer generated abstract since 2001, and their document has no issues with the State Department. The only other state that the State Dept has an issue with abstracts is California. They had a reduced size document that was too easy to forge. It didn’t even include an embossed seal. California doesn’t issue abstracts any more, but Texas gives the option for an abstract. I think the Texas abstract still works for many things, but not for the State Dept.
Also – there is no more “long form” in Hawaii after about 2001. It’s almost all electronic registration from now on for hospital births. Same goes for many states that are moving to completely electronic registration without any “live signatures” collected by the state or local registrar. I think some states might require that a document be filled out and signed by the parents, but the registrar only receives a transmission of information from the hospital. The hospital might keep it on file, but I don’t think they’re required to keep it forever. Many hospitals destroy their records after a set time period. The only means to produce a birth certificate in that case will be a computer generated printout.
Also for Sally Hill, if you’re genuinely interested, I found those article through a Google search of the phrase “texas midwife birth certificate fraud”:
http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=texas+midwife+birth+certificate+fraud
There are dozens of articles on the subject from major publishers like the Houston Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press.
From wikipedia: “Some sources incorrectly report that Romney graduated BYU as valedictorian. Romney himself has corrected this notion, saying that he was not. While he believes he did have the highest grade point average for his BYU years in the College of Humanities, he did not if his Stanford year was factored in, and he did not among the graduating class university-wide.” He did give the commencement address, but not as top student.
At Harvard, Romney was a Baker Scholar (MBA with High Distinction, top 5% of the class) and graduated JD cum laude from the Law School. http://americaneedsmitt.com/blog/2011/10/05/mitt-romneys-resume-speaks-volumes/
I can’t find any actual source for the SAT 1600 rumor. Mitt Romney certainly is an intellectual heavy-weight by any measure. (Except for publications, so Dr. Drew might heavily downgrade him.)
so your point is no one watches fox ? ok.
is there some legal precedent that would preclude determining/confirming the existence of the original birth certificate in the vaut in hawaii ?
if obama gave his consent, is there a law that says the state of hawaii must deny his request ?
The existence of the original birth certificate was confirmed when the State released a certified copy and even a statement by the Director of Health that she witnessed the copy being made.
I don’t think you appreciate how crazy your question is in the context of the birther movement. Even if birthers got to look in the vault, they would just say it was a fake. Confirmation is an impossible outcome for these people.We have seen time and again that birthers discount any and all evidence that contradicts them. For normal people, the question was settled in 2008.
Why so you have such difficulty understanding that his consent or lack is not relevant. It’s not his piece of paper.
Your question is akin to me trying to give consent to a third party to enter your house and view my response on your computer. After all, the information that I gave is right there in your cache, why should I just let people into your house and clear this all up once and for all?
Really, why is this so hard for you? Or are you just trying to look dull-witted?
There it is – the request from Pres Obama, the supporting request for arrangements from his personal attorney, and the response from Director Fuddy. All hosted on the Hawaii Dept of Health website.
Of course there’s a Birther explanation (or three) for what this is:
1) A forgery since the alleged letter from Director Fuddy didn’t spell the name of the state “Hawai’i” correctly.
2) The PDFs show clear signs of being tampered. They probably used a rejection letter as a template, but then modified the body of the letter to say that he received the long form.
3) Pres Obama used his power and “got to them” enough to force them to produce a letter that was a lie.
Of co
I forgot to link to the scans of the request and response:
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/Birth_Certificate_Request.PDF
In addition to the comments others have made I also note that you are mixing and matching ‘his consent’ and ‘his request’.
It’s quite simple. No, there’s nothing to stop Obama, if he for some reason wanted to, or if he had a moment of irrational in.sanity himself, putting in a special “request” to Hawaii for them to allow Mr/Mrs ‘x’ inspect whatever record from 1961 is sitting in their files in much the same way as he asked them to make an exception and issue him a certified “long form” in April 2011. He would however be doing so in the full knowledge that it is not actually his ‘consent’ to give.
