I had an exchange with someone who has a lot of experience in debunking other conspiracy theories, but who is not part of the usual anti-birther cohort. I appreciated very much him offering his perspective but I was a little jarred by his views on the relative value of evidence as to where Barack Obama was born.
I come from a professional career that started in a health department, and ended working with state and local health agencies as a vendor of data systems. The way I think, those records as reported officially are the “gold standard.” A Certification of Live Birth such as Barack Obama released in 2008 (in its original form, not the copy on the Internet) is what gets you a driver’s license and a US Passport. My correspondent basically wrote that off as just something printed from a database. Since I spent my adult life trying to insure the integrity of those databases, such a view goes against the grain for me, but with a little effort I can appreciate it.
The second shock came when he said that certified copies of the birth certificate in the vault in Hawaii weren’t much use because no qualified expert had ever authenticated the original. (Remember, this is NOT a birther talking.) That one was difficult for me too. But we to have to admit that fake documents have been fabricated by governments, and while I would afford huge credibility to state vital records officials, some of whom I have personally known and worked with, not everyone looking at the question objectively would agree.
For him, the “killer evidence” was the two contemporary newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth in Honolulu newspapers in 1961. That evidence essentially wipes out every birther gambit of modern forgery, collusion of present Hawaiian officials, and questions about what’s in the files in Hawaii.
Birthers have tried mightily to discredit the newspaper accounts, but their arguments don’t stick. I’ll just outline them below as they have been discussed already in other articles.
- Hawaiian birth announcements are ads by parents. Statements by the newspapers contradict this, and the very title of one newspaper column calls them “Health Bureau Statistics.”
- Out of state births appeared in the official Health Bureau registrations. Birthers just lie about the law, either citing earlier laws that do not allow out of state registrations, or laws that do allow out of state registrations but didn’t exist in 1961.
- The announcements don’t mention Barack Obama by name. So what other Obama do they think was born in Honolulu in August of 1961.
- All the microfilm copies in the world have been replaced by fake ones. Really?
- Obama was fraudulently registered in 1961. Recall that Obama’s published birth certificate clearly shows he was born in a hospital and not at home where there is a slim opportunity for fraud. In order for Obama’s original birth registration to have been fraudulent there has to be not one but two separate conspiracies at different times and involving different people: one to fake the registration in 1961 and one to replace the original documentation of it 2011. That’s really a stretch.
I was going to point out also that the birthers do not have any smoking gun of their own, but then I am reminded that modern firearms really don’t smoke.
I do not agree with the opinions of this anonymous conspiracy “expert.”
For what its worth and since Barack Obama’s status could only be officially determined in a court of law or by actions of Congress, here’s the relevant law of the land:
42 CFR 435.407–Types of Acceptable Documentary Evidence of Citizenship
For purposes of this section, the term “citizenship” includes status as a “national of the United States” as defined by section 101(a)(22) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(22)) to include both citizens of the United States and non-citizen nationals of the United States.
(a) Primary evidence of CITIZENSHIP AND IDENTITY. The following evidence MUST be accepted as satisfactory documentary evidence of both identity and citizenship:
(1) A U.S. passport. The Department of State issues this. A U.S. passport does not have to be currently valid to be accepted as evidence of U.S. citizenship, as long as it was originally issued without limitation. Note: Spouses and children were sometimes included on one passport through 1980. U.S. passports issued after 1980 show only one person. Consequently, the citizenship and identity of the included person can be established when one of these passports is presented. Exception: Do not accept any passport as evidence of U.S. citizenship when it was issued with a limitation. However, such a passport may be used as proof of identity.
(2) A Certificate of Naturalization (DHS Forms N-550 or N-570.) Department of Homeland Security issues for naturalization.
(3) A Certificate of U.S. Citizenship (DHS Forms N-560 or N-561.) Department of Homeland Security issues certificates of citizenship to individuals who derive citizenship through a parent.
(4) A valid State-issued driver’s license, but only if the State issuing the license requires proof of U.S. citizenship before issuance of such license or obtains a social security number from the applicant and verifies before certification that such number is valid and assigned to the applicant who is a citizen. (This provision is not effective until such time as a State makes providing evidence of citizenship a condition of issuing a driver’s license and evidence that the license holder is a citizen is included on the license or in a system of records available to the Medicaid agency. The State must ensure that the process complies with this statutory provision in section 6036 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. CMS will monitor compliance of States implementing this provision.).
(b) Secondary evidence of citizenship. If primary evidence from the list in paragraph (a) of this section is unavailable, an applicant or recipient should provide satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship from the list specified in this section to establish citizenship and satisfactory documentary evidence from paragraph (e) of this section to establish identity, in accordance with the rules specified in this section.
