Mark Kirsnis: Obama approval rating’s so low, Kenyan television is reporting proof that Obama was born in the USA.

Frankly, I’m perfectly happy Obama released his birth certificate. I always thought that the only thing worse than the birthers being wrong would be the birthers being right.

Igniting a whacky constitutional crisis because Barack Obama spent a few weeks or months in Kenya as an infant seemed like madness to me. Throwing out the first black president in the middle of his presidency would be absurdly difficult, painful, and counterproductive in every way, dredging up a level of biliousness this country has rarely if ever seen. And at the end of the process, even if a “birther Congress” could have successfully impeached and removed the guy for being ineligible, we would have . . . President Joe Biden.

(By the way, I’ve long pondered what a Biden presidency would look like. I think the Lloyd Bridges character in Airplane! gives us a good sense of what Biden’s presidential leadership style would be.) ...

I got a lot of grief from the usual types for asking why Obama dragged this out as long as he did. I still think it’s a perfectly legitimate question.

It seems to me that if there was no “there” there this whole time, the responsible thing would have been for a junior deputy assistant press secretary to release the thing over two years ago.

Think about it. Liberal surrogates in and out of the press and the administration have been saying for two years that the birthers are discrediting the Republican party. They’re racist. They’re nuts. They’re trying to tear down the president and the country with their paranoia. And yet Obama could have put the whole thing to rest with five minutes of paper shuffling. The White House only asked Hawaii for the birth certificate last week. And this was after we’d been told incessantly that Hawaii couldn’t find or couldn’t release the long-form birth certificate.

(Never mind that we never heard anything like the same level of outrage and dismay over the “truther” conspiracy theories, which A) were more widely held on the left than birtherism has been on the right and B) were far, far more repugnant. One theory held that a politician was hiding something on his birth certificate for political reasons. The other theory held that the United States government from the president down systematically planned and carried out the worst terrorist attack in American history and then successfully covered it up with the help of nearly all of our elite institutions.)

It seems to me the strategists around Obama liked it this way. They thought they could exploit the birthers the way Clinton exploited the militias. Keeping the story in the news by letting the birthers drive themselves nuts helped them. The press helped, too. Did you ever notice how whenever a Republican denounced the birthers or dismissed the issue, the press would often cast it as a tactical move to win moderates, not an act of conviction?

During the week of news coverage that Obama says was dominated by the birther issue, you were something like 35 times more likely to hear about the subject on CNN or MSNBC. Do you think those outlets framed the issue in a light favorable to the birthers or to the president? (Even now, the only media types really eager to prop up the birthers as a serious force are MSNBC hosts and their freelance producers at Media Matters & Co., who want to use the topic for guilt by association.)

Trump changed the equation. As odd as it is to me personally, Trump is a mainstream figure and his birtherism wasn’t discrediting the GOP because he’s not identified as a “real” Republican. And given the awful economy and the general pessimism out there, the birther thing had more salience culturally (which is unfortunate).

But also, Obama has been cultivating his image as the “grown-up.” The White House has been trying to position Obama as the adult in the room, above the squabbling parties. Releasing the birth certificate now and having the president denounce “silliness” and “distractions” was a great way to get that message out there.

Or at least it seemed that way. My hunch is that Americans are starting to figure who Obama really is—and the answer, as always, has nothing to do with his birth certificate.

The theory that he was born in Kenyan would have disqualified him from office on the basis of an alleged clause in a pre-1970 Naturalization Law, which apparently excluded from citizenship the child of an under-aged female American citizen by a non-American father who gave birth outside the US.

Jus sanguinis and the 14th Amendment would probably have caused such a clause to fail in a court test anyway, and Jonah Goldberg is perfectly correct in arguing that we want to remove Obama electorally, and not by a technicality in order to promote Joe Biden.

But it still makes no sense for Obama to have refused to release that long-form birth certificate.

Frank Fleming has examined it and concludes that it must be real.

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Tommy De Seno attempts (not very persuasively) to dispel skepticism provoked by the “layered birth certificate image” issue.

As I understand it, if you scan an image to a pdf, there are no layers. You basically get a photograph. However, if you use a software like Photoshop and change things, you get layers – the original image and the new image layered on top of one another.

Or so I thought.

I went online to read the 411 from folks who claim to know much about this sort of thing. I got lost in conversations about OCR and halos and other geeky things. All I accomplished was to become intimidated. Both sides sounded convincing, I assume because I know so little about computers that I’m easy to convince.

