Monday, August 25, 2008

Obama birth certificate not fake; someone sues anyway

Ed Brayton and the WorldNutDaily have noted that Philip J. Berg:
has sued Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission, claiming that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and, therefore, is not eligible to be president of the United States.

For his efforts, Ed has given him the not-so-coveted Robert O'Brien Trophy that he awards regularly for special displays of stupidity (he apparently manages to have a blog, see PZ's dungeon for more details about Robert O'Brien.

A summary of Berg's claims are:


Obama was not born an American citizen; lost any hypothetical American citizenship he had as a child (Editor's note: This point is not supported by U.S. citizenship law); may not now be an American citizen and even if he is, may hold dual citizenships with other countries. If any, much less all, of these allegations are true, the suit claims, Obama cannot constitutionally serve as president.

Note that even a WorldNutDaily editor knows more about the law than this crazy fellow.

Obama was born an American citizen, as confirmed by FactCheck.org:

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal

To quell even the most diehard of conspiracy theorists about this:

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

Obama's birth announcement

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.
Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

And Philip Berg sues with no basis for his lawsuit because 1) Obama was born a US citizen, 2) even a wnd editor knows that 2) one cannot lose citizenship as a child, 3) is still an American citizen even if 4) he holds dual citizenship (which is not a crime is most cases; embarrassing perhaps, but not a crime; in any case, the US does not prohibit dual citizenship). If Obama were not a citizen or were not born one, then, yes, Berg would be right. Since he was born in Hawaii he is a citizen and unless he specifically renounced (even then, it's not necessarily final) he still is -- and was admitted to the bar, the senate... Maybe Berg will get reprimanded for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

2 comments:

guppy23 said...

http://www.annenbergfoundation.org/other/

Good Job,
Good information here. Did you know if you kept on digging what you would find?

Factcheck.org is part of The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

Senator Obama was chairman of Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Obama left the board in 2002.

Both entities are related. Factcheck.Org has a conflict here.

Keep up the good work.

Nada Platonico said...

Thanks for your comment.

I don't think any possible conflict of interest had any influence here; their site has plenty of discussion about misrepresentations, mistakes, or even lies put out by Obama during his campaign. Of course, the question of how much oil one saves by properly inflating tires vs. drilling for oil offshore is kid's play compared to whether he's eligible to run and if he's misrepresented himself to numerous institutions over the years (including the Senate, the State Bar of Illinois, etc.). They certainly didn't make up the birth announcement (it was posted somewhere by a Hillary supporter). All this suggests that there is no forgery. It would be a juicier story if there was one, but I think that chances of that are virtually nonexistent. Regardless, it is good to note the one-time connection.