Dave Weigel reports that the McCain campaign looked at and dismissed the notion that a lawsuit challenging Obama's citizenship would be successful. The primary problem was that the plaintiffs lacked standing; however, the McCain people also claimed to have pondered the substance of the case (my emphasis):
Grr - even the inestimable Captain Ed went along with the birth announcement notion back in July 2008 when Dave Weigel (then of Reason) floated it.
My point, then and recently - Barack's mom and maternal grandparents had a strong incentive to create a paper trail documenting Obama as a US citizen back in 1961 and it had nothing to do with assuring his future viability as a Presidential candidate. Alll they needed to do was imagine a day when the white Ms. Dunham would be engaged in a custody fight in a Kenyan court contesting the fate of a black Kenyan baby sought by the black Kenyan father and his African family, and their course would have been clear.
As to faking the birth certificate? The short form certificate that has been presented to the public is only described by Hawaiin law as an accurate summary of the long form; since the short form says Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, presumably the long form says the same thing.
However! The short form contains no information about the hospital or attending physician that delivered Barack, as would appear on the long form. And it seems to have been the case that the Stae of Hawaii would issue a long form certificate on the basis of simply a parental affidavit.
So - suppose that Obama's long form certificate, which he has diligently refused to release, contians no information about a hospital or doctor but simoply nbotes that Obama was born at home, based on an affidavit. Obviously that would not prove that he was in fact born elsewhere, but I suspect eyebrows would be raised.
Ah, well - neither the McCain nor Clinton camps pushed this, but there is always 2012!
HUH? Dave Weigel delivers a non-sequitur of a "rebuttal":
The problem with this? Parents and relatives don’t, and didn’t, get to place birth announcements in the Honolulu Advertiser or the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. As a Star-Bulletin employee explained to WorldNetDaily, the editors “print what we receive from the Department of Health Vital Statistics System,” and did so in 1961. And the Advertiser worked the same way.
Unsurprisingly, WorldNetDaily used that information to argue that the state could have had bogus information that it passed on to the newspaper, which is absurd on its face. But it really should be enough to debunk this “Obama’s grandparents lied to win a future custody suit” theory.
Well, a false affidavit that produced a birth certificate would also produce a birth announcement, apparently, so Mr. Weigel has debunked nothing. But part of the problem is that Mr. Weigel is apparently confused (willfully or otherwise) about my theory, which he summarizes as "Obama’s grandparents lied to win a future custody suit". My point is not that they did in fact lie; my point is that they had a clear motive to lie in 1961 which had nothing to do with a possible Presidential run decades later.
The McCain strategist was dubious about their motive; I supplied one. But any fan of crime fiction knows that the holy trinity of crime is motive, means and opportunity. I am satisfied (and Mr. Weigel has not attempted to rebut) the notion that the Dunhams had a clear motive to fraudulently document Baby Barack as an American; I am far from clear as to whether they had the means and the opportunity.
Maybe discussing this in the context of Barack Obama causes too great an emotional burden for some people to discuss it rationally, so let's try a different example. I, Tom Maguire, have a clear and compelling motive to kidnap Melinda Gates and hold her for, Bwa Ha Ha, One Million Dollars ransom - not only would the money be nice but I also am stuck with Vista on my new laptop.
So, having established my motive, should we worry that Ms. Gates has in fact been kidnapped? Relax - I didn't do it.
And should Dave Weigel explain that, since, I didn't actually kidnap her, that proves I had no motive to do so? Well, on his current performance he might, but it would make no sense.
So Tom, let's get this straight:
Obama's mother and father take a long and expensive trip to Kenya in 1961 just to say hi to the folks. And while she's in her third trimester! In 1961 a trip to Kenya would have required dedicated savings for the average American worker. (Obama Sr. came here on scholarship.) Credit cards? In 1961, no way. Cash up front.