Before this thing gets out of control, the makers of Adobe and Photoshop need to come out with a joint statement and explain what is behind this “layered” business. Guys like me can’t figure it out.

Another point: Even if it is layered, it’s OK. What was released could be an aggregation of information from other sources of Hawaiian vital statistics, which is perfectly legitimate.

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Robert Stacy McCain attempts to put the whole Birther controversy into the proper perspective.

Scarcely had the White House released President Obama’s birth certificate than the “Birther” skeptics issued statements expressing their continued doubts about other aspects of Obama’s biography. One oft-heard refrain was that the president had waited too long to release the document. Others moved on to demanding to see Obama’s academic transcripts. Donald Trump congratulated himself on having pressured the White House into finally putting an end to many months of mystery.

What will be the political impact of this? In the long term, likely none at all. Americans who don’t like Obama will continue not to like him. The president gave a sanctimonious press conference lecture—the nation was being “distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” he said—but Obama’s opponents have long since ceded his superlative gifts at delivering sanctimonious lectures. Where he fails is in delivering effective policies to address our nation’s manifold problems. By the time the 2012 election arrives, the Birther controversy will be long forgotten, while Obama’s failed policies will (or at least should be) front and center of the campaign debate.

The ‘long form’ birth certificate that the White House released confirms that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was our president’s father. Obama Sr., a Kenyan by birth, was a citizen of the British Empire. While his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an American citizen, his father never emigrated to the United States, or married her. ... [should be: “validly married her” as Barack Obama Sr. was already married in Kenya, his marriage to Stanley Ann Dunham was bigamous and therefore invalid.—DZ]

While the definition of ‘natural born citizen’ was never made by the founding fathers, in 2008 then Senator Obama co-sponsored Senate Resolution 511 which was drafted to address the status of senator and presidential hopeful John McCain’s status as a natural born citizen, having been born in the Panama Canal Zone.

The resolution states,

Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country’s President;

Whereas such limitations would be inconsistent with the purpose and intent of the `natural born Citizen’ clause of the Constitution of the United States, as evidenced by the First Congress’s own statute defining the term `natural born Citizen’;

The reference this bill makes is to,

CHAP III

An Act To establish an uniform rule of naturalization
Approved March 26 1790 US Statutes at Large Vol I pp 103 104

SECTION 1

…And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea or out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural born citizens. Provided That the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.

This distinction drawn between ‘citizen’ and ‘natural born citizen’ is at the heart of the debate over Obama’s eligibility to continue serving as the President of the United States.

It’s this issue that the members of the ‘birther’ movement should have been behind since day one, instead of concocting theories about Kenya midwives and Indonesian home births.

Only 30 months after the November 2008 election which won him the presidency, Barack Hussein Obama II, stung by repeated criticism by Donald Trump, suddenly abandoned the dogged struggle he had fought in the courts of at least 8 states at a cost estimated to approach close to $2 million and finally released a copy of his long-form birth certificate from the state of Hawaii.

When one glances over the fabled and mysterious document, alleged recently not even to exist as a form of Hawaiian document, on the one hand, one is comforted with the knowledge that the occupant of the chief magistracy of the United States is actually apparently eligible to hold the office he currently occupies. But, on the other hand, one remains perplexed as to why he did not simply release this bland and uncontroversial document long ago.

I think the country is still due a rational explanation of why it was that the president wanted to avoid releasing this.

Nonetheless, NYM congratulates the President of the United States on this bold gesture in the direction of transparency.

Special thanks are obviously due to Mr. Donald Trump, who personally assumed the responsibility for articulating public concern and forcing the disclosure of a fundamentally significant source of data.

Meanwhile, the Number 1 Best Seller on Amazon in the category of all books is Jerome Corsi’s Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President, which is not even published yet, and which will not be released until May 17th.

The new Corsi expose is described:

Over the course of more than three years of research, Jerome Corsi assembles the evidence that Barack Obama is constitutionally ineligible for the office of the presidency. As a New York Times bestselling author, Harvard graduate, and investigative journalist, Corsi exposes in detail key issues with Obama’s eligibility, including the fact the President has spent millions of dollars in legal fees to avoid providing the American people with something as simple as a long-form birth certificate.

Trump is having fun picking on Obama over the unreleased full birth certificate.

Some news agency reports that Hawaii’s governor is abandoning his effort to release Obama’s mysterious long-form birth certificate.

A privacy law that shields birth certificates has prompted Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie to abandon efforts to dispel claims that President Barack Obama was born outside Hawaii, his office says.