Since he is POTUS I susect that Hawaii wouldn’t just straight out tell him to piss off. However the chances of them considering that there are enough “special case” circumstances existing now as there were back in April are slim to non-existent.
Obama and Hawaii have gone through a laborious exercise of co-operating in a very special case issue of a “long form” which has better provenance than any other birth certificate in history and Hawaii would undoubtedly conclude, like Obama himself would, that anyone who does not accept the reality of his birth in Hawaii after that is at best terminally moronic, and at worst certifiably insane.
There is no more chance of an inspection of the vital records ever happening than there is of anyone who actually feels it necessary to see those original vital records ever accepting that they are genuine.
I’d also note that the issue of midwife birth registration fraud has caused immense problems along Texas’s border with Mexico. It’s a way of life for many who were born in the US and travel freely between the two countries. I’ve heard that there are some who lived just across the border in Mexico bu attend school in the US by virtue of their US citizenship. People cross the borders all the time in order to shop, visit relatives, or even work.
It used to be a simple matter of having a birth certificate and photo ID handy to return to the US. However, in order to return quickly, CBP now requires a more stringent proof of the right to return to the US, such as a passport, passport card, SENTRI/NEXUS card, or an “enhanced” driver license/photo ID. I’ve read that Gov Perry declined to implement an enhanced DL program (even though he signed the law that authorized it) because he interpreted federal law as requiring only a US passport was legal for international border crossings. I looked at the Texas DMV website, and they still don’t issue them even though they worked with Homeland Security on the requirements.
As far as I know, the State Dept only has specific issues with the birth certificates from three states/territories because of rampant birth certificate fraud of one type or another. Texas of course had the issues with midwives performing fraudulent registrations. Dr. C mentioned that the same might have been an issue in California, although my research indicates that a bigger problem with the ease of forging the small birth abstract.
California for years hasn’t licensed lay midwives. Midwives are generally required to be registered nurses, which means there aren’t that many midwife births in California save the few nurses who do this and of course those willing to break the law.
Finally there’s the issue of Puerto Rico, where using birth certificates was almost a way of life. Like any other state, birth certificates were used to prove a child’s age for school, sports, etc. Unlike most other jurisdictions, it was common for schools and other organizations to hold onto the certificates in their files. People would order up several certified copies for their kids and dole them out to each official asking for proof of age. Some thieves were on to this and would break into school administration offices and only steal the birth certificates. The thieves could sell each one for thousands of dollars to someone looking to use them to establish a life in the US. It didn’t produces as much suspicion when someone with a Spanish surname from Latin American produced a PR birth certificate. There weren’t also thieves, but people willing to profit by obtaining their legitimate birth certificates and selling them on the black market. I read about one guy who did it for money, but later regretted it after it completely screwed up his life. There was some other guy using his name and identity, which put him under suspicion if he tried to get a job or apply for credit.
The PR authorities tried to solve this by invalidating any PR birth certificates issued before a certain date in 2010. They had issues producing enough new certified copies such that they extended the deadline for when older certificates could still be accepted. I’ve read about people in the US born in PR who tried ordering the new certificates but were waiting 3-6 months for them to arrive.
I think there are two things in play here. The first is the “tangible interest” requirement for someone to receive a copy of a vital record in Hawaii. A person can assign the right to receive a certified copy of a vital document to a third party (“a person or agency acting on behalf of the registrant” in their wording) as Obama did with his personal attorney. As far as I can tell by a lay reading of Hawaii’s UIPA, a person named in a state record is entitled to be able to view that record or receive a copy of the record. I don’t see any means to assign the right to view an original record to a third party.
I also wouldn’t trust someone else to view the original. What’s to stop someone from defacing or damaging the original certificate on file if the chance arises? I remember the FedEx commercial where someone in a meeting room accidentally sees an executive compensation list on the back of a reused sheet of copy paper, and an executive jumps across the table, grabs the paper, crumples it up and stuffs it in his mouth to swallow it. A certified copy is by law equivalent (or even better) than the original. A certified copy can also be replaced, while the original can’t be replaced.
