Debunking Lou Dobbs and Other Birther Wingnuts

Barack Obama at age 10 with his Father

Barack Obama IS a Natural Born Citizen

The "Birthers'" are Guilty of a Criminal Conspiracy

A national movement to convince American that its newly elected President is not an American has been organized and is in full throttle. From politicians to so-called attorneys, to news personalities, the despicable acts and claims are obviously fraudulent and intended to not only remove Obama from office, but to bring down the American system of government and to foment a rebellion.

Their Fraudulent Claims are Bogus.

1. He was born in Hawaii but is not a natural born citizen. They claim that Obama's father was a British citizen at the time of his birth, therefore Obama had dual allegiance and is not a "natural born citizen".

FACT: The Supreme Court ruled in 1898 in the Wong Kim Ark case that a child born in the United States is a "natural born citizen" regardless of his parents' citizenship.


2) His Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth as posted online is fraudulent and not a real Birth Certificate. Lou Dobbs of CNN is one of those perpetuating this myth.

FACT: In the year 2000, Hawaii went to a paperless system and no longer gave out the original birth certificate. It now gives out a Laser copy of the information contained on the original.

The State of Hawaii has certified that the President was born in the State of Hawaii, in the city of Honolulu, island of Oahu. What determines the certified record of birth that the State of Hawaii has provided is sufficiently proven under the law to be valid? The question becomes; ‘Is the short form Birth Certificate that was issued by the state of Hawaii sufficient to prove birth in the United States?’ The ‘Full Faith and Credit’ section of the Constitution provides that Congress may prescribe the manner in which the records of a state may be proved.

In order to determine what threshold of proof is for ‘Birth Certificates’ we must look at what the laws passed by the Congress have to say in this regard. There is no specific law that has been passed by Congress that is directly aimed at proving the authenticity of a state issued Birth Certificate, but there is clear guidance in this matter. Congress has specifically authorized a means for a citizen to prove citizenship, and this authority has been provided under a General Law.

The Congress has granted the Secretary of State, and by implication the Department of State, the authority to issue Passports under US Code, Title 22, Chapter 4.. The granting of authority to the Department of State to issue a Passport implies that the authority to prescribe the manner in which citizenship must be proved has also been granted.

When this authority has been granted to a federal Department or Agency, the rules that the Department or Agency will use are then promulgated as regulations. These regulations are maintained as part of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The Department of State has issued regulations under CFR22.51.42 that state the following requirements for a citizen to prove birth in the United States:

(a) Primary evidence of birth in the United States. A person born in the United States generally must submit a birth certificate. The birth certificate must show the full name of the applicant, the applicant’s place and date of birth, the full name of the parent(s), and must be signed by the official custodian of birth records, bear the seal of the issuing office, and show a filing date within one year of the date of birth.

That is the law. Claims by the birthers that a birth certificate must show the name of the hospital or physician are bogus. The State of Hawaii has issued a Certificate of Live Birth that meets all of the requirements of CFR 22.51.42. That Birth Certificate is certified by the State of Hawaii, and is considered proven by the Laws of the United States. It will be up to anyone who challenges its authenticity to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the Birth Certificate is actually invalid.

State Health Director, Chiyome Fukino, has stated that both she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate. Fukino said she has personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures. Republican governnor, Linda Lingle, has confirmed this.

Certificate of Live Birth

Alvin Onaka's Signature

The Raised Seal that Birthers say doesn't exist.

Focus on the Location of Birth

Some birthers insist incorrectly that there's a Hawaiian statute that applied to Obama that would have allowed his parents to register a foreign birth there, and somehow get state officials to say he was born in Honolulu. But as Janice Okubo, the director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health, recently explained to the Washington Independent's David Weigel, "If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate. But it’s become very clear that it doesn’t matter what I say. The people who are questioning this bring up all these implausible scenarios."

Finally, a birth announcement appeared in both Hawaiian newspapers in 1961, announcing the birth of Barack Obama:

Here is a letter written by President Obama to the hospital of his birth:

For all sane people without an agenda, this should put the birth certificate issue to rest. However, the birthers don't operate with common sense and many of them insist that Obama was actually born in Kenya. Never mind the fact that there is no record of his mother ever having been in Kenya. Here is their theory:

They say that Obama's mother left the comfort of her parents' home in Hawaii to travel to war-ravaged Kenya to give birth in a third world hospital WITHOUT HER HUSBAND whom we know was not in Kenya in 1961, to give birth. She then rushed to Hawaii to submit a false birth announcement in the event that almost 50 years later her son may want to run for President.