State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that privacy laws bar him from disclosing an individual’s birth documentation without the person’s consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday.

Obama is not only not releasing his birth certificate, college transcripts, and medical records, he is also not releasing his detailed legal bills, but Obama’s campaign organization is required by law to divulge what it does with its money, and World Net Daily is able to report:

President Obama has paid nearly $1.7 million to his top eligibility lawyer since the election.

Obama for America, Obama’s 2008 political campaign, merged with the Democratic National Committee in January and is now known as Organizing for America. The grass-roots army that some refer to as “Obama 2.0” is still collecting financial contributions.

Federal Election Commission records for “Obama for America” show that the lobby organization has paid international law firm Perkins Coie exactly $1,666,397.01 since the 2008 election. ...

The FEC shows Obama’s campaign has made regular payments to Perkins Coie since Jan. 1, 2007 – the month he formed a presidential exploratory committee and only weeks before he formally announced his candidacy for president.

In total, Obama has paid Perkins Coie, a single law firm, $2.6 million since he announced his campaign for presidency. ...

Robert Bauer of Perkins Coie – top lawyer for Obama, Obama’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and Obama’s Organizing for America – is the same Washington, D.C., lawyer who defended President Obama in lawsuits challenging his eligibility to be president.

Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer argues that the $1.7 million spent on Perkins Coie’s legal services since the election cannot possibly all have been for costs related to keeping that birth certificate out of public view.

WorldNetDaily has noted that FEC filings show that Obama’s presidential campaign has paid out more than $1.7 million since the election to the law firm of Perkins Coie. Until recently, that firm was home to Obama’s campaign lawyer, and now White House counsel, Robert Bauer—the very same DC lawyer, says WND, who has defended Obama in many of the birther lawsuits. Ergo, WND concluded, Obama must be devoting that entire $1.7 million to crushing birthers in court. This is a ridiculous claim: Even after an election is over a presidential campaign has plenty of need for lawyers as it winds down operations and meets campaign finance law requirements.

I think she has a point. There must have been some legal filings and reports that had to be done but, $1.7 million is a lot of money and obviously represents a great deal more in the way of legal services than routine, post-election paperwork.

How much money would you or I spend to avoid releasing our original and complete birth certificate so that every Tom, Dick, and Harry could pore over it to his heart’s content (as part of our ascension to the highest office in the land)? The obvious answer, in my own case, is not a dime. Why would I care?

Barack Obama clearly has spent very large and substantial sums of money on legal efforts to prevent that birth certificate’s public release. It is clearly in his interest to release it, to end law suits and put a stop to speculation and charges that he is somehow unqualified for the office he holds but, as we see again, despite encouragement from his own friend and ally, Hawaii’s Governor Abercrombie, Obama is not releasing it.

I don’t think Obama was born in Kenya, but it is only too obvious that Obama must have something to hide. Something sufficiently embarrassing or damaging that it is worth spending a great deal of money to conceal it.

According to the News Junkie:

Concerning Wikileaks, Governor Mike Huckabee said: “If we want to keep our nation’s secrets ‘SECRET,’ store them where President Obama stores his college transcripts and birth certificate.”

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

There is no great split in the United States of America on the issue of the Ground Zero Mosque. Sixty-eight percent of Americans oppose it.

In fact, using the same metric — CNN Opinion Research polling of 1,000 Americans — more Americans have doubts about Barack Obama’s birth story than support the mosque.

Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.
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Afghan President Karzai reported to doubt that America can win.

Ingenious, but I don’t see how anyone can invest very much in this one in the complete absence of any actual evidence.

I knew it all along. Barack Obama is not a US citizen. He is a space alien, probably a robot. Eric Spiegelman has the proof. He compared 130 photos of Barack Obama posing with UN dignitaries at reception recently in this 0:21 video. Can that smile possibly be human?

The proof, my actual Kenyan birth record, has been posted here. But, unlike Obama, I was born in Tsavo.... in a cave.

You can get your own Kenyan birth record, too, at this handy web-site.

Run right out and get one. A British passport could come in handy someday, if you ever want to visit some country barring entry to US passport holders the way Barack Obama did in the 1980s.

Hat tip to Jose Guardia.

Divulged by Shiplord Kirel to Charles Johnson.

According to this Free Republic post, an attorney named Orly Taitz, representing Alan Keyes, has filed a petition to have the above Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Hussein Obama II authenticated.

Web searches produced no other news sources reporting any such development. So I think we need to be just a little skeptical here.

