Saturday, November 8, 2008

Obama, citizen or not.....

Philip Berg, a lifelong Democrat, filed suit against Obama regarding his place of birth, believing that he is NOT a native born American. There apparently is sufficient evidence that he was not born in Hawaii as he claims, but in Kenya. He intially filed suit in his home state, but the judge there said he did not have "standing", essentially saying that the people did not have the right to challenge presidential qualifications as required by the Constitution.

Berg then filed the case with the Supreme Court of the United States, and asked that the Nov. 4th elections be postponed until the issue was resolved. The Justices refused to postpone the elections, but did tell Obama that he must provide proof of his birth in Hawaii. Apparently this is going to be difficult to do, since he refused to do it when challenged previously. Contrast this with McCains response when challenged over the same issue, who rapidly provided all the information requested. (McCain was born in Central America while his father was stationed there.)

Berg's press release is here:

http://www.obamacrimes.com/index.php/news/52-us-supreme-court-awaits-response-to-berg-writ-of-certiorari-from-obama



There are more complications to the issue as well. He was adopted by his stepfather in Indonesia, and then attended school there when only citizens of Indonesia could attend school. It would appear, then, that he accepted Indonesian citizenship, but could have requested that his citizenship revert to the U.S. at 18, but there is no record he did so. Documented here:

http://www.obamacrimes.com/attachments/016_Obama,%20Motion%20for%20TRO%20from%20Pacer.pdf

Interesting take on it here:

http://www.rightsidenews.com/200811072518/editorial/america-the-beautiful.html

13 comments:

smrstrauss said...

Re Obama being born in Kenya and allegations that he lost citizenship by having had dual citizenship while in Indonesia:

If Obama had been born in Kenya, there would be a record of his mother arriving in Kenya in the archives of the Kenya government.

The critics of Obama, who allege that he was born in Kenya, have not shown anything like this. All they would have to do is to go to those files in Kenya and show that Obama’s mother had been in Kenya in 1961. But they have nothing.

I listened to the tape, and it is not clear that Obama's grandmother understood the question. The translator (who is also apparently a relative) says repeatedly that Obama was born in Hawaii. In any case, it is not evidence. She could be referring to Barak Obama senior, Obama’s father, who certainly was born in Kenya.

The officials in Hawaii say he was born in Hawaii. They have seen his birth certificate in his file.

The certificate (or certification, whatever) of live birth has been accepted as legal proof of Obama's birth in Hawaii by a court in Virginia. (Monday. See: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2123806/posts)

After Berg, several other cases against Obama on the natural born citizen issue were brought in other states.

While most of them just did what the Berg case did, which was to rule that Berg had no standing to sue, some of the others looked at the “evidence” - and concluded that the stuff was absurd.

In Ohio, for example the judge (magistrate) said:

“(Neal) presented no witnesses but himself. From that testimony, it is abundantly clear that the allegations in [Neal]’s complaint concerning “questions” about Senator Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen” are derived from Internet sources, the accuracy of which has not been demonstrated to either Defendant Brunner or this Magistrate … Given the paucity of evidence… this Magistrate cannot conclude that Defendant Brunner has abused her discretion in failing to launch an investigation into Senator Obama’s qualifications to hold the office of President of the United States. ” See:
http://www.oxfordpress.com/hp/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/10/31/ws103108obamasuit.html

In Virginia, which was just ruled on Monday, the judge went further and said that the certificate of live birth was good proof that Obama was born in Hawaii, and there was NO proof presented that he was born anywhere else.

Here is a report from a web posting that is not official, of course, but it seems accurate mainly because the fellow who posted it was AGAINST Obama. He is disappointed, but accepts the ruling. You can find this post at : (
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2123806/posts)

(Note that sometimes the author correctly puts COLB correctly and sometimes he types it as CLOB, but he means certificate of live birth throughout.)

Quotes:

The Court made the following findings:

1. The Certification of Live Birth presented to the court is unquestionably authentic.

The court noted that the certification had a raised seal from the state of Hawaii, had a stamp bearing the signature of the registrar of vital statistics. The court found “wholly unpersuasive” any of the internet claims that the birth certificate was altered in any way. Furthermore, the document itself was accompanied by an affidavit from the State Health Director (of Hawaii) verifying that the document is an authentic certification of live birth. The court held that there could be no doubt that the document was authentic unless one believed that the state of Hawaii’s health department were in on an elaborate and complex conspiracy – and that there is not a shred of evidence that this is the case.

