Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Congress Needs To Examine Barack Obama And The Eligibility Issue
There are two challenges to Barack Obama's eligiibility. One, that Obama was never a natural born citizen. Two, Obama might or might not have been a natural born citizen but that he lost his US citizenship when as a child he was legally adopted by a foreign national and by law he was required to reapply for US citizenship. Failure to apply for citizenship would mean that Barack Obama is an Indonesian national and an illegal immigrant. Should he apply for citizenship Barack Obama would not be a natural born citizen and thus, ineligible to be president.
Of the two challenges, I believe the latter is the stronger. Through no fault of his own, the minor child Barry Soetoro became an Indonesian citizen and lost his US citizenship. Those are some stubborn facts that might be tough to wish away should they ever be held up to the light of reason. But there have been no serious challenges on these grounds.
Instead, constitutionalists have challenged Obama's birth status. This might be a case of charging the cape instead of the matador. David Gregory and other Obots loved to bring up the birth challenges out of the blue to people like Michelle Bachmann and John Boehner who were not challenging Obama's birth status. Clearly, the loyalists had something up their sleeves. They would prefer to label all challengers "Birthers" and to shape the debate--such that it is--to revolve around birth certificates and such. Who knows how the Obamamedia would treat an Indonesian challenge.
It should be noted that even the preferred Birther challenge was not met as smoothly as Team Obama would have liked. Grandstander Joe Arpaio not let the matter go. Nor would Orly Taitz nor the state of Alabama. Now, Lord Christopher Monckton is weighing in on the subject. Can Barry and Obamamedia run out the clock?
The stakes are high. Should Obama be declared ineligible to serve as president, his every presidential action will be challenged. Every executive order and every piece of legislation and even two Supreme Court Justices will be challenged. I hope the two Obama nominees will have the decency to recuse themselves. Fat Chance.
Come on Congress. Let's resolve the eligibility issue once and for all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Obama was born in Hawaii, as has been proven overwhelmingly by his birth certificate and the confirmation of the officials of BOTH parties in Hawaii and the Index Data file and the birth notices sent to the Hawaii newspapers by the DOH of Hawaii in 1961 (and only the DOH could sent notices to the "Health Bureau Statistics" section of the paper, and the DOH of Hawaii only sent out notices for births IN Hawaii).
The US Supreme Court ruled in the Wong Kim Ark case (which btw was AFTER Minor v. Happersett) that the meaning of Natural Born comes from the common law and refers to the PLACE of birth and that hence every child born in the USA except for the children of foreign diplomats is a Natural Born US Citizen.
Obama was not adopted, he simply used his stepfather's name, and he NEVER became a citizen of Indonesia, as a simple telephone call to the Indonesian Embassy in Washington will confirm. Since he never lost his US citizenship, he did not have to get it back.
More reading on the Natural Born Citizenship issue:
http://www.fredthompsonsamerica.com/2012/07/31/is-rubio-eligible/
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/birtherism-2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-born-citizen_clause_of_the_U.S._Constitution
http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/scotus-natural-born-citizen-a-compendium.html
http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/the-natural-born-citizenship-clause-updated.html
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/bookmarks/fact-checking-and-debunking/the-debunkers-guide-to-obama-conspiracy-theories/#nbc
smrstrauss:
Thank you for your comments and your documentation. I will visit all of those sites in the next few days.
Let me briefly restate my perspective. There are two challenges to Barack Obama's presidential eligibility. One, is his birthplace and the other is the question of Indonesian citizenship. I will address them in order.
I believed that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. However, it annoyed me to no end that Mr. Transparency refused to release a birth certificate until Donald Trump made an issue of it. Obama's refusal to show America his birth certificate was one more thumbing of his nose at all of us. He was simply too self important to oblige the peasants.
I have not visited the forged birth certificate sideshow. Sheriff Joe Arpaio was at the top of the bill and he is such a shameless publicity whore that I ignored his commentary altogether. Then Orly Taitz entered the fray. Philip Berg had previously suggested that Taitz was affiliated with the White House. She was a court jester sent to mock and discredit all serious Birthers. Given my time constraints I ignored Orly Taitz and I never delved into the forgery brouhaha.
But the lid just will not go back on the box. In May of 2012 Breitbart broke the story that Barack Obama had submitted a brief autobiography to a Massachusetts literary agency http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/Obama-pamphlet-in-use-2007. By this time Barack Obama had established a reputation for duplicity and overt dishonesty. Once more, Barack Obama had been less than truthful with the American people and the mainstream media went into fired drill mode to cover(up)this story. Despite the literary agent's assertions to the contrary, the evidence was overwhelming that is was Barack Obama who had promoted the notion that he was born in Kenya.