Well, the simple fact that the Director of the DOH shall not provide for an abstract of a birth certificate unless the original is in his possession combined with the fact that the COLB is sufficient legal evidence makes it somewhat hard to argue that the original does not exist. Of course, one may raise the somewhat dubious claim of some conspiracy but from a legal perspective, and the Rules of Evidence, and the DOH Administrative rules, the existence of the original is in no doubt.
But that will not prevent some foolish people from arguing the contrary, as their beliefs cannot accept another conclusion. Confirmation bias combined with a strong dislike of our President and the tendency amongst some right wingers to object to common sense, reason and logic as ‘elitism’ have caused some to go down a path of ignorance and fear.
Furthermore, a third party request shall still be delivered to the address of the original applicant, that is President Obama and the White House…
Chapter 8 2.5(a)(3)
It’s probably going to blow Birthers’ minds with the increasing use of electronic birth registrations – where the “original” is nothing more than a data file saved to some electronic medium such as a hard drive, solid state storage, or some sort of data disk. It would probably need to be backed up before original’s inevitably fails. With digital data it’s an easy matter of transferring the data to multiple back-ups of which each copy is functionally identical to the original. If they question the authenticity of a document, what would be the original that they would want to be able to examine?
Archival storage has always been an issue with all sorts of documents. Common paper will often turn acidic and can crumble. Inks (pen or typewriter) can fade over time. I can imagine some birth certificates prepared with an IBM Selectric II which had correctable lift-off ribbons rather than inks. I could easily see an original in an archive where the type has peeled off over time or stuck to the page next to it. Modern forms of printing often use toners that can stick or peel. Photographic methods have always created issues as film can degrade over time. I’m sure there are really old microfilm or microfiche archives that have degraded.
I’m losing track. Are you asking for confirmation of the confirmation of the confirmation of the confirmation? Or only the confirmation of the confirmation of the confirmation?
Alternatively, which part of the sentence “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding” don’t you understand?
I have no idea what people here actually watch.
It would be more fair to say that the regular posters here are simply not susceptible to FNC-type brainwashing techniques.
As just an example for illustration, Jon Stewart and his staff spent a lot of dedicated time watching Fox, but that is so they are simply aware of what Fox is saying and doing, not because they buy into the propaganda that channel pushes.
Some portion of Fox’s audience comes from those that simply monitor or watch that channel to see what they are up to, without being susceptible to being brainwashed by what they say.
Excellent points! I agree completely.
Also: H/T for the reference to that particular commercial. LOL! I know exactly the one you are talking about. It is fairly recent and is still getting airtime. It is quite memorable for exactly the situation and points you noted.
BINGO!
Well said!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo5eXKGODIo
Bonus H/T for finding and adding that link to the actual commercial! Thanks! 🙂
so you don’t know either. that’s liberal philosopy what you said. no offense, but it sounds like legal doublespeak.
i think this is where it’s headed. over time, the existence of an obama original will “just fade away”
although i have a copy of mine from 1959 that’s in great shape.
You are in danger of failing the Turing Test.
Yeah, you have a COPY. You don’t have your original. No one does.
Obama has a copy from 2007 that is in great shape too along with two more copies from 2010 that are likely in pristine condition.
Quick quiz for you, Scott – if you lose your precious 1959 COPY… what do you do to replace it? Then, when they issue you a new 2012 COPY, are you going to go all @pe-shit when you realize the form they give you now is different from how the form looked in 1959…
*duh*. Further, I have no idea what gobbledygook “liberal doublespeak” is supposed to mean. Sounds like that is just a glib dismissive slur for you which translates to you simply lacking the capabilitty to grasp the actual complexities of the world we live it.
I don’t think so. His original is on file in Honolulu in a safe placed in a climate-controlled room. While there are some archival problems, keeping files relatively cool, dark, and at consistent humidity levels will work wonders.