2. The Certification of Live Birth establishes that Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen.

The affidavit of the State Health Director states that the information on the CLOB is identical to the information on the “vault” copy of the birth certificate, and that both documents establish that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu. The Court noted that the CLOB is valid for all citizenship purposes. The court noted our argument that the COLB is not valid for determining citizenship, but referred us to Hawaiian law that states otherwise. “There is no difference between a certificate and a certification of live birth in the eyes of the state. For instance, either can be used to confirm U.S. citizenship to obtain a passport or state ID.” The court found that Hawaiian law makes the COLB valid for all purposes with the exception of determining native Hawaiian heritage for certain state and federal benefits. The court held that if Mr. Obama were born elsewhere and the birth registered in Hawaii, the “place of birth” line on the COLB would reflect that fact. The court stated that there could be no doubt that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii and that any argument to the contrary was fanciful and relied on completely unsubstantiated internet rumors.

3. For that reason, 8 U.S.C. §1401(g), which at the relevant time provided as follows:

“The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth: ***(g) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than ten years, at least five of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years:…..
is irrelevant to this matter, as Mr. Obama was conclusively born in Hawaii.

4. Mr. Obama did hold dual citizenship in the U.S. and Kenya until he became an adult. When Barack Obama Jr. was born Kenya was a British colony. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.’s children: “British Nationality Act of 1948 (Part II, Section 5): Subject to the provisions of this section, a person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by descent if his father is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at the time of the birth.” In other words, at the time of his birth, Barack Obama Jr. was both a U.S. citizen (by virtue of being born in Hawaii) and a citizen of the United Kingdom by virtue of being born to a father who was a citizen of the UK. Obama’s UK citizenship became an Kenyan citizenship on Dec. 12, 1963, when Kenya formally gained its independence from the United Kingdom. The court noted that Chapter VI, Section 87 of the Kenyan Constitution specifies that:

1. Every person who, having been born in Kenya, is on 11th December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a British protected person shall become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December, 1963…

2. Every person who, having been born outside Kenya, is on 11th December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies or a British protected person shall, if his father becomes, or would but for his death have become, a citizen of Kenya by virtue of subsection (1), become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December, 1963.
Thus the court held that as a citizen of the UK who was born in Kenya, Obama’s father automatically received Kenyan citizenship via subsection (1). So given that Obama qualified for citizen of the UK status at birth and given that Obama’s father became a Kenyan citizen via subsection (1), thus Obama did in fact have Kenyan citizenship in 1963.

However, the court further held that the Kenyan Constitution prohibits dual citizenship for adults. Kenya recognizes dual citizenship for children, but Kenya’s Constitution specifies that at age 21, Kenyan citizens who possesses citizenship in more than one country automatically lose their Kenyan citizenship unless they formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya. The court held that there was no evidence that Mr. Obama has ever renounced his U.S. citizenship or sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4, 1982.

The court held that there was no legal requirement that Mr. Obama renounce his Kenyan citizenship or affirm his U.S. citizenship in order to maintain his status as a natural born citizen.

5. Mr. Obama did not lose his U.S. Citizenship based on the acts of his parents, including adoption by an Indonesian citizen. The Court held that no action taken by the parents of an American child can strip that child of his citizenship. The court cited to the 1952 Immigration & Nationality Act, Title III, Chapter 3, Sections 349 and 355, which was in effect in the late 1960s when Obama went to Indonesia, and which stated that a minor does not lose his US citizenship upon the naturalization of his parents or any other actions of his parents, so long as the minor returns to the US and establishes permanent US residency before the age of 21. Thus the adoption of Obama did not serve to strip him of his U.S. citizenship. The fact that Indonesian law does not allow dual citizenship is irrelevant, as U.S. law controls. Furthermore, the Court held that traveling on a foreign passport does not strip an American of his citizenship. The Court noted first that there was no evidence that Mr. Obama traveled on an Indonesian passport (Mr. Berg and others we reached out to for evidence never provided any evidence of this claim or any other of the claims we could have used some proof of.) Nonetheless, the court held that such travel does not divest an American of his citizenship.