Forged document? A young Barack Obama's claim to have been born in Kenya? One more assist from the Obama-sympathetic media? Maybe the birthplace should be re-examined.
However, the more significant issue might be Barack Obama's possible Indonesian citizenship. You stated, "Obama was not adopted, he simply used his stepfather's name, and he NEVER became a citizen of Indonesia, as a simple telephone call to the Indonesian Embassy in Washington will confirm."
As a non-lawyer I have to ask, "That is all we have to do?" A phone call to whomever answers the phone at the Indonesian Embassy settles this matter once and for all? I thought courts usually wanted documents and such. Why the heck doesn't anyone pick up that phone?
"Obama was not adopted, he simply used his stepfather's name..." Once more, I am out of my league. I know very little about US law and even less about Indonesian law. But does Indonesia allow minors to simply use one's stepfather's name without some legal process involved? Would that legal process be what we call adoption in the United States? Is a minor automatically adopted by one's stepfather under Indonesian law? Doesn't a child have to be an Indonesian citizen to attend Indonesian schools?
I can't answer these questions but they deserve answers. We need an institution that can provide answers. That institution is not Huffington Post or ABC News or National Public Radio. That institution is the US Congress.
Re: " Mr. Transparency refused to release a birth certificate until Donald Trump made an issue of it. '
Obama released the short-form birth certificate of Hawaii, which is the OFFICIAL birth certificate of Hawaii way back in June 2008, five months before the presidential election of that year. The short form birth certificate, known as a Certification of Live Birth, is the only birth certificate that Hawaii normally releases (Obama had to get a special ruling on his long-form), and it is used by thousands of people every year to get their US passports.
The fact that Trump and other BIRTHERS said that the Certification of Live Birth is not a birth certificate (it is, it is just a fancy name for a birth certificate) or that it was issued to people who were not born in Hawaii (not with the words "born in Honolulu," it wasn't, NEVER) does not change the fact that Obama showed his birth certificate. In fact, it must have been damn irritating to have to get another birth certificate from Hawaii, when you have already shown one, and when the officials in Hawaii of BOTH parties confirmed the facts on it, and the Index Data and the birth notices in the newspapers, etc.
Re the "brief autobiography."
No, the literary agent said that she wrote it and that she made the mistake. And it is a mistake. If YOU really believe that Obama's mother traveled tens of thousands of miles to Kenya (where Yellow Fever was endemic at the time and which had lousy hospitals) late in pregnancy, and a cost of tens of thousands of dollars in 2012 terms, you are just as nutty as Orly.
It was a mistake, get it? The literary agent read the book quickly, saw that a person named Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and assumed it was the person who wrote the book. It was his father, of course. His father, you know, ALSO had the name Barack Obama, and in fact was born in Kenya. But Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Should the US Congress investigate every time a literary agent makes an obvious mistake?
Re: "As a non-lawyer I have to ask, "That is all we have to do?" A phone call to whomever answers the phone at the Indonesian Embassy settles this matter once and for all? I thought courts usually wanted documents and such."
If it ever got to court, the court might ask the Indonesian Embassy to send someone to testify, and what would that person say? She or he would say: "Obama was never a citizen of Indonesia." And that would settle it.
But you do not have to wait for a court to do that, you can call yourself, ask for the Press Officer.
Re: "But does Indonesia allow minors to simply use one's stepfather's name without some legal process involved? "
A question for you? Do people always obey the law? We know that Obama used his step-father's name. There is NO evidence that he was adopted, and there would be evidence if he were. There is no evidence that he changed his name legally, and there would be evidence if he did. So, he just used the name.
If that turns out to have been illegal in Indonesian at the time, well so what?
Re forged birth certificate. I agree with you that the claims of the birth certificate being forged come from Obama's enemies and are simply made up by them. Among the birther "experts" are Paul Irey, who showed his attitude towards Obama by continuing to insist that Obama never attended Columbia College, despite Columbia University saying that he did, and that he graduated, and Doug Vogt, who showed his rationality by claiming to have discovered the original altar of Abraham. Want to see his site?
There are many real experts who say that there is nothing wrong with Obama's birth certificate, including John Woodman, who happens to be a member of the Tea Party and who dislikes Obama and Obama's policies, but shows that the birther "experts" are wrong. They also include Ivan Zatkovich, who was hired by WND to examine the image of Obama's birth certificate, and when he submitted his report that there was nothing wrong with Obama's birth certificate, WND simply did not publish it.
Re: "Is a minor automatically adopted by one's stepfather under Indonesian law? Doesn't a child have to be an Indonesian citizen to attend Indonesian schools?"
The answer is NO and again NO (that claim was made up by birthers), but you can check for yourself. Once again, the Indonesian Embassy knows all about such things. They even have a legal expert on their staff.
Post a Comment