Palin helps Obama, again

While conservatives seem to be pretty happy about the choice of Sarah Palin, some (including me) have noticed that choosing her smacks of desperation and hurts McCain numerous ways -- she nullifies his criticism of Obama's lack of experience since she has little, to name but one example.


A pretty good influx of cash went into McCain's campaign after he nominated her for the vice-presidency (there is plenty of speculation that the GOP is going to drop her pretty soon; not sure that's going to happen), about $10 million worth.

But now the same amount has gone into Obama's coffers. Since her speech. About 24 hours ago as I write this:

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is bringing in campaign cash for the Democrats as well as her own party.

Barack Obama, 47, reported raising at least $10 million from more than 130,000 donors today after Palin, the Alaska governor, addressed the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, and criticized the Democratic presidential nominee.

``Sarah Palin's attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected,'' Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said. ``And we fully expect John McCain's attacks tonight to help us make our grassroots organization even stronger.''

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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.
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barack's birth certificate forgery myth busted

Someone mentioned a new layer to the urban legend filling people's emails saying that Barack Obama is not eligible to be president because he wasn't a natural-born citizen. Snopes.com puts an end to the issue citing his birth in Hawaii as closing the discussion. Except now a supposed expert claims that his birth certificate is a forgery (read about the forgery here.).

But that post was published Sunday, July 20. As I write, it is late Thursday, July 31. Almost two weeks have passed and not one major news source has covered this alleged smoking gun. A search of CNN and Fox News websites turned up no hits. The only hits I found about the forgery were on the internet, primarily in the blogsphere. Why is there no coverage of an issue that could make the candidate leading in the polls ineligible for the office?

I could only find a couple websites that questioned the report on Atlas Shrugs. One site mentioned simply that an Obama spokesman confirmed that it was his (Obama's) birth certificate. Not a credible denial. A poster there altered me to a website that addressed the issue.

This site investigated the claims made by Atlas Shrugs. Among other actions, they "e-mailed it [Obama's birth certificate] to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real. This site also questions the claims of forgery.

"'It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,' spokesman Janice Okubo told us."

The research raised a lot of questions, so they kept digging and they also "circled back to the Department of Health, [and] had a newsroom colleague bring in her own Hawaii birth certificate to see if it looks the same (it’s identical)."

So far we have: Barack's birth certificate is identical to another birth certificate from the state, and a spokesman for the state confirms this.

They kept asking questions, and finally concluded: "If this document is forged, a U.S. senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud. They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and many other government agencies."

That's at least five different government sites that would have to be complicit in the forgery for it to be successful -- and the number is probably double that. Considering the mainstream media -- with an opportunity to break a huge story (a political scandal along the lines of Watergate and Monicagate, not to mention the drama of The Manchurian Candidate) -- have remained completely silent. If there's a conspiracy here, it's how some people have far too much time on their hands and don't just fall down more often.
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