The Court makes other holdings and findings that I won’t bother you with here. Needless to say, the decision is wholly against us. The court finds the claims against Mr. Obama’s citizenship “wholly unpersuasive and bordering on the frivolous, especially in light of the complete absence of any first-hand evidence on any critical issue” and further classifies it as “conspiracy theory of the lowest sort, fueled by nothing than internet rumor and those who truly want to believe egging each other on.”

I like the part about “conspiracy theory of the lowest sort.”

Repeat: “The court held that if Mr. Obama were born elsewhere and the birth registered in Hawaii, the “place of birth” line on the COLB would reflect that fact. The court stated that there could be no doubt that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii and that any argument to the contrary was fanciful and relied on completely unsubstantiated internet rumors.”

bwaites said...

Interesting, then, that the Supreme Court of the United States felt a need to demand the documentation, don't you think?

Ashley said...

Where's the pics of your grandkids?? You like football but don't you love your grandkis? ;) Dad you have a point...who is this smrstrauss person?

bwaites said...

Don't know who smrstrauss is. Pretty well informed guy, though!

I originally thought most of the Obama birth stuff was just foolishness, but his refusal to actually supply a legitimate copy of his birth certificate makes me wonder. His response was so different than McCains that it is suspicios.

bwaites said...

PS, I don't have any suitable grandkid pics! :)

Ashley said...

Do you want one of them? Which is your favorite? I wonder about Obama too just because it seems weird that he hasn't proven it.

smrstrauss said...

Re: Interesting, then, that the Supreme Court of the United States felt a need to demand the documentation, don't you think?

It didn't. Let me repeat. It did not. It did not ask for documentation.

Only Berg has said that the Supreme Court asked for documentation, and he is not telling the truth. (I don't say that he is lying. I say that he made a mistake.)

But whether a lie or a mistake, it is still NOT true.

How do I know. Because the Supreme Court is not a judge of evidence. It is only a judge of the laws. In the case that Berg has brought, the Supreme Court will not decide on whether Obama is a citizen or not. It will simply decide on whether Berg has standing to sue in this case. So it has no need to see the birth certificate.

If if finds that Berg has standing to sue --- which is very unlikely -- it would then refer the case back to a lower level court to see the evidence. (And since Berg has no evidence proving that Obama was born outside the USA, that is not likely to be a winning case for him).

But, as to your question, it is not true that the Supreme Court asked to see the birth certificate.

smrstrauss said...

Re: "but his refusal to actually supply a legitimate copy of his birth certificate makes me wonder."

Who actually has asked that Obama provide anything other than the certification of live birth OTHER than some right-wing blogs? Now that we know that the Supreme Court has not asked for it, has any other court?

At least one court, we know, found that the certification of live birth was adequate proof, and the US State Department finds it is adequate in order to grant passports.

So, how can you say that Obama refused?

Of course, if the issue is really settled by the supreme court, and they send it back to a lower court to hear the evidence, and the lower court asks for the birth certificate, THEN IF Obama refuses to give it, you can say he refused.

But, (1) in the unlikely event that this would occur, the court might find that the certification is good enough (specially since there is no evidence from Kenya that he was born there), and if they asked for his birth certificate, I doubt that Obama would refuse to give it. We know that there is a birth certificate in the file from the news statement of the officials in Hawaii.

smrstrauss said...

Re: I wonder about Obama too just because it seems weird that he hasn't proven it.

Who, other than you and some other bloggers have asked to see Obama's original birth certificate?

If a court had asked for it, or the DNC had asked for it, or a state board of elections had asked for it, that would be a different thing.

Besides, why provide additional documents when (1) the certification of live birth is evidence that he was born in Hawaii and (2) there is no evidence that he was born anywhere else than Hawaii?

bwaites said...

Actually, Berg is anything BUT a right wing blogger. He is a life long Democrat, and has functioned in multiple positions within that party.

As far as that goes, IF he was born in Hawaii, why not solve the mystery and simply provide the evidence?

It SEEMS that he is trying to hide something by not being immediately forthcoming with what has been asked. That hardly fits his "open to everyone" persona, does it?

The DNC is useless in such cases, (as is the GOP, as far as that goes).

I don't understand his difficulty in simply producing the document, regardless.

I am impressed by your knowledge of the issue, though, you've done a lot of work digging up information!

smrstrauss said...

Re: "As far as that goes, IF he was born in Hawaii, why not solve the mystery and simply provide the evidence?"