So after this arduous and expensive trip to Kenya Stanley Ann gives birth there and hurries back to the U.S., smuggles the infant Obama past Customs and Immigration, leaving no record of entry to the U.S. Presumably she even bribed BOAC so as not to appear on any passenger manifest. Then the Dunhams swear a false affidavit that Obama Jr. was born in Hawaii just to have better standing in a future custody dispute! Makes perfect sense to me!
Couldn't she have assured a U.S. paper trail for Obama, Jr. by just staying put in the U.S. for a few weeks? Your whole scenario is 100% B.S. speculation and 0% fact.
Posted by: Bob Weber | July 26, 2009 at 04:07 PM
The real reason to suspect nefarious action is how reliably any mention of the stink draws trolls.
Posted by: sbw | July 26, 2009 at 07:07 PM
Mr. Maguire, we don't have Barry Soetoro's Certification of Live Birth. Nobody outside of Mr. Soetoro's crowd of sputniki does. What we have are computer graphic IMAGES of what some anonymous flunky at the Obama campaign emailed to DailyKos and to Barry Soetoro's fellow Annenberg Foundation employees at FactCheck.
The point you must make is that the "genuineness or non-genuineness" of a real, print-on-paper, signed and sealed legal COLB - supposedly issued to Barry in 2007 - has never been proven by anyone competent to do so.
What is required is either that Barry Soetoro (and I call him that deliberately, as he apparently never changed his name back to "Barack Hussein Obama II" after having been adopted by Lolo Soetoro as a child) produce this paper document for evaluation by a panel of qualified forensic documents examiners or that a court of law grant an order obliging the officers of the government of the state of Hawaii to disgorge such information on Mr. Soetoro's place of birth and parentage to the public.
Reasonable, isn't it? Nothing more than the average citizen in any number of American states would be required to produce at the DMV to get a driver's license.
But Barry Soetoro is stonewalling like Organization Todt to evade this simple, straightforward demand, spending upwards of a million bucks in legal fees (or services rendered as "professional courtesy") to quash these efforts.
Barry Soetoro positively stinks on ice, Mr. Maguire.
Posted by: Tuci78 | July 27, 2009 at 03:26 AM
ben is entirely wrong about natural born.
First, the US is the only country in the world that offers automatic citizenship for being born on US soil, regardless of the citizenship of the parents. (And US soil includes things like embassies but not territories/protectorates, I believe.)
However, there are rules about how children born overseas are considered citizens. Generally, at least one parent must be an adult US citizen AND the birth must be registered at the earliest convenience with the nearest US embassy. This is how my German-born army-brat aunts are considered natural-born citizens, and how McCain was recognized as a natural-born citizen despite being born in Panama.
However, in 1961, an "adult" parent had to be 19 (so conception happened in adulthood) to confer citizenship to their offspring. So Ann Dunham's citizenship had no bearing on BO's citizenship if he was born overseas, because she was 18 when he was born. That's why the PLACE where he was born matters. He has to claim citizenship based on being born on US soil because he couldn't inherit it.
Posted by: Ella | July 27, 2009 at 07:35 PM
"would be engaged in a custody fight in a Kenyan court" That's pretty weak. A US citizen custodian living in the USA is beyond the reach of any Kenyan court. There would be no practical need to plant the birth announcement. If a Kenyan court finds against a US citizen outside Kenya, that US citizen can tell Kenya to pound sand, and will.
Posted by: gp | July 27, 2009 at 07:43 PM
"Birther" = Appeal to Ridicule. Straight out of Alinsky #5. This has been THE ONLY response by BHO's supporters to the fact that he has NEVER demonstrated his Article II eligibility.
All theories regarding BHO's actual circumstances of birth aside - including his own claim - he has NEVER produced documentation that affirms his natural born citizenship.
The Certification BHO has presented, and which his supporters constantly wave as "proof", is not even accepted by the State of Hawaii for such purposes.
When you read State of Hawaii law that controls this document, two things become clear.
