Is This Really a Smoking Gun? Yes, if It’s a Smoking Gun for Gullibility.
Here we go again. The Birthers are all atwitter about a brand-new version of Obama’s Kenyan Birth Certificate. From World Net Daily, a.k.a. Birther Central Command:
WASHINGTON – California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama’s eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication.
Yes, because Orly Taitz is certainly the definitive source for unbiased material on this matter. Recall that she was the lawyer for the guy who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan and then sued the government not to force him to go because Obama could not legally give him orders to do so. After the fraudulent setup had been sprung, Taitz claimed victory when the military agreed to withdraw his assignment with “no explanation”–but the military had made clear they did so on the grounds that he had volunteered. That’s the first I had heard of Taitz, but it seemed clear that this person was a huckster on a loonie-fringe mission in the Birther community.
Se when Taitz reveals a “Kenyan birth certificate” and demands that courts confirm its authenticity, I am not exactly compelled to believe it. Strange how Birthers will not believe (a) an official birth certificate from Hawaii many times confirmed by state and federal governments as official, (b) two separate birth announcements in local newspapers from the time, and (c) multiple sworn statements from Hawaiian officials that Obama was indeed born there–but they will breathlessly expect to be real a piece of paper forwarded by someone already noted as forwarding false information on the matter, even after other forgeries have floated around even as recently as last week:
WND was able to obtain other birth certificates from Kenya for purposes of comparison, and the form of the documents appear to be identical.Last week, a counterfeit document purporting to be Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate made the rounds of the Internet, but was quickly determined to be fraudulent. The new document released by Taitz bears none of the obvious traits of a hoax.
Yes, because they checked so thoroughly, and the ink was dry. It’s so convincing!
Of course, it would help to know where the document came from, how Taitz got it in her hands. The answer: it was anonymous! That’s even more convincing! And you’ll love the reason why it’s anonymous:
Taitz told WND that the document came from an anonymous source who doesn’t want his name known because “he’s afraid for his life.”
Well, that’s believable! Because we all know that Obama, just like Clinton before him, is a vicious, ruthless killer who sends assassination squads to rub out anyone and everyone who dares expose their myriad lies and scandals!!
Or, maybe, the person is anonymous because making their name known would allow people to ask them where they got the document, and the fraud would fall apart even more quickly.
And it is falling apart quickly indeed. The announcement of the document is still just a day old, and already there are several powerful reasons to believe it is a forgery:
- The document was purportedly made three years after Obama’s birth, with no reason given for the delay;
- The hospital which the document claims as his birthplace has checked their record for that time period and has found no record of Obama’s birth;
- The document purports to have been issued on February 17, 1964 by the Office of Principal Registrar, Coast Province, Republic of Kenya–but Kenya was not known as the “Republic of Kenya” until December 12, 1964, before which it was the “Dominion of Kenya.”
So, we have a document which was supposedly created three years after Obama’s birth in a country that would not exist for another ten months for a birth at a hospital which does not have any record of the event. Yes, World Net Daily is right, it is convincing!
Convincing evidence that the birthers are still as fake as ever.
One thing that kind of stands out is Taitz’s demands for court action, with which we may see the actual purpose behind the forgery:
Taitz’s motion, filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, requests the purported evidence of Obama’s birth – both the alleged birth certificate and foreign records not yet obtained – be preserved from destruction, asks for permission to legally request documents from Kenya and seeks a subpoena for deposition from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.“I filed the motion with the court asking for expedited discovery, which would allow me to start subpoenas and depositions even before Obama and the government responds,” Taitz told WND. “I am asking the judge to give me the power to subpoena the documents from the Kenyan embassy and to require a deposition from Hillary Clinton so they will be forced to authenticate [the birth certificate].
”I’m forcing the issue, where Obama will have to respond,“ she said.
In short, Taitz is hoping to become the new Ken Starr, using a ginned-up false crime so she can start accessing the power of the court system. Little wonder that she wants Obama and Clinton to respond before authentication of the document is complete. You can see that she is hoping for another perjury trap, expecting that she can get some official on record saying something that she can claim is untrue and, well, you know the drill.
