Confronting The Lies About Barack Obama’s Citizenship
By Doug Mataconis | Related entries in Barack
The Chicago Tribune looks into the allegations put forward by those questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship:
•The birth form released by Obama was “an unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited” live birth form, Schulz says.
Last summer, Obama’s campaign presented a digital copy of his certificate of live birth. After critics questioned its authenticity, staff at FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, said they had seen, held and examined the actual birth certificate.
The results of FactCheck’s investigation can be found here.
A copy of the Certificate of Live Birth, identical to others issued by the State of Hawaii and containing the requisite official seals, can be found here.
A thorough debunking of the arguments claiming that the COLB is a forgery can be found here.
•”Hawaiian officials will not confirm” that Obama was born in their state, Schulz says.
Initially, Hawaiian officials said that privacy laws prevented them from releasing a copy or confirming that Obama’s copy was authentic. But in late October as questions persisted, Hawaii’s health director and head of vital statistics reviewed Obama’s birth certificate in the department’s vault and vouched for its authenticity.
Details about that can be found here.
•Schulz says that legal affidavits state Obama was born in Kenya.
The affidavits that Schulz refers to are filings by the Obama critics themselves in the court cases challenging Obama’s citizenship.
Quite frankly, anyone can say anything they want in an affidavit; that doesn’t mean it’s true.
•Obama’s paternal grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended Obama’s birth in Kenya, Schulz says.
The group’s Web site posted what it says is a transcript of a long-distance phone conversation in Swahili and English from late October between a questioner in the United States and Sarah Hussein Obama, in her Kenyan home. The translator said he was one of two interpreters conducting the interview in a crowded hut during a celebration, over a speaker phone that dropped the call three times. A copy of the recording was not provided by Schulz.
Without a copy of the recording and independent translation, there’s no reason to believe that this allegation is true.
• Schulz says that “U.S. law in effect in 1961 [the year of Obama's birth] denied citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.”
If a child is born in the United States—as Hawaiian officials state that Obama was—that child is a U.S. citizen regardless of his or her parents’ nationalities. If born to an American parent outside the U.S., the law at the time would require the U.S. citizen parent to be at least 19, which Obama’s mother was not. The provisions of this law were subsequently loosened and made retroactive for government employees serving abroad and their families. It appears that this would not apply to Obama’s mother. The matter would seem to be academic: Hawaiian officials vouch for Obama’s birth certificate.
There’s simply no evidence that Barack Obama was born anywhere other than Honolulu Hawaii.
•Schulz says that in 1965, Obama’s mother relinquished whatever Kenyan or U.S. citizenship she and Obama had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen.
U.S. law lists the specific acts and formal procedures necessary to relinquish U.S. nationality. The statute requires the acts be performed voluntarily and with the intention of relinquishing one’s nationality. In many instances, one must be 18 to renounce one’s citizenship. Obama moved to Indonesia in 1968 and moved back to Hawaii while still in grade school. There is no indication that Obama renounced his U.S. citizenship.
And no legal argument supporting the assertion that his mother could have renounced his citizenship for him before he reached 18.
Schulz supports his argument with a reproduced Indonesian school document that states Obama’s citizenship at that time as “Indonesian.” But the same document also lists Obama’s birthplace as ” Honolulu, Hawaii.”
Oops on that one, I guess.
Game. Set. Match.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 and is filed under Barack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Since when did things like facts get in the way of nutcases? They just want to throw enough dirt in the air to make some people wonder. If you consider the number of people who falsely think that Obama is Muslim, this looks solid in comparison.
It is a shame that people are spending the time and resources on crap like this when there are so much better uses than full page ads in the Trib.
December 4th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Obama has had numerous opportunities to put this to bed. Provide the ORIGINAL document that was suddenly sealed by the Governor of Hawaii.
I agree that there are certainly bigger fish to fry. But Obama could have headed this off a while back.