Let's see now. Who has asked to see more evidence? You and some other right-wing bloggers, and Berg (who is said to be a life-long democrat but has no evidence other than the grandmother tape, and after all some Democrats are nutty too.)

So, why should Obama provide anything other than what he has provided. He is busy these days. People are calling on him to do something to help the economy as soon as he gets in office.

And he belives, as do I, that the certification of live birth is unquestioned proof that he was born in Hawaii.

Until someone comes up with something more powerful than the grandmother tape(which I listened to, and in which it is not clear that she understood the question), why should Obama do anything?

Besides, I am confused by your assumption that the real birth certificate shows anything unusual. What would it show? It would be a typewritten document showing the name of the doctor and the hospital. All interesting, sure. But the certification shows that this document is in the file, why do we need to see it?

If the COLB proves that the document is in the file, and there is no evidence other than the grandmother tape that Obama was born anywhere else than in Hawaii, and only right-wing bloggers are calling for him to post the real birth certificate, why should Obama do anything?

Besides, we have no evidence that Obama even knows that someone other than Berg is asking for him to make his original birth certificate public.

bwaites said...

It's simple; he should produce the birth certificate because it is the right thing to do. If even one constituent has a question about something as easy to rectify as this, why not do it?

Even if it is only Mr. Berg, he should do it.

He talks about reaching across the aisle to conservatives, but if he can't do something as simple as this for them, why should any of us believe that he will listen about anything else?

To top it off, he has plenty of people to handle these kinds of things, no one is asking him to fly to Hawaii and get the paper himself.

He has repeatedly talked about transparency and openness, but neither seem to apply in this case.

I'll say it simply:

All he has to do is "Do the right thing".

It shouldn't be hard, and should take almost NO time from his schedule.

It would cement that he is committed to the openness he has so often given lip service to.

Finally, he knows there are questions about the issue, you can't be sued without notice, so he needs to put the issue to bed.

smrstrauss said...

Re: Even if it is only Mr. Berg, he should do it.

Actually, when someone demands something, the natural tendency is to fight. So, Berg is demanding the birth certificate (and actually there are at least two other cases).

So, even if there is a valid birth certificate, Obama may fight the cases on the issue of whether these claimants have the RIGHT to force him to show something which is normally private.

That's a very different thing from asking for the document nicely.

Unfortunately, no one other than members of the right wing has asked to see the birth certificate, and as far as I know, no one has asked for it nicely.

The trick, I think, would be to get one or both of the two big Hawaii newspapers to ask for the original birth certificate because they would like to confirm which hospital he was born in. If they did, and Obama did not respond, then it could be said that he refused to provide information that a newspaper had requested.

But, what do you expect to see on the birth certificate? It is not, and cannot be, a Kenyan birth certificate filed in the Hawaii files. And, I cannot see that it would have been affected by Obama having moved to Indonesia and changed his name. The original birth certificate is what it is, not an amended certificate. So all it would do is show which hospital and maybe which doctor.

It might be nice to see that, but hardly newsworthy, and hardly likely to cause the Supreme Court to reverse the election, or give the election to Biden.

IF there is evidence that Obama was born in Kenya, it would exist in Kenya. If Obama's mother had traveled to Kenya, there must be a record of her arrival. If she had given birth in Kenya, there must be a birth certificate. And, most importantly, IF she had given birth in Kenya, she would have had no reason to hide the fact, so she would have had photos made of her and the child with the grandparents, etc.

But the theory holds that she gave birth in Kenya and then rushed right back to Hawaii, where some witnesses say (though of course their memory may be faulty) that they saw her with the infant Obama about ten days after the birth.

This seems most unlikely. It requires Obama's mother to travel in the ninth month of pregnancy (which was not common then), to a country where you had to have a Yellow Fever shot to go to, on airlines which were not direct in those days and (as one post I saw asserts) took a minimum of 29 hours to get back from Kenya to Hawaii via New York, if all connections were perfect.

Still, IF she had gone to Kenya, there would be proof of that fact in Kenya.

Conversely, the document in the Hawaii file we know from the officials who saw it and commented about it, shows that he was born in Hawaii. How do we know that? Because the certification of live birth says he was born in Honolulu city, Oahau Island, and Honolulu County, and the officials who issued a statement said that they could confirm the certification based on what they saw in the file.

So, two things can be done. (1) get someone to ask for the birth certificate nicely; (2) get someone to go to Kenya and try to find real evidence.