My kid’s certified birth certificate were produced soon after his birth. I anticipate that they could very well degrade over time. The paper is high quality security paper that I expect was acid-free and designed for excellent archival life. What probably isn’t as secure is the toner from the common laser printer used to produce the certified copy.
I do expect that we’ll be able to order new copies if the need arises. The original was scanned and the image file can be repeatedly backed up to new data storage by the government agencies tasked with maintaining their files. The State of California will still maintain the original but will likely be reticent to ever pull it out unless a formal request is made.
Of course who know if it will ever come to the point where that birth certificate is pored over for every little detail. All the copies from all three sources look different because each office performed its own scan and introduced tiny scanning artifacts. Perhaps one day that BC will be the subject of endless bickering about whether it’s a genuine or fake document because of all the visible noise from the relatively low resolution scans.
Which according to you and other birthers is meaningless and worthless.
So what?
so let’s dance… i’m not running for president will.
you and the anti birthers think that birth certificates are meaningless ? that doesn’t make sense.
i got a copy in 93 or so and they are the same, taken from the original. it’s my birth certificate and it exists in a vault in evergreen park.
if i were running for president (and i still might someday), i would have a major showing; which i think obama might, eventally, after four years actually do.
unless there isn’t one, then he cannot.
my posistion hasn’t changed.
Perhaps something like this?
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2008/12/obama-announces-national-natural-born-day/
It’s as if I can hear a head slamming against a wall from here!
Doc, that was an awesome post from ’08, thanks for referring us rookies back to it 😀
scott:
You’re not paying attention again. That’s not what I said and once again (surprise) you have spectacularly missed the point.
Is the copy of your birth certificate an official copy?
How do you know it’s not a forgery and that there is no vault original?
That sounds terribly awkward and painful.
I think you are misapplying your own situation in your own state to the broader reality of how BCs simply work.
For one, your ’93 copy looking similar to your copy from the 50’s doesn’t say anything more than that your state’s official formats didn’t happen to change much in that timeframe.
A simple reality here in the 21st century is that more and more places are able to take advantage of the inevitable advances in technology and are moving towards electronic records. As they do that, the official formats are likely to change to accomodate that.
There is nothing sinister nor unusual about that process. The format does not matter at all, only the underlying data it conveys.
HI’s COLB is their *only* official current format for issuing BC documents. They moved to that over a decade ago.
As the official authority issuing such documentation, they have the right to update their format whenever they like and only issue new documents from that point forward under the new format. The underlying data conveyed has not changed at all. Only the format and which fields of information they deem relevant for display.
It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp, Scott. No conspiracy here, nothing unusual. I honestly don’t understand where you are hung up on accepting this…
*huh* You just made the opposite conclusion from what his statement actually claimed. You’ve simply got it backwards and are making the opposite argument of what he was.
No “anti-birther” has said or claimed that “birth certificates are meaningless”. That is just asinine.
i’m not even sure he’s in town next week.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/complete/2012-01-19
is there a legal precedent that says i can’t personally view my original in chicago ?
you missed the caddyshack reference.
i don’t will.
I don’t know. I worked on the state death system in Illinois, but not the births. The answer is going to vary state to state. My feeling is that in most states you cannot look at original documents, although you can get a copy. In most states the original records are bound in volumes. If they let you get at the book, you could in theory grab a handful and run. These are high-security documents kept in tightly controlled conditions. The public never gets in these places (except when someone is trying to impress somebody and you get a tour). I got a tour of the vault in Ohio and I’ve been in country record rooms in a couple of other states.
I was shown one death certificate where the physician had entered under Cause of Death: “Don’t know. Was dead when I got here.”
FEMA camp?
Illinois Administrative Code
TITLE 77: PUBLIC HEALTH
CHAPTER I: DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
SUBCHAPTER e: VITAL RECORDS
PART 500 ILLINOIS VITAL RECORDS CODE
SECTION 500.20 ACCESS TO VITAL RECORDS
I believe this means no.
No, but apparently he is making traffic difficult today.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/Traffic-Obama-137095618.html
Another reason to ride Metra.