A U.S. public birth certificate showing birth in one of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico (if born on or after January 13, 1941), Guam (on or after April 10, 1899), the Virgin Islands of the U.S. (on or after January 17, 1917), American Samoa, Swain’s Island, or the Northern Mariana Islands (after November 4, 1986 (NMI local time)). A State, at its option, may use a cross match with a State vital statistics agency to document a birth record. The birth record document may be issued by the State, Commonwealth, Territory, or local jurisdiction. It must have been recorded before the person was 5 years of age. A delayed birth record document that is recorded at or after 5 years of age is considered fourth level evidence of citizenship. (Note: If the document shows the individual was born in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands of the U.S., or the Northern Mariana Islands before these areas became part of the U.S., the individual may be a collectively naturalized citizen. Collective naturalization occurred on certain dates listed for each of the territories.) The following will establish U.S. citizenship for collectively naturalized individuals:
Keep in mind that we’re dealing with a conspiracy theory, not law.
More to the point: We’re dealing with conspiracy theorists and not rational people.
I have seen no evidence that the newspaper birth announcements are effective in countering the conspiracy theory. Those buying into the conspiracy have filed more than two hundred LAWsuits.
Actually I think the birth announcements more or less killed birtherism among Hillary Clinton’s supporters (with a few notable exceptions like Phil Berg and Mara Zebest).
The results of which have demonstrated beyond any doubt, reasonable or unreasonable that your previous statement:
is unequivocally false. The courts have no role to play what-so-ever. None. Zip. Nada.
Yes, the phrase ‘or action by Congress’ that allows your assertion to be half true means that the boolean statement “a or b” resolves to true. That is, however, cheap weazel words to hide your actual meaning.
Congressional action has already ‘officially determined Obama’s status’ – once in 2008 and reaffirmed in 2012.
Furthermore, which part of
do you not understand? Obama has had a U.S. passport since around the age of 10. He has traveled all around the world on it. His current diplomatic passport is the subject of a youTube video.
And finally, 42 CFR 435.407, pertains to Medicare eligibility requirements. What does that have to do with Presidential eligibility requirements?
Doc, I absolutely agree with your, uh, consultant that the newspaper birth reports are the most efficacious in shutting down this particular conspiracy foolishness. Of all the exhibits testifying to Obama’s place and date of birth, the newspaper announcements, by placing items in evidence far removed from the present and in the hands of numerous objective parties, force birthers to make the largest leap when they attempt continued “conspiracy creep”.*
Conspiracy Creep, for any not familiar, is that devious trait of conspiratorial, to defend against any and all refutation (and refuse admitting error) by retrenching, invoking a larger, more sophisticated conspiracy.
The idea that the gov’t is “in on it” is taken for granted by conspiracy nuts; it’s one of their most basic assumptions. In this case, of course the gov’t forged Obama’s papers and of course the entire gov’t, state and federal, judicial and legislative, even down to the county election boards, are all “in on it”. “They” are everywhere. So, when some nut alleging forgery is confronted with verifications from Hawaii, “Hawaii is in on it—dee-yuhhhh!”
In order to expand their conspiracy blathering to account for the newspaper announcements, birfers have to make one of 3 assertions:
Unfortunately, #3 is no problem for the most deranged conspiracists. After all, these nuts are capable of believing that civilization itself is one giant conspiracy, hatched by secret societies at the behest of their alien overlords, for the purpose of exploiting the entire human race.
After all, if that’s what’s going on, then manufacturing a patsy wunderkind a/o duping a state government a/o controlling national elections is not only not a problem, it’s just another day at the office!
I also appreciate your candor is acknowledging your bias toward the value of vital records. Legally, as Joey and countless other anti-burthers have stated, they are the gold standard, and very handy in short circuiting birfer attempts to waste court time.
Um… President Obama’s status certainly could be officially determined in a court of law (should a court of competent jurisdiction choose to do so). In fact, I would say that the court in Ankeny (among others) did just that. It is certainly the case that if a party with standing brought a ballot challenge against a presidential candidate then the court would have to make such a determination in order to make its ruling.
Just sayin’…
We are dealing with a conspiracy theory about a matter of law. Birthers claim that President Obama does not meet the Constitutional requirement of being a natural-born citizen. The records of the state of Hawaii imply that he does.
The question, then, is how much faith should we have in those state records and how much credit should we give them? “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” — U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 1. The Constitution itself *makes* those records the gold standard to settle the legal question which this is.
Let’s try a bit of “what if” reasoning, and compare two hypothetical cases: What if there there were no newspaper birth announcements but the state records of Obama’s birth remain, versus what if there were no state records but the newspaper announcements remain? In which case would birthers be less stupid? I don’t think there’s any question. Lots of states don’t report births in newspapers and that casts no doubt on the validity of their records. But if a candidate in this day actually had no state record of his birth, that would be weird. He’d probably have to take those birth announcements to a court in order to get a state record created.
