Simply stated, Doc’s Law is:
Any significant article by a major media organization on the Barack Obama birth controversy will include at least one factual error.
Case in point: In 2011 CNN sent a crew to Hawaii to interview Dr. Chiyome Fukino, former Director of Health for Hawaii. She said she had seen Obama’s original certificate and that she was convinced it was genuine and that Obama was born in Hawaii. The investigation aired in two extended segments over two nights. Barack Obama released his own long-form certificate a few days later.
CNN has re-edited footage from 2011 and broadcast it this week and oops, there is a big mistake. The “Busting the Obama ‘birther’ conspiracy” audio track (at 1:22) has the words “President’s computer-generated certificate” over an image of a microfilm print of a Hawaiian long form certificate of someone other than President Obama. Doc’s Law strikes again.
yah, I noticed that too, but I enjoyed the story
as fot Trump,
his “it’s in his bio” has morphed into “it’s in his book”
how do news people let him get away with these lies
the BLOVIATING BUFFOON brings in ratings
as chris matthews said recently, if they confronted all of these people about their lies, they would never be granted a SECOND interview
where are the questions about trump saying obama’s COLB was worthless?
is mitt’s COLB ok because he’s WHITE?
It’s true. Few if any major media outlets have explored the Birther idiocy in any real depth.
Honestly, I felt this inadequacy when I attended Strunk’s hearing in Brooklyn last month and then talked about it on a radio show. Yes, I gave the most honest report I could. But I am not an attorney. And to be fair, actual consitutional scholars admit that the NBC defintion has never been clearly delineated by our courts. Yes, we have a huge bank of precedent guiding our courts, but nowhere is there a clear, definitive, irrefutable NBC determination. On one hand, I hoped attorneys would call in and clarify it, and on the other, I was happy I was not thrust into the position of being a constitutional scholar.
I disagree with all the Brithers, but I am willing to concede that there is no clear definition of NBC anywhere. Legal precedent proves the Birthers wrong at every turn, but that is not equivalent to a clear definition.
I hope that other anti-birthers can acknowledge that this is actually the case.
Having gone far down the birther hole, I’m pretty sure the difference in their minds is that Obama lies OMG so much! that he can’t be trusted… and Etch-a-Sketch Romney doesn’t.
At least that would be their story…
In the case of those born in the US, there is no lack of clarity, despite the twists and turns of Mario et al. There was a clear ruling in the Ankeny case, now re-iterated in a number of other states, which says unequivocally that those born in the US are NBCs. Whether one likes the decision or not, it is as clear as a mountain stream. I will admit that the situation is more muddied in the case of those born to US citizens abroad.
So what to do? Some would say that courts should define the term. But courts aren’t there to define terms, they are there to decide cases, each of which has a particular set of facts. They are really not supposed to go off the rails into hypothetical cases not before them.
In my opinion, the place to define citizenship and the requirements to hold office is in the Constitution. Vague 18th century terms don’t cut it. We need clear 21st century definitions. Any organization I have ever been part of defines who is a member and who is eligible to be an officer. The Constitution of just about every country that has one defines clearly who is a citizen and what is required to hold office. For example the Brazilian Constitution says, ” the president must be a native-born citizen of Brazil, be at least 35 years of age, be a resident in Brazil, be an elector, have all the electoral rights, and be inscribed in a political party.” French law says the President “must be a citizen, have attained the age of 23 years, be qualified to vote, and not be ineligible by dint of a criminal conviction or judicial decision.” Both of those seem pretty clear and self-evident.
So, the place to define the terms is in an amendment to the Constitution. If the consensus is to do away with the requirement and go to something like “a ciitizen for 20 years”, fine. Or to say “a citizen at birth”, also fine. Both of those seem very clear. If the birthers want to try to write “2 citizen parents” into law, that’s their right, but they ought to provide a sound rationale based on actual data, not mumbo-jumbo about Swiss philosophers.
You haven’t been to WVa recently, have you?
I suggest the streams in the Anchorage area. At least in springtime. Crystal-clear, cold, fat and fast with runoff from the mountains.
I was thinking of the Adirondacks, but I’m sure Alaska or the Canadian Rockies work too.
Doc, your law is six words too long. Strike, “on the Barack Obama birth controversy”.
Sounds bad until compared with how personal acquaintances tell the world’s news.
There were several, and one of them prevailed:
A natural-born United States citizen is a United States citizen who has become a United States citizen at the moment of his or her birth.
I’ve nothing against those who have made a hobby of studying the history, the arguments, the precedents and such. Reality is that the matter is settled. The 2008 presidential election was not a giant conspiracy to subvert the Constitution.
There is some fuzziness around the edges. I wouldn’t put Obama near the edge, though.
When the framers wrote the Constitution, either they were crystal clear what they meant, or they were being creatively ambiguous. I don’t know of anything in the debate to suggest the latter. I think the problem is simply that it’s been a couple hundred years and things that everybody knew back then are not known today.
An alternative view is that they didn’t consider the corner cases we have today and that neither they, nor those who ratified the Constitution, had a unified opinion of George Romney or Chester Arthur’s situation. It that be true, then there is no definition, which in my mind gives the benefit of the doubt towards the questioned candidate, and lets the voters ratify or not.