As usual, Orly Taitz makes little sense in her latest press release [link to Taitz site], this time about the certification of copyright registration of Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father. The opening paragraph contains at least two and probably 3 mistakes:
Attorney Orly Taitz recently discovered lack of necessary entry of date of birth in Obama’s registration of copyright protection of his book “Dreams from my father”.
The simplest mistake is not naming the book correctly as to capitalization. The second is the word “necessary’’ since the date of birth on a copyright application is optional according to the instructions. (“Author’s birth date is optional but it is useful as a form of identification.”) Here’s the copyright registration from Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code, also with no birth date. The third is the statement that Taitz discovered the blank birth date, when it is highly unlikely that she made the discovery herself.
Taitz then goes on to say that an age on Obama’s “MySpace” page puts him being born in 1957 and this “matches” the copyright application. The last time I checked, a blank doesn’t match 1957. (You can read about the MySpace thing at WorldNetDaily.) Taitz then goes on to embrace the 1957 birth date (never mind that Obama Sr. was still in Kenya, and Obama’s mother hadn’t moved to Hawaii and was like 14 years old) and say:
This is of value as HI bceame (sic) a state in 1959 and this is another strike against Obama, as not US born and not eligible for the US presidency.
But if indeed Obama were born in 1957 (which he wasn’t), then neither his mother nor his father would have been in Hawaii, making it impossible for him to be born there and making the year of Hawaii statehood irrelevant. Obama Sr. didn’t come to the US until 1959, leaving not a scrap of even conspiracy-quality evidence for Obama being born outside the United States. What is also totally wrong with what Taitz said, is that it is the consensus of legal scholars is that being born in an incorporated US Territory qualifies for making someone a natural born citizen.
Taitz then brings out some other anomalies (that really aren’t anomalies) to muddy the waters. And speaking of irrelevance, Taitz claims her computer got hacked, and her web site ranking went down 10-fold as a result of attacks (unspecified) from the Obama “regime.” It is true that Taitz’s blog stands at miserable Alexa.com raking of 170,447 (down 21,727 over the past 3 months), but when I reported her numbers back in July of 2012, it was even lower: 251,665, and in March of 2010, her Alexa ranking was 583,013. The only thing I can figure out is that Taitz is comparing a USA ranking in one instance with a worldwide ranking in another. (I would add that this blog has dropped considerably at Alexa, down to 765,510 and far below Orly’s site.1)
Technically, I didn’t see much information about where Orly’s document came from. It was scanned on a Canon scanner and the PDF was created by Canon software. It looks to me that the original application form was printed recently onto security paper by the USTPO, since the Register of Copyrights listed has only been in the job since 2011.
The only interest in the Taitz press release is in its stupidity.
1It is my opinion that numbers for the Taitz blog and this site at Alexa are not comparable. I think the more educated and sophisticated readers here are far less likely to have installed the Alexa toolbar in their browser than some who reads Orly. The rankings are based only on people with the toolbar installed.
Looks as if Orly’s been punked again. Her latest story, about Obama’s copyright registration certificate and how he was trying to conceal his year of birth…seems to be a forgery. It looks like at least two documents cut and pasted. And the person who signed the certificate wasn’t the Register of Copyrights in 1995.
Well, like the rest of birtherdom(or is it birtherdumb?), she’ll very quickly post anything negative or suspicious about Obama without checking it out first. I think its one of the reason that stuff which was debunked years ago sometimes crops up as “news”. For instance, I see it a lot in newcomers going “Leik Ermahgerd guys! Obama’s college ID says foreign student on it!”. A few minutes of googling would save them the embarrassment, but that’s giving them far too much credit.
A favorite of Orly’s, is to find completely innocuous clerical errors or typos, and wave it around as evidence to support her conspiracy.
Two nanoseconds of critical thinking and checking shoots this one down pretty fast:
First, the certificate is an “additional certificate” as noted by the stamp on the top and is clearly a print out of archived data on a current security paper form that was provided pursuant to a current FOIA request from lawyer Tatiz..
Second, the frothing about lacking his birth date is quickly put to rest by reading the instructions for the form which say that the birth date is “optional”.
But….never mind all that……the birthers have already decided it is “another” forgery designed to…….designed to…….hmm……what does it accomplish?
There isn’t a skeptical bone in all of Birtherstan. They go for anything that feeds their delusion and once they bite they just can’t let go. It is fascinating to watch.
Thanks to the commenters preceding for the ideas in this article.
Add to it that Obama didn’t fill this form out, or sign it (that I can see). Like most published works, this is administrative details sorted out by the publishers staff.
Exactly. For example: Onaka certified Obama’s COLB even though Lee was the registrar when Obama was born.
Taitz has simply Sternsigged her reading of a simple copyright registration form. She is incapable of reading instructions.