The trouble with conspiracy theorists is that they often have a pre-existing commitment to some overarching conspiracy theory such as the New World Order, the Illuminati, or similar, and therefore everything is read in the light of the presupposition that there is this New World Order shadow government out there that is slowly making itself known. This makes no sense to me, because if you secretly ran the world from the shadows the most sensible thing to do would be to keep on secretly running the world from the shadows and let the puppet regimes take the flak, but there you go.
What this presupposition means is that the idea that Barack Obama was intended from birth to become President of the US is not too great a stretch for some people. Now quite why they NWO couldn’t just get him born in the USA rather than having to fake it is quite beyond me, but the commitment to Obama being born outside the US is incredibly strong in some people.
What the birth announcements do is stop the *conspiracy* theory in its tracks. They are not the end-all-and-be-all of the ultimate proof, despite being a clear point of fact, as much as they are a spanner in the works of the smooth flow of the conspiracy. Nothing ever keeps committed theorists from dodging bullets in their minds, even when a theory is well buried. But the birth announcements quarantine the outbreak.
One person in my family, still a thorough hater of Obama, gave up on the birther stuff once Obama released his long form birth certificate. The most virulent birther in my family, on the other hand, wasn’t phased (not even to this day). But I always used the birth announcements as a firebreak to his arguments.
You want to argue the NWO infiltrated and changed the Hawaiian birth records? Do they have a time machine too? Of course, his answer is that Satan is involved, but there you go. Now the conspiracy has reached a level where even the other Obama haters in the family don’t really defend it. They may half-believe it, or unthinkingly believe it, out of their general hatred. Some do. But they can’t sustain it, and except for the virulent one, primarily just fall back on their general view of Obama as a socialist fascist hippie control-freak.
The forged birth certificate has always been a joke to me, because for the theory to work you immediately reach the point that Hawaiian officials, or someone infiltrating Hawaii, had to have been involved. Fine. Now what do you say about those birth announcements again?
If not Satan, it was just the family itself lying somehow? There would have been no real need to lie at all, though, just as there was never any need to pretend his sister, Maya, wasn’t born in Jakarta. The only reason to lie would be if you wanted to argue that in 1961, presciently and urgently at the time of his birth, they wanted to ensure beyond all doubt (except for the chance that their lie might be found out) that this particular African-American boy was eligible for the presidency, because for any other purpose, just as was the case with his sister, it wouldn’t matter.
You could argue without internal inconsistency that there could be a conspiracy that, if it needed and if it could, would alter original birth records. Never mind the difficulty, you could argue it, and call your detractors fools who don’t believe the government ever does anything bad.
But ahem, how again do you explain those birth announcements?
I want to emphasize separately and clearly this point about Obama’s sister. She was born in Jakarta. No one ever lied about her birth (except was she really born in Kenya too?), and she never has had any problems. Her mother brought her back to the United States just fine.
The birth announcements force the motive for any deception to originate with the family itself.
So it would have to have been the family, urgently and presciently at the moment of birth, that decided to lie, only because they wanted to make sure he, a mixed-race child of African-American heritage born in 1961, could be president, in keeping with the argument that one has to be born on American soil–never mind any chance of such a lie being found out, never mind his heritage.
Maya’s birth demonstrates, not just theoretically, not just arguendo, that there would have been no other reason to lie. Never mind whatever reason they didn’t lie (or succeed at lying?) about Maya’s birth. She was recorded as being born in Jakarta. No problems to show for it. No need to lie merely to bring her back to America.
The family, not a conspiratorial network, had to make a risky lie, even if they somehow had the means and opportunity, for what purpose again?
It’s not just that Paper but you have other contemporary information including the INS record from 1961 pointing to the hawaii birth as well as the state department memo from 1967. Birthers have never been entirely clear when they think the forgery occured. I’ve heard several claim in 2008 when the short form was shown. Some say 2011 but a select few point back to 1961.
You just don’t understand, President Obama is the all-powerful with amazing powers and equipment at his beck and call.
For example:
1) He has a Tardis that allowed him to go back to 1961 and plant the fake BC and all the announcements
2) He has a mind-control machine to make the INS agent think that Sr. told him about a son born in Hawaii.
3) He has his own Starship Enterprise to beam his minions all over the country in just seconds to intimidate judges and witnesses, like in Georgia when they had a witness that saw AG Holder there at the same time Holder was pictured in LA.
Heck, I’m still waiting for the one about the President not being Barack Obama but his evil twin brother who was sent away at birth for indoctrination in the USSR and is now the one running the country and the real Barack Obama is being held in a secret camp outside Moscow.
