Posted by
Always To The Right on Thursday, December 04, 2008 6:11:36 PM
The Chicago Tribune
briefly revives the Obama-birth-certificate kerfuffle in an update
today, if only to throw more cold water on it. Tomorrow, the Supreme
Court confabs over whether to grant a review to Leo Donofrio’s lawsuit
after having it rejected in district and appellate courts:
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. …
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.
The latest buzz surrounds the decision by Clarence Thomas to
circulate the appeal petition to the entire court after David Souter
rejected it immediately. That really doesn’t mean much, as the Tribune
explains. Of the 842 petitions circulated in that manner, only 60 got
a spot on the court calendar, and not all of those succeeded. Thomas
may have been interested in the technical aspects of the suit rather
than the merits, or perhaps it was a slow week.
It does, however, make it news, no matter how much some of us wish
it would go away. The state of Hawaii has repeatedly insisted that
their records show Obama was born in Hawaii, as the Certificate of Live
Birth states. The COLB would get any Hawaii native an American
passport with no questions asked, even without the official endorsement
of the Republican governor and her Department of Health. There is even
a contemporaneous birth announcement in a local paper confirming it.
I’m sure the comments section will fill with various conspiracy
theories over Indonesian school records, Kenyan births, and so on.
None of it — absolutely none — has any real, solid evidence showing
that Obama was born anywhere else than Hawaii apart from sheer
speculation and hearsay, and even less evidence that Obama’s stepfather
renounced Obama’s birthright citizenship, which he didn’t have the
power to do anyway. It’s a conspiracy theory spun by conspiracy
theorists (Philip Berg is a 9/11 truther) who use their normal
thresholds of evidence for this meme.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court can’t kill the conspiracy
theories. It can only kill the lawsuits, which is what they will
almost certainly do tomorrow when they meet.
Update: From October 31:
The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed
on Friday what Barack Obama has been saying all along: the presidential
candidate was born in Honolulu.
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s
official birth certificate,” said Chiyome Fukino. “State law prohibits
the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have
a tangible interest in the vital record.”
Citing her statutory authority to oversee and maintain Hawaii’s
vital records, Fukino said she has “personally seen and verified that
the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth
certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.
“No state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, has ever instructed
that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other
vital record in the possession of the State of Hawaii,” Fukino added.
Update II: From the comments, a link to Donofrio’s explanation:
“Don’t be distracted by the birth certificate and
Indonesia issues. They are irrelevant to Senator Obama’s ineligibility
to be President. Since Barack Obama’s father was a Citizen of Kenya and
therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time
of Senator Obama’s birth, then Senator Obama was a British Citizen “at
birth”, just like the Framers of the Constitution, and therefore, even
if he were to produce an original birth certificate proving he were
born on US soil, he still wouldn’t be eligible to be President.
The Framers of the Constitution, at the time of their birth, were
also British Citizens and that’s why the Framers declared that, while
they were Citizens of the United States, they themselves were not
“natural born Citizens”.
Hence their inclusion of the grandfather clause in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution: No
person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United
States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution shall be
eligible to the Office of President; That’s it right there. (Emphasis added.)
If so, this is an even dumber argument than first thought. The
children of immigrants born in this country are ineligible to be
President? Since when does “natural born” refer to the parents
of citizens? Natural born means the person at question was born in US
territory, and it always has. Immigration-enforcement activists have
been trying to change that definition to eliminate the “anchor babies”
issue.
Also, adoption only changes the parentage on the birth
certificate, not the place, date, or time of birth. I’ve done an
adoption myself and can personally attest to that fact. If Obama had
been adopted by Mr. Soetero, Hawaii would only have changed the
father’s name on the record — and since Barack Obama Sr has been listed
on the birth certificate, it appears that Mr. Soetero didn’t adopt
Obama anyway.
Update III: As a rebuttal to Update 1, this from the comments:
The paper lied on purpose. The HI Dept of health went of
its way to say everything but that. They do have his original birth
certificate, but from where?
The State of Hawaii only keeps birth certificates from births in
Hawaii. The State of California only keeps birth certificates from
births in California, Minnesota only keeps those from births in
Minnesota, and so on. They don’t store information on births outside of
their state. Why would they bother to do that? Use some common sense.
Update IV: The Honolulu Advertiser reported on the Dept. of Health statement on November 1 in a little more detail:
State Health Department employees continue to be
barraged by requests from people demanding to see Barack Obama’s birth
certificate, including some who have called the department’s registrar
of vital statistics at home — in the middle of the night.
“This has gotten ridiculous,” state health director Dr. Chiyome
Fukino said yesterday. “There are plenty of other, important things to
focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy.”
So, in what likely will be a vain attempt to halt the inquiries,
Fukino yesterday issued a statement saying that she and the registrar
of vital statistics personally inspected Obama’s birth certificate and
found it to be valid.
Will this be enough to quiet the doubters?
“I hope so,” Fukino said. “We need to get some work done.”
Fukino issued her statement to try to stomp out persistent rumors
that Obama was not born in Honolulu — and is therefore not a U.S.
citizen and thus ineligible to run for president.
Fukino, however, repeated the Health Department’s position that
state law prohibits her or any other officials from actually releasing
the birth certificate, which Obama’s campaign says shows he was born in
Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s
official birth certificate,” Fukino said in the statement. “State law
(Hawai’i Revised Statutes ¤338-18) prohibits the release of a certified
birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the
vital record. … No state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, has
ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different
from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawai’i.”
I guess they’ll have to wait a little longer to get any work done.