The Orly Taitz web-site has a distinct flavor of the fever swamp about it. Still, it has clearly gotten some lefties excited. When I tried to open Dr. Taitz’s blog, the Trend Micro antivirus software I use blocked it, informing me that this site has been reported as a site distributing malware.

Too bad that its reliability is so dubious. This website does offer a sample long form Hawaiian birth certificate, which, if real, would be a very interesting piece of data. Not as good as Barack Obama’s actual Kenyan birth record, but pretty good.
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UPDATE 8/3:

You read it here first, but the story is everywhere today, being reported with skepticism similar to my own.

Daily Kos’s David Waldman notes that the Kenyan birth record is labelled “Republic of Kenya,” Obama’s date of birth is August 4, 1961, and the new birth record is dated February 17, 1964, but Kenya became independent December 12, 1963 and changed status from a Dominion to a Republic on December 12, 1964.

Below the Beltway discusses the problem with the purported Kenyan document at length.
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UPDATE 8/4:

David Weigel seems to have found the source of that Kenyan birth record: an Australian birth record taken from an Internet genealogy site.

Politico:

Shocker poll from Kos/Research2000 today.

A whopping 58 percent of Republicans either think Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US (28 percent) or aren’t sure (30 percent). A mere 42 percent think he was.

Count me among the 30% Not sure.

I think he was probably born in Hawaii. But, who knows? Very serious money was spent on court cases in a large number of states in order to avoid releasing more records.

I want Obama to instruct the Hawaii officials to release the official original document they say they have in their hands. Why not?

Ho! Ho! Just watch Andrew crayfish, after the left turns on the email heat.

My goal here is transparency and avoiding double standards. I’m sorry I got lost a little in the weeds there. And I would think it’s clear enough I’m not part of the Birther crowd. I’m trying to defuse them. I’m done now.

Scuttle.
——————————————————————

But National Review says Obama’s Certificate of Live Birth is his real, full, complete, and entire birth certificate.

The fundamental fiction is that Obama has refused to release his “real” birth certificate. This is untrue. The document that Obama has made available is the document that Hawaiian authorities issue when they are asked for a birth certificate. There is no secondary document cloaked in darkness, only the state records that are used to generate birth certificates when they are requested.

If one applies for a United States passport, the passport office will demand a birth certificate. It defines this as an official document bearing “your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records.” The Hawaiian birth certificate President Obama has produced—the document is formally known as a “certificate of live birth”—bears that information. It has been inspected by reporters, and several state officials have confirmed that the information in permanent state records is identical to that on the president’s birth certificate—which is precisely what one expects, of course, since the state records are used to generate those documents when they are requested. In other words, what President Obama has produced is the “real” birth certificate of myth and lore. The director of Hawaii’s health department and the registrar of records each has personally verified that the information on Obama’s birth certificate is identical to that in the state’s records, the so-called vault copy.

——————————————————————
Mark Krikorian, however, offers an email rejoinder by Glynn Custred.

The question of Barack Obama’s birth certificate has provoked a surpisingly aggressive response from the White House and near hysteria from Obama supporters. If the question is so crazy, and especially since conservatives have joined the Obama supporters in their condemnation of those who asked them (Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, the National Review), why all the fuss?

The question on which the “birthers” hinge their complaint is, is there a more specific document that the president is purposefully witholding from the public? No one seems willing or able to answer that question in a straight forward manner, thus fostering an atmosphere in which doubts linger and conspiracy theories thrive.

The real problem, however, is not the president’s place of birth (it is highly unlikely that he was born anywhere but where he claims) but the Nixonian secrecy with which he has chosen to surround himself. Has Obama released his transcripts from Occidental College and Harvard? (we know all about Bush’s mediocre grades at Yale). Has he given permission for his theses and publications to be released? If not, why not? Michelle got into hot water when her thesis was publicized. Maybe Barack learned a lesson from that episode. And why the secrecy about the grades of such a smart guy as Obama? Might they reveal some kind of favoritism along the way?

We do know that there are things Obama tried to hide, such as his association with Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger as well as William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Do his records reveal other questionable associations or statements? Where is the transparency we expect of public officials? Why is Obama getting a pass when other presidents do not? And why the hysteria when the topic is brought up?

The real question is why has Barack Obama spent, as of last March more than $800,000 (by now, doubtless, a lot more), opposing all those court cases demanding he prove his citizenship by releasing a complete birth record?

If no such thing exists, it would be awfully silly to spend over a million dollars resisting proving its non-existence.