Obama's grandmother, Sarah, who speaks only Swahili, was the victim of a con in which she supposedly acknowledged his birth in Kenya. This "recording" has been debunked and it has been confirmed that she was saying that she had witnessed the birth of his father, not the President. Birthers have made other claims that have shown up in anti-Obama lawsuits and in the proliferation of “birther” websites. One relies on an audio tape of Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah Obama, who lives in Kenya, being goaded into saying (through a translator) that the future president was born in Kenya before quickly correcting herself and confirming it was her son, not her grandson. (A doctored version of this tape, which cuts off before the retraction, is posted on YouTube.

Obama an Indonesian Citizen?

Another claim of these wingnuts is that Obama must have been adopted by Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian man who married Obama’s mother when the future president was five years old, because he attended elementary school in that country. Because a contemporary school record referred to Obama as “Barry Soetoro” and listed his nationality as “Indonesian,” They argued that there was “absolutely no way Obama could have ever regained ‘natural born’ status.”

“That’s just completely wrong,” said Mitzi Torri, an Arizona-based immigration lawyer. Torri pointed to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which sets a high bar for renunciation of American citizenship. According to the INA, an American can only forfeit his citizenship if he commits treason, if he makes a “formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign state,” or if he becomes a citizen of another country “upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent.”

“Berg wants to say,” said Torri, “that this document from a school in Indonesia, which has no signature, which has no standing whatsoever, is more important than Obama’s birth certificate or our immigration law.”

Obama Must Have Traveled to Pakistan in 1981 on a foreign Passport

Obama traveled to Pakistan in 1981, when it was illegal for an American to do so, suggesting that he used a non-American passport. The problem is that there never was any such ban.

“We have no record of any travel ban between America and Pakistan during that period or since,” said Noel Clay, a spokesman for the State Department.

“We got that from someplace,” Berg told TWI on Thursday. In an email, he added his paralegal was “reviewing” his files on Pakistan. Yet the false claim appears in Orly Taitz’s lawsuit on behalf of perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, which argues that Obama visited Pakistan “when entrance to Pakistan was banned to Americans, Christians and Jews,” proof that he gave up his American citizenship. What is the truth?

US State Department Travel Advisory for Pakistan in 1981, No. 81-33A

“Before traveling to Pakistan, American Citizens should be aware of the following updated visa requirements: 30 day visas are available at Pakistani airports for tourists only. As these visas are rarely extended beyond the 30 day time per visa. Tourists planning to stay longer should secure visas before coming to Pakistan. Any traveler coming into Pakistan overland from India must repeat must have a valid visa, as 30 day visas are not repeat not issued at the overland border crossing point at Wagha.”

Case closed on that one.

THE BIRTHERS HALL OF SHAME

Just who are the people who so blatanly disregard the facts and insist that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen? We'll start with the so-called "attorneys". Philip J. Berg tops the list.

Philip J. Berg - Birther

He was an ardent Hillary Cllinton supporter and a former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania; former candidate for Governor and U.S. Senate in Democratic Primaries; former Chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; former member of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee; an attorney with offices in Montgomery County, PA and an active practice in Philadelphia, PA. In 2005 he was fined and sanctioned $10,000 for having committed a "laundry list of unethical actions."

"Other attorneys should look to Mr. Berg's actions as a blueprint for what not to do when attempting to effectively and honorably perform the duties of the legal profession," Joyner wrote.

"This court has grown weary of Mr. Berg's continuous and brazen disrespect toward this court and his own clients. Mr. Berg's actions ... are an enormous waste of judicial time and resources that this court cannot, in good conscience, allow to go unpunished," Joyner wrote."

Andy Martin

The New York Times has reported that Martin, who refers to himself in the third person, and describes himself as an "Internet Powerhouse," "is credited as being among the first -- if not the first -- to assert in a chain e-mail message that Mr. Obama was secretly a Muslim." The Nation's Christopher Hayes has written that when asked about emails being circulated that claimed Obama was educated in a madrassa -- a falsehood, like the claim that Obama is a Muslim:

"Everybody started calling me" when the e-mail first made the rounds, Andy Martin told me. "They said, 'Hey, did you write this?' My answer was 'they are all my children.' "

Since then, Martin has been unsuccessfully suing the Hawaii state government over Obama's birth certificate.