”Before, they said, ‘You don’t have anything backing your claims,’“ Taitz explained. ”Now I have something. In fact, I have posted on the Internet more than Obama has. My birth certificate actually has signatures.“
Oooh. Signatures. Well, I’m sold.
Late update:
You can see Taitz’s wingnuttery direct in the video below: note how she is asked a simple question, and half a sentence into her answer, takes a 90-degree turn into a rant about unrelated stuff and never actually answers the question–just keeps on (a) whining about how she isn’t being allowed to speak, and (2) just uses the time to use the TV interview as a platform to spew the Birther crap:
Note, by the way, that Taitz doesn’t even provide an actual document–just a color copy/photo of the document, meaning we can’t inspect the seal, check the quality of the type, etc.
And, to top it all off, several more signs of forgery have been noted:
The hospital in the document is identified as Coast General Hospital, but the real location is Coast Provincial General Hospital (or Coast Province General Hospital);
Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya.
The area was called the ”Central Nyanza District,“ not Nyanza Province. The regions were changed to provinces in 1970.
Obama’s father’s village would be nearer to Nairobi, not Mombasa.
The serial number on the document is 47O44; 47 is Obama’s age when elected, ”O“ (not ”0“) is for Obama, and 44 is the number president Obama is, after Bush 43.
”EF Lavender“ is a laundry detergent; officials rarely if ever put initials in official documents;
The document lists a ”Christian name,“ unlikely for an official document in a region that is mostly Muslim.
His father’s age is wrong; he would have been 24 or 25 when Obama was born, not 26.
World Net Daily is still not pronouncing it a fake, nor has Taitz withdrawn her court motions.
Correct me if I am wrong, but as I remember my lessons from school many years ago, aren’t you legally an American citizen so long as one of your parents is a legal citizen? I.E. Obama could have been born on the moon, but so long as his mother was a citizen, he would be also.
This has been driving me nuts since all this BS came up.
Sean: That’s another issue in the whole matter. The Constitution says that you must be a “natural born Citizen.” Usually that is construed as being either born in the U.S. or having at least one parent who is a citizen at the time of your birth. But since the Constitution does not specify what “natural born Citizen” means, the Birthers have narrowly construed it to mean “born on U.S. soil.” What this would have meant for McCain, born in Panama, is also uncertain, though these same people would undoubtedly have insisted that somehow he qualified (though they likely would have taken the opposite view had it been Obama who was born in Panama–let’s not kid ourselves about what these people are really all about).
So, even if the certificate were real, which it almost certainly is not, there would be another hurdle of defining “natural born Citizen.” Or there may be law on this I’m not aware of–something to research, perhaps.
Sean:
The Wikipedia article on this is quite good. It notes that the term “natural born Citizen” has only been set down in legislation once–in the Naturalization Act of 1790, which specified “the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens,” so long as the parents were sufficiently resident in the U.S. and not absentee. But just five years later, a new Naturalization Act took out the words “natural born.” Make of that what you will. Lots of other stuff in the article, including legal decisions and several historical examples of other notable people, including presidents and candidates, in regard to whom this issue has been brought up before.
McCain was born in Panama -but in the Canal Zone, which at the time was considered for all practical purposes American territory, very much like Puerto Rico.
@Luis Thanks for looking it up, Luis. (duh, not sure why I didn’t do that) This whole thing is just insanely stupid and a huge waste of time. It’s over, move along, nothing to see here.
Although great point on McCain. I had forgotten about the Panama thing. I am blown away by how long this thing has dragged on.
Now the interesting thing will be if this certificate is as fake as it looks, I’ll be interested to see if the lawyer gets disbarred over this.
This is just more proof that people believe what they want to believe.
It’s also proof of another thing. Even though the United States is headed towards becoming a majority minority country, I suspect a large block of white people just aren’t going to accept it – maybe ever. And, as they will tell you, they’ve all got guns and know how to use them.
I wonder what happened to this ilk of people in South Africa after South Africa went to majority rule? Maybe they didn’t have a big block of them. One thing seems clear. It has never been about logic. Millions of Southerners fought in the Civil War to protect slavery for a handful of plantation owners. In America, the racism issue has never been about logic.