I agree that it seems implausible that Obama was born elsewhere than Hawaii. The only evidence for the alleged birth in Momabasa is the interview of Sara Obama, BO’s grandmother, by a clearly conniving Bible-thumper who is doing everything he can to get her to say she was present at Barack Obama’s birth at a hospital in Momabasa. She is elderly and at one point goes along and repeats the words he is putting in her moith, but another relative, a Mr. Ogombe immediately corrects her, and the “proof” dissipates. I listened to it, it was partially inaudible, and I wound up having no confidence in the reliability of anything anyone there was saying.

The Economist and liberal Alex Koppelman at Salon discuss the evidentiary problems with the Sara Obama interview.

But I do suspect there are other real, and politically embarrassing, personal details, like Barack Obama’s probable adoption by Lolo Soetero, his dual British citizenship (resulting from having a Kenyan father), the possibility that he may have owned and actually used a British passport to travel to countries banning US citizens, the question of whether he may have needed to take official steps to change his name from Barry Soetero to Barack Obama or to recover US citizenship after being adopted in Indonesia and never did, are all more likely to be the troubling issues requiring a coverup.

Despite the inclination of establishment media to dismiss issues of Obama’s citizenship status, questions continue to surface in wider circles of American society.

We’ve all seen the e-mails about Barack Obama’s citizenship. This is a new twist we hadn’t known. Interesting. More questions. And this time some good questions.

It can be resolved by Obama answering one simple question: What passport did you use when you were shuttling between New York, Jakarta, and Karachi?

So how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without the price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later? And once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York, Jakarta and Karachi ,what passport was he offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration?

The American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions, they must have answers.

It makes the debate over Obama’s citizenship a rather short and simple one.

Q: Did he travel to Pakistan in 1981, at age 20?

A: Yes, by his own admission.

Q: What passport did he travel under

A: There are only three possibilities. 1. He traveled with a U.S. passport, 2) He traveled with a British passport, or 3) He traveled with an Indonesia passport.

Q: Is it possible that Obama traveled with a U.S. passport in 1981?

A: No. It is not possible. Pakistan was on the U.S. State Department’s “no-travel” list in 1981.

Conclusion: When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981, he was traveling either with a British passport or an Indonesian passport. If he was traveling with a British passport, that would provide proof that he was born in Kenya on Aug. 4, 1961, not in Hawaii as he claims. And if he was traveling with an Indonesian passport, that would tend to prove that he relinquished whatever previous citizenship he held, British or American, prior to being adopted by his Indonesian stepfather in 1967.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the American people need to know how he managed to become a “natural born” U.S. citizen between 1981 and 2008.

Personally, I always experience a dramatic increase in skepticism when I observe the argument from intimidation underway. Whenever people point to a bien pensant media consensus as established and inarguable fact, I start looking around for the alternative theory.

As to Obama’s native born status, I’ve read Internet rumors that say his grandmother supposedly said some time somewhere that he was born in a hospital in Kenya, but I’ve never seen any form of reliable report confirming that.

I’m well aware, and support the fact, that the United States traditionally bases citizenship both on jus sanguinis (citizenship by right of blood descent) and jus soli (citizenship by right of birth on US soil). I also think that if a person elected to national office by 60-odd million votes as the result of a process as expensive, time-consuming, and elaborate as a US Presidential election were to be disqualified by an arcane, subsequently eliminated, technical and ill-conceived provision of 1960s era citizenship laws, that it would be a disaster.

But I do also think the law is the law, and Barack Obama’s citizenship status, which undoubtedly features a number of occasions for questions, ought to have been thoroughly and openly explored before the democrat party ever nominated him.

I think it is probable that democrat party member state officials in Hawaii are telling the truth, and Obama’s birth certificate is real, valid, and in proper order, but I also wonder, if that is the case, why has he spent more than $800,000 (at last count, which was some time ago), fighting lawsuits in numerous states to resist allowing it to be released.

Obama’s effort and expense at litigating only makes sense if there is something to hide. (In an earlier post, I suggested that perhaps he was really named Sue.)

Beyond the alleged birth in Kenya to a slightly underage US citizen mom, there are also obviously live possibilities of problems with conflicting dual citizenships held contrary to US law. Obama might very well have been adopted by Mr. Soetero. His admission to Indonesian schools apparently required Indonesian citizenship. If Obama lost his US citizenship by adoption as a juvenile, he would have had to take official steps later to restore it.

Obama could have in the past claimed to be a British subject by virtue of his father’s Kenyan nationality. It is reported that Obama travelled to Pakistan in 1981, at a time when US citizens were not allowed to enter the country. Those circumstances suggest he could have used a different passport at the time.