This would be an embarrassment to most lawyers. Taitz wears her ignorance and incompetence like a Hero of the Soviet Union medal.
Doc probably has a better handle on this but I suspect the point is that the issuing agency doesn’t retain records of a certified copy but rather just the data and when requested produces a currently certified copy, on security paper, and signed by the current person in charge.
We saw the same thing recently when birthers (Susan Daniels and Sharon Rondeau leading the charge) got all excited about the copy of the Selective Service registration obtained by Hollister in 2010. The copy was signed by Lawrence Romo, who became Director in 2009.
http://www.birtherreport.com/2013/09/p-exclusive-obama-social-security.html
“While supplying The Post & Email with additional information on her research, Daniels discovered that the signature of current Selective Service Administration Director Lawrence Romo appears on Obama’s purported Selective Service registration card printout:”
“According to Romo’s official biography at the Selective Service Administration website, he began his working years in 1987 and therefore could not have been Selective Service Administration Director in 1980. According to the Selective Service, the director in 1980 was Dr. Bernard D. Rostker, which appears in his Wikipedia entry.”
Yes! They don’t know what they don’t know and they don’t waste any time trying to figure it out……especially if they really like it.
The form looks like it was filled out with a typewriter. If this is a printout from a database and not a photocopy of the original, my guess is that it is a database of images of the originals rather than a database with tables that contain the information that goes into each blank on the form like short-form birth certificates.
I agree. Should have clarified what I meant by “database”. It could be either an image or tabular data but in this case, like the Selective Service card, its and image.
Barack Obama has a MySpace page? What annoying tune does it autoplay?
Never mind; I’ll go find it myself with AltaVista.
I don’t claim any expertise here, but that seems to me what we’re seeing.
It looks like to me that Orly is playing “throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.” Only problem is that she’s running out of walls. Even her goof-ball supporters have posted that this has zero value, but that’s not going to stop here. She’s trying to milk this for donations (as she does everything) and she has yet to disclose where or how much or who she spends her money from her “foundation” which does no charitable work but is chartered as a 501(c)(3). Maybe somebody needs to file a FOIA against her. Next bit: Orly will find a piece of pizza that is from the 50s that she believes was chewed on by Barack’s uncle.
The catalog of copyrights in the United States is comprised of 660 volumes. Recent entries, since 1978 are in a database, about 20 million of them. Earlier volumes are in the process of being digitized in book form, some available at:
https://archive.org/details/copyrightrecords
Hey, I got a shout out in the book The AltaVista Search Revolution: How to find anything on the Internet, published by Osborne McGraw Hill (1997). Now it’s not even in the Firefox spelling dictionary.
“This is of value as HI bceame (sic) a state in 1959 and this is another strike against Obama, as not US born and not eligible for the US presidency”
Wrong.
8 U.S.C. 1405:
“A person born in Hawaii on or after August 12, 1898, and before April 30, 1900, is declared to be a citizen of the United States as of April 30, 1900. A person born in Hawaii on or after April 30, 1900, is a citizen of the United States at birth. A person who was a citizen of the Republic of Hawaii on August 12, 1898, is declared to be a citizen of the United States as of April 30, 1900.:
I was thinking more of the routine work flow in the offices that maintain birth records. I couldn’t imagine them certified copies around and my personal experience reenforced that. I have three birth certificates:
Oldest was issued when I was born and is a very small photostat of the handwritten form – about the size of a file card, with a raised seal. Second was issued around 1960 and is also a photostat which includes the original handwritten form in a larger template but also with a raised seal. The newest one, issued a few years and looks like the Obama’s Certification of Live Birth. Each was signed by the appropriate person at the time they were issued.
Whoever signed the last one probably wasn’t even alive when I was born!!
I recall going through this 50 years ago when Barry Goldwater was running for President. He was born in the Arizona Territory three years before it became a state.
Charles Curtis, 31st Vice President of the United States, was born in Kansas Territory prior to Kansas’ admission to the Union as a state. Vice Presidents also must be natural born citizens.
I don’t think Lee was the State Registrar, whose signature would certify a copy as authentic. Wasn’t she just a clerk at the Dept of Health? I think whoever processed/recived each original birth certificate was considered the “local registrar” who would sign that box. I understand there are/were satellite offices for the Dept of Health, and sometimes it would be a clerk at such an office signing off in that box. I remember a BC from a birth at a military hospital, and the “local registrar” for that one was an administrator at the hospital.
Anyone know who the State Registrar would have been at the time?
OMG another “almost usurper” the birthers will throw under the bus (next to Chester Arthur)?
Let me play advocatus diaboli for a minute:
If that law makes everyone born in Hawaii after 1900 an NBC, isn’t that an ordinary law changing the definition of the qualifications for President? Doesn’t such a change need a constitutional amendment?