Oh, I agree. The thing about the birth announcements, though, is that they were one of the first, clear facts out there to hand, and they are a simple, straightforward part of the public record. Plus, importantly, they are spread out, with archival copies all over, not centralized in the government’s hands.
So, any tampering with facts would have had to have been necessarily at the hands of the family, not the government, which could still be the case (forged documents to look like from 1960s) with the INS and the State Department (in theory, conspiracy theory, that is).
Regardless if Obummer born in Hawaii or not…His father was a British National, according to British Law, any offspring of a British subject is British regardless of where the child is born. That makes Obummer a British subject at the time of his birth and that would give him “dual” citizenship IF HIS MOTHER COULD PASS CITZENSHIP ON TO HIM! Dual citizenship is not “natural born” so he is NOT eligible for the position as POTUS!
You must not get out much.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/74176180/Qualifications-for-President-and-the-%E2%80%9CNatural-Born%E2%80%9D-Citizenship-Eligibility-Requirement
Someone in Congress should hear about this!!
Republicans have been trying for years to try to stop Barack Obama from being President. I guess they just don’t have access to people who know the Constitution as well as Karacek does, Or maybe they just don’t know that the secret to turning bullshit into actual truthy stuff is writing in all capital letters.
There is nothing in case law or history that suggests that dual citizenship disables a person born on US soil.
Better educate yourself.
Wow. You’ve really schooled us on that one.
It’s so clear when you put it that way. I don’t know why no one has realized this before. How did the man get elected twice? Have you considered a lawsuit against Congress, or at least getting on national television where you can explain it to people? I know people have discussed this before over and over, but you put it so clearly that I just don’t know why no one of any consequence understands or agrees with your incisive observation.
I am sure you have done some diligent research, as required for such an important circumstance. I’m sure you’re not one of those talking without really knowing or understanding, out of spite or laziness or any such thing.
Do you need some funding to get the word out?
However that may be, even if I am dripping sarcasm, I hope at least you are enjoying your Thanksgiving.
Au contraire, mon frere.
It’s right there in the case law and history of……Birtherstan.
Oh yeah? Then how come she couldn’t ever get into Little League with that crummy foreigner birth certificate?
Huh? ‘splain that one mister smarty pants.
Of course not. Everybody knows that there ain’t never been a wimmin President. What would be the point of going through all the trouble trying to fake her NBC status? Besides, they only had to look to the procedure that the Cruzes went through to get little Teddy eligible to see that foreign born kids can still grow up to be President.
Lie? Why would someone think anybody lied?
See, if you cut out all the “A => B => C” stuff in the middle, that’s what remains. You are saying that British law decides who can and cannot be POTUS. I guess the Founders are spinning in their graves now.
Some fine “patriot” you are.
What is it with you birthers? Whenever it suits you, you claim Indonesian or British law trumps US law. That’s not patriotism, that’s treason.
It’s their “Blut und Boden” ideology. They believe (I’ve actually seen birthers make that claim) that birth on US soil to US parents somehow makes it impossible to become a Marxist traitor who is willing to plunge the country into ruin.
Therefore the Almighty Conspiracy had to find someone born abroad (and as far away from a true blue WASP as possible, so “black gay African Muslim” was the perfect anti-WASP) to be perfect for the job.
Of course it would’ve been so much easier to just use some of the good old ultra-violence, uh, ultra-mind-control on some old white Texan, but hey, Soros made a bet in 1961 that he could make anyone President, so the Devil made a blind pick on the map and his hoof landed on Kenya. The rest is history… 😉
actually, it’s pretty obvious that soros was already running a backup plan …
Would you agree that every other country has absolute authority to determine who are and are not their citizens?
Would you also agree that if two countries determine that the same person is their citizen, that would be dual citizenship?
If you answered “yes” to that, then you must believe that every single country has veto power over the United States Presidency and in order to determine who is eligible for the Presidency, we must determine what the citizenship laws of every other country is, correct?
Don’t waste your breath, dustvangeet, no birther can or will answer this. (The only answer I ever got from a birther was, in all caps, “no, that is not what it means, go away”. Figures.)
You seem to forget that British law has no power in the United States of America.
Or are you unaware that we gained independence from them in the latter half of the 18th century?
Some people are a bit slow I guess. Funny how they fail to understand the concept of sovereignty and our Constitution.
You mean these Golden Constitution Warriors may have gotten it all wrong?
Those who claim loudest to be patriots rarely are…
Cant remember where I read it, but someone said “Being a patriot, is like being famous. If you have to go out of your way to announce that you are, you probably aren’t.”, or something to that effect.
The way I’ve heard it said, being a “patriot” is a lot like being “famous.” If you have to tell people that’s what you are, then you’re not.
Simple birther logic. The President wasn’t born here, but his birth certificate says he was; therefore, someone somewhere sometime lied. Keep it stupid, simple.