As Media Matters has documented, Martin has a history of making anti-Semitic and racially charged comments, such as claiming that "African-American judges ... circle the wagons and try to protect Barry [Obama]" and that "African-Americans are willing to corrupt and abuse their-public offices to defend their own sleazy candidate for office." The Chicago Tribune and several federal courts have stated that Martin has called a judge a "crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." In October 2008, Martin appeared on Fox News' Hannity's America and smeared Obama by claiming he was "training for a radical overthrow of the government" as a community organizer.

Orly Taitz

Orly Taitz is a Russian immigrant who claims to be an attorney, a dentist and a realtor and is now based in Southern California. It is not known if she has obtained her American citizenship. Her law degree was obtained through an online correspondence course, and she apparently became a dentist in Israel. Investigation reveals that she is the target of numerous malpractice suits.

Taitz has reportedly made numerous controversial remarks, including:

• Taitz is quoted in the OC Weekly article as saying in February, "The simple fact is that we are long overdue for another Rebellion in this nation, and I heartily endorse the idea of having one again very soon, preferably starting THIS year!"

• According to the OC Weekly article, Taitz also said that Obama is a "usurper" and an "arrogant jerk from Africa and Indonesia," and calls anyone who stands in her way an 'Obama thug.' "

• According to several blogs -- including ones that both support and oppose birther theories -- Taitz wrote that Obama should be tried for "crimes perpetrated upon American citizens": "There is no proof that you are even a citizen. For all we know, you need to go back to Kenya and wait for your green card, and that after we try you for all the crimes perpetrated upon American citizens."

• Taitz wrote that Obama defenders should be tried in "Nurenberg [sic] style trials":

She has filed three lawsuits in California (two of which have been dismissed), and unsuccessfully attempted to file a fourth in federal court in Washington, D.C. Having been unable to achieve her goal by legal action, she has begun encouraging her followers nationwide to organize themselves as wholly unlawful “Citizens Grand Juries,” and making “presentations” to lead them in indicting President Obama on criminal “charges”. Already, a group of citizens in Georgia issued an “indictment” of the President, and “served” it on government officials, threatening violence if their “indictment” was ignored. Another such “indictment” came in early May, under her direction. In addition:

1) She has accused the following federal officials of treason and called for their indictments:

a) All the justices of the Supreme Court,
b) All the members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate,
c) Attorney General Eric Holder, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, and other federal officers,
d) and, of course, President Obama himself.

2) She has personally confronted two Supreme Court justices, when they made public appearances. On both occasions, she tried to engage them in improper ex parte discussion of her case before the Court.

3) At her confrontation with Chief Justice Roberts, she gave two suitcases full of documents to his security detail, later claiming that she had “filed” a Motion for Reconsideration in one case, and a new lawsuit — though she paid no filing fee, failed to file with the clerk’s office, and showed no proof of service on opposing counsel. When her documents were not placed on the Supreme Court docket, she accused Justice Roberts of further treason and demanded his resignation.

4) She has openly encouraged and advised these unlawful “Citizens Grand Juries”. In Georgia on March 28, she “presented the case” before a “Citizens Grand Jury” of 25 people, who then issued an indictment of President Obama on charges of fraud. The “indictment” was then “served” on the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and on the Georgia Attorney General, on Georgia’s Speaker of the House, and on Georgia’s President of the Senate. http://www.riseupforamerica.com/index.html

She apparently also plans to “do the presentation,” as if a prosecutor, at the “Illinois Citizen’s Federal Grand Jury” on May 2. http://americangrandjury.org/grand-jury-updates-from-georgia-andillinois

She believes she’s some sort of “National Prosecutor” at these “Fake Grand Juries,” and more will surely follow.

By openly advocating armed revolt, accusing virtually the entire federal government of treason, and using poisonous invective against President Obama, she is making it significantly more likely that someone will attempt to assassinate the President of the United States.

Other attorneys who have joined the ranks of the Birthers include Leo Donofrio and Mario Apuzzo.