I mean, some birthers claim “failure to register for Selective Service makes you ineligible for President” and I always replied “an ordinary law cannot add restrictions to the presidential qualifications in the Constitution”.
Wouldn’t the same apply here, that an ordinary law cannot relax the constitutional restrictions (by enlarging the number of people considered NBC)?
Wow. Took Orly 5 years to come up with a theory I proposed in 2009 when I considered “if I were a birther, what would ‘reasonably’ be a candidate for a forged entry if not the place of birth?”.
From what I’ve read so far, the birther consensus seems to be that the “USA” in the birth date field was some cut-and-paste job to cover up the real birthplace that was given there. Totally makes sense how Obama constantly torpedoed the 50 years of conspiracy by filling out forms with “born in Kenya” left and right. 😉
The head of vital statistics at the time held the title of “Registrar General.” Local registrars were appointed by the registrar general and approved by the board of health. So Lee was a bit more than just a clerk. In some Hawaii counties the county health officer served as local registrar, but in Honolulu, it was a full-time position. In 1955 there were 4 local registrars, including the full-time employee. I presume that Lee was the full-time local registrar in Honolulu.
In South Carolina when I worked for the Department of Health, we had a local registrar in our office. The birth certificates paper stock we used had a preprinted signature of the state registrar on them which was then countersigned by the local registrar to make the certificate valid. § 57-16 of the then-current Hawaii Revised Laws states that certified copies of birth certificates are certified “by the registrar general.”
Certificates were issued only centrally, although a local registrar could issue a non-certified verification that was valid for school attendance. Given that there were about 40,000 requests for certificates annually, I think it likely that the registrar general did not physically sign each certificate, but may have employed a rubber stamp of some such alternative used under his authority, as is done today.
In 1921 the Registrar General was M. H. Lemon. In 1947, the registrar general was Andrew S. Wong. Mr. Charles Bennett was the Chief of the Bureau of Health Statistics in 1955, and I think that position most likely corresponds with the Registrar General. Mr. George Tokuyama was the Chief of the Registration and Records Section of the bureau.
See: http://www.scribd.com/doc/55625290/Vital-Records-in-Hawaii
And now for something completely different.
I don’t get why the girl couldn’t just use “Talula”. The number of people who know my father’s second and third name is probably below a dozen. So nobody needed to know her name continues “Does The Hula From Hawaii”.
Then again we all know Obama’s real BC lists “Obama Brings You Drama From Bahama Through His Momma, Hare Rama, Born In Kenya I’ll Be Seein’ Ya” as his first name(s).
Oh, and I so wanted to call my first-born “Seven of Nine”. Well, I guess I’ll have to settle for “Borg Drone” then…
Looking at the Nordyke BCs it appears they had a separate sheet with Bennett’s and Bernstein’s name and signature preprinted on it. The bound volume was then placed over the signature sheet and a copy made. They could have just used that signature sheet over and over again.
In 1960, the Director of Health was Dr. Richard Lee and Dr. Bennett was the Registrar General.
http://www.wnd.com/2011/05/298537/
In 1965, Dr. Leo Bernstein was the Director of Health and Dr. Bennett was the Registrar General.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/dailypix/2009/Jul/28/M1139416728.GIF
Looking at the Nordyke BCs, it appears they had a separate sheet with Dr. Bennett’s and Dr. Bernstein’s name and signature preprinted on it. The bound volume was then placed over the signature sheet and a copy made. They could have just used that signature sheet over and over again.
BTW, someone other than Verna Lee signed the Nordyke’s.
Pretty much the same boat we’re in with John McCain. A law retro-actively declaring people natural born citizens (the Hawaii statute was passed in 1952)…exept that this one applies to a US territory, whereas McCain was born in a territory that the US was merely administering.
I’m one of the few fringe folks that actually still questions McCain’s eligibility, so I’m probably the wrong person to ask. There was a string a while back on this subject. I’m of the school that NBC means born on the territory, and subject to the jursidction. I’d argue that Congress can’t change the definition of a term in the Constitution to effectively amend the constitution without going through the amendment process. There are some that argue the NBC means merely citizen at birth, and Congress can therefore add to the catagory of NBC by adding citizens at birth (which I still argue is an impermissible change to the Constitution). My final issue is there are only two sources of citizens, naturalization and by birth. Now if Congress is only granted the power of passing naturalization laws, then even a statute giving someone citizenship at birth, would still be naturalization, wouldn’t it. There is one eligibility case that has a throw away line about Congress has the power to make citizens, even at birth, but it was a denial of a injunction if I recall, so didn’t really have a deep discussion on the subject (and I’d argue that the case they cited was actually a naturization case – Blackmun in the minority opinion ID’ed it as such, even though the majority never used that langauge), but otherwise, the caselaw on the subject isn’t really that well defined.
Well, there’s my 2 cents.