First, a birth occurring outside Hawaii can be legally registered in Hawaii. What this means is that the newspaper notice folks point to - as "proof" that BHO was born in Hawaii - is not proof at all. That is, the birth notices are simply driven by new registrations which, according to Hawaii State Law, may have occurred outside Hawaii.
Second, birth registrations can be legally amended (i.e., altered). Hawaii law does not stipulate which elements of a registration may or may not be changed.
Most important of all, and completely ignored by almost everyone who discusses this issue, is this:
Even the State of Hawaii itself will not accept its own Certification document as proof of native born Hawaiian status.
From the State of Hawaii DHHL:
The reason Hawaii will not accept a Certification document as proof of natural born Hawaiian citizenship is because it may represent an altered registration. And according to Hawaii State Law, altered registrations have no intrinsic probative value.
The Certification document, which the State of Hawaii will not accept as proof of natural born citizenship is the same type of document Gibbs claims is the "proof" of BHO's natural born citizenship.
When someone can explain to me why BHO has an army of attorneys keeping his original COLB under lock and key, let them come forward. Until then, BHO is by default a usurper, as he has not in good faith demonstrated that he's eligible to be elected POTUS.
Posted by: goy | July 27, 2009 at 08:03 PM
I am stuck with Vista on my laptop
Why? You can order things from Dell or anywhere else with XP.
Posted by: OT whore | July 27, 2009 at 09:33 PM
It is very simple.
Why is Obama spending massive dollars to avoid showing his birth certificate?
Obama himself chooses not to put this to rest.
No one truly answers the basic questions.
Gibbs is a fatass bully with his non answer and reporters now days are useless wimps.
One thing that rings true with our President is that he has a lot to hide.
Our forefathers found it in the interest of our Nation to make "certain requirements" of those seeking the office of the Presidency for very good reason, the continued existance of our good Nation.
But alas there are those individuals who have decided that they know what is best for our nation, hey the founding fathers may have known what was best in "their day" but they are old style and out of touch.
When you fail to learn from the past you lose your future.
Posted by: Vanessa3436 | July 27, 2009 at 10:20 PM
The McCain people found "no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else." That may have been the case when they did their research, but it certainly is not the case now.
Are people really unaware of the affidavit of Ron McRae, the Anabaptist missionary from Johnstown PA who got a TAPE RECORDING of Obama's "Grandma Sarah" insisting that she witnessed Obama's birth in Kenya?
This is a credible character. He was the one local person who raised a public protest over the giant Islamic-shaped crescent that the Park Service chose as the memorial to Flight 93 (the Crescent of Embrace). By the way, they call it a broken circle now, but the unbroken part of the circle, what symbolically remains standing in the wake of 9/11, is completely unchanged. It is still a giant Islamic shaped crescent that actually points to Mecca.
In the course of my efforts to stop the flight 93 memorial, I had a couple of short conversations with Mr. McRae and one long conversation. He was a hard guy to get ahold of because he was always going off to Africa for months at a time.
This guy has African connections like few people in the world. One of his fellow missionaries was there with Grandma Sarah, translating questions and answers, with about a hundred people there in Kenya as witnesses. Check it out. This is significant information.
The recorded conversation took place just a couple weeks before the election and I don't know when it first got circulated. The link I have is to a reposting on November 2, 2008, so it is likely that McCain's people never saw it. Tom, you probably want to look into this.
Posted by: Alec Rawls | July 28, 2009 at 12:22 AM
Here is a link to a PDF scan of McRae's affidavit. I don't know if the recording itself is online. Will call Ron and find out.
Posted by: Alec Rawls | July 28, 2009 at 12:40 AM
Guys, it's not where he was born, but that his dad was a British suject, creating dual nationality. BO even admitted this on his campaign website.
He may now be an American citizen, but dual nationality citizens are not natural born, and eligible for to be POTUS.
Posted by: s.v. | July 28, 2009 at 10:27 AM