Media Birthers

Lou Dobbs - The Joe Arpaio of Cable News

Recently on both radio and TV, CNN host Lou Dobbs has provided cover for conspiracy theorists who claim that President Obama lacks a valid birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to be president. Specifically, Dobbs has repeatedly said that Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and cast doubt on the birth certificate posted online by FactCheck.org. Moreover, Dobbs ha claimed that "reasonable people should be interested" in the issue and that Obama has refused to put the questions to rest.

Filling in for Lou on his July 17 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, guest host Kitty Pilgrim debunked claims that President Obama does not have a valid birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to be president. Pilgrim said that CNN "found no basis" for such claims and cited "overwhelming evidence that proves that his birth certificate is real, and that he was born in Honolulu," including Obama's birth certificate posted online by FactCheck.org. Pilgrim, a regular correspondent for Lou Dobbs Tonight, issued the categorical rebuttal two days after Dobbs, for whom she was substituting, repeatedly claimed on his radio program that Obama needs to "produce a birth certificate" and cast doubt on the "peculiar" birth certificate posted by FactCheck.org "purporting to validate the president."

Here is Pilgrim's video:



Other media wingnuts who support this un-patriotic attempt to disrupt our government include famed Watergate crook G. Gordon Liddy, Sean Hannity, Rush "Oxycontin" Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly.

SEN. McCAIN'S CAMPAIGN INVESTIGATED THIS ISSUE

“We monitored the progress of these lawsuits against the Obama campaign,” said Trevor Potter, a Washington attorney who served as general counsel to the 2008 and 2000 McCain presidential campaigns. “The McCain campaign faced a series of lawsuits like this, too, alleging that he could not be president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Both campaigns took the position that these plaintiffs lacked standing.”

But the flawed conception of the many “birther” lawsuits, coupled with the inexperience and foul-ups of “birther” lawyers, have only fed the frenzy over Obama’s legitimacy to serve as president of the United States. A survey of the lawsuits filed against Obama reveals a reliance on widely debunked rumors, bogus stories sourced back to web sites, affidavits from “experts” who refuse to provide credentials or even their real names, and frequent and blatant misunderstandings of basic constitutional law. The dismissal of “birther” lawsuits has allowed conspiracy theorists to believe that the information in those suits is accurate–a belief that manifests itself in the emails, phone calls, and town hall meeting rants that have pushed the theories into the mainstream media and the halls of Congress.

While they ruled out any chance of the ‘birther’ lawsuits holding up in court, lawyers for the McCain campaign did check into the rumors about Obama’s birth and the assertions made by Berg and others. “To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations,” said Potter. “We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state’s Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance.”

source: McCain Investigated

IS THE CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH A LEGAL DOCUMENT UNDER FEDERAL LAW?

Primary evidence of birth in the United States. A person born in the United States must submit a Birth Certificate which must show: 1) the full name of the applicant, 2) the applicant’s place and date of birth, 3) the full name of the parent(s), and 4) must be signed by the official custodian of birth records,5) bear the seal of the issuing office, and 6) show a filing date within one year of the date of birth.

All of this information is present on the COLB that the state furnished to Obama. There is NO legal requirement to have the hospital or attending physician listed or the parents' signatures. NONE.

The State of Hawaii has issued a Birth Certificate that meets all of the requirements of CFR 22.51.42. That Birth Certificate is certified by the State of Hawaii, and is considered proven by the Laws of the United States. It will be up to anyone who challenges its authenticity to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the Birth Certificate is actually invalid.

There is a very high standard of proof that must be met in order to override the Constitutional ‘Full Faith and Credit’ standard granted to the State of Hawaii in this matter. That standard of proof would require that the complainant show proof that there was an actual fraud committed by the State of Hawaii in the certification of that Birth Certificate, or that the certificate itself was fraudulent. Either way, the burden of proof rests with the complainant. Merely making accusations that this may have happened is not sufficient.

CNN researchers have determined that Hawaiian officials discarded paper documents in 2001 when they converted to a paperless system. Because of that, it is reported that Obama’s long-form birth certificate no longer exists and a shorter certificate of live birth that has been made public is the official record.

Hawaii’s Certificate of Live Birth was given full certification by the Feds under CFR 22.51.42 and is legal for passports, drivers licenses, and running for public office.

John Stewart - "The Born Identity"

John Stewart offers his take on Lou Dobbs and the Birther Conspiracy.

Copyright @ 1998-2009
All Rights Reserved

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.