December 4th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Why do so many people want this to go away without simply publicly verifying the source legal documents? Doesn’t seem like such a difficult or offensive task. Probably would save the hassle and tax money of the US court system getting more involved than it already is.
December 4th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
How many people have looked at teh copy of the birth certificates that they get from the states these days? they don’t say anything different that what Obama’s say. Mine, from PA, received in 1992, says even les, my parents aren’t’ even listed and their is no raised seal, no signature, just a state emblem, and a stamp.
When people say, he can easily rectify this…I ask… how? He has done exactly what is required of every other citizen of the US, naturally born, and gotten the same copy, that they would get from the state. Anything outside of that, is verified by the state authorities from the official record, which has been done also. Anyone with a birth certificate received from a request sent in AFTER 1990, maybe even before that, will find it hard to find one with anything on it close to what is in the official birth record.
Give it break already. It’s started to sound like the Dread Scott case.
December 4th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Wow. Only four responses? Must have been a tsunami of layoffs at Wingnut Central since the last thread on this pointless topic.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
People, people, people; let’s stop pretending with the matter of Obama’s birthplace. I naively thought that by now it would have been obvious that those three knuckleheads and their supporters couldn’t care less about Obama’s citizenship. What’s going on here is two fold. First, boy are they sore loosers. Second, it is simply a matter of not been able to overcome beliefs and attitudes of the past that have no place in today’s world. When you sit at your dinning table made in Thailand, to eat the fish imported from Chile, while sipping a French wine, dressed with your best outfit made in Senegal, enjoying the company of your best friend who works at Lufhtansa; there’s no sane reason in the universe for which a Black man in the White House still make your skin crawl. We overcame!
December 4th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I think that a second hand account of a transcipt of a conversation with an elderly Kenyan woman translated from Swahili over a choppy speaker phone during a loud Kenyan clelebration sounds convincing. Count me a nutjob, you elitists. He’s a muslim!!! Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!
December 4th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
This is ridiculous.
His birth certificate looks like War and Peace compared to mine from the same year.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:27 am
“But Obama could have headed this off a while back.”
He did. He posted certified proof that he was born in Hawaii, and the nutjobs claimed it was a forgery. If he produced the vault copy, they’d say he had it made by Hawaiian Ninjas while he was over there poisoning his grandmother, and demand that he produce his umbilical cord for forensic analysis. If he did that, they’d demand that he submit to trial by ordeal, in order to prove he doesn’t weigh the same as a duck. Trying to placate crazy people leads down the road to madness.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
I love how people try and use FactCheck.org as some sort of credible source. It was at Annenberg that Obama sat on the board with Bill Ayres.
Bah… You’re right, no conflict of interest there…
December 5th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Since when did Annenberg become some kind of liberal icon? Walter Annenberg was an Ambassador under both Nixon and Reagan and was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Reagan. His widow was an open supporter of John McCain.
Since Ayers had become a prominent educator in Chicago, it was seen fit to put him on an education related board. How awful. The Anneberg name will not survive such a scandal.
People need to grow up.
By the way, anyone notice the term “Prima facie” on the Birth Certificate? It means Obama does not have to defend it, its accepted as proof of his birthplace and date. In any legal proceeding someone would have to prove it invalid.
March 4th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
DEMOCrat! –
** BARRY ** BARAK ** BARACK ** BARRACK ** HUSSEIN ** MOHAMED ** ABDULLAH ** BIN SOETORO ** ONYANGO ** UBAMA
ILLEGAL ALIEN , kenya
http://WWW.OBAMACRIMES.COM
http://WWW.ISRAELENEWS.COM/VIEW.ASP?ID=3324
http://WWW.WETHEPEOPLEFOUNDATION.ORG/OBAMA
http://WWW.DAILY-JEFF.COM/NEWS/SIMPLE_ARTICLE/4486084
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=81550
September 16th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
[...] Donklephant has cobbled together a fairly definitive list of all the ways in which these theories have been debunked and even Obama’s strongest critics at Hot Air don’t want any part of this nonsense. [...]