There can be no doubt that the national news reporting organizations allowed political partisanship to deter them from undertaking the questioning and scrutiny of the candidacy of Barack Obama that would normally be expected. It would not be hard to argue that, at this point, the country would be better off, our electoral processes better served, simply by averting our eyes from what is bound to be, at most, some technical disqualification, faced with plunging the country into an appalling and unprecedented leadership crisis (and perhaps making that idiot Biden president), but it is simply not true that no rational basis for skepticism of Barack Obama’s eligibility for office exists.
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Earlier posts.

On the same day the Supreme Court declined to hear one appeal challenging Barack Obama’s right to become president because of questions about his citizenship, Justice Antonin Scalia distributed another appeal on the same issue for the court to consider.

The new case, Cort Wrotnowski v. Susan Bysiewicz, Connecticut Secretary of State, is scheduled to be discussed by the justices at their Dec. 12 private conference. They plan to decide whether to give the case a hearing – again on whether the British citizenship of Mr. Obama’s father makes the president-elect ineligible to assume the office. ...

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down the previous appeal filed by New Jersey attorney Leo C. Donofrio.

Unlike Mr. Donofrio’s appeal, Mr. Wrotnowski’s case “includes a more solid brief and a less treacherous lower court procedural history.”

Law blog

A number of prominent conservatives have recently been labeling anyone who thinks there is any possible legitimate issue here as a “kook.”

Well, personally, I think it costs real money to fight lawsuits in eight states, and multiple appeals for Supreme Court certiorari. Why would anyone bother when he could simply release the long form of his Hawaiian birth certificate?

A person seeking much lower privileges, such a driver’s license or voter registration must produce a birth certificate; why not a candidate for the highest office in the land. Which situation implies a higher duty by government officials; state statutes or the national constitution? ...

The state of Hawaii is asserting that privacy laws forbid it from revealing the certificate. This should be considered a bogus claim. Anyone running for the presidency has placed himself in the arena of a public, rather than a private citizen. A candidate is, for all practical purposes, giving up his privacy rights, and making his or her entire life open to scrutiny by the public and the press. Their personal records should and must be part of this. ...

If the certificate is never produced, and proper birth status is never verified, one way or the other, it will likely become the core of another Great American Conspiracy Theory such as those surrounding the death of John F. Kennedy. The Kennedy assassination conspiracies have been debunked, for all practical purposes, but they haven’t gone away. We don’t need another one of these things.

Read the whole thing.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by some opponents of Obama’s election.

The meeting of justices will coincide with a vigil by the filer’s supporters in Washington on the steps of the nation’s highest court.

The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.

Legal experts say the appeal has little chance of succeeding, despite appearing on the court’s schedule. Legal records show it is only the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama’s election over accusations that he either wasn’t born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.

The Obama campaign has maintained that he was born in Hawaii, has an authentic birth certificate, and is a “natural-born” U.S. citizen. Hawaiian officials agree.

If Obama really was born in Hawaii, and actually has that legitimate birth certificate, why does he have a problem with producing and displaying it?

This 1:02 video has an inflammatory and partisan tone, but does summarize the questions about Obama’s citizenship succinctly.

Now, Alan Keyes, who does possess standing, having himself appeared on the California ballot this year as candidate for president of the American Independent Party, is suing the Secretary of State of California in Superior Court in Sacramento, asking the court to order that she refrain from certifying the election of the democrat party’s individual presidential electors until Barack Obama provides proof of his eligibility with respect to citizenship for the presidency.

Keyes v. Bowen pdf

In case Senator Obama cannot present proper documentation verifying his citizenship, he cannot be elected President of the United States, and SOS (Secretary of State) has a duty to bar the casting of votes by California Electors in support of his candidacy.

84. Based on all of the above, it is the duty of the SOS to obtain proper documentation of Senator Obama’s citizenship to confirm his eligibility for the office of the President of the United States.

If Keyes, Berg, et. al. are correct in their suspicions, it appears that Americans will have inadvertently elected Joseph Biden president.

The state’s Department of Health director on Friday released a statement verifying the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama birth certificate.

That seems to settle questions on the subject of Obama’s place of birth. Except… The mystery remains of why, if he has a perfectly valid Hawaiian birth certificate, the Obama Campaign has been so vigorously fighting lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and six other states, when all he needs to do is to hand over a certified copy of his birth certificate. Why does he have a problem about doing that?