This is excellent news… for insane people:
A college instructor who worked as a senior elections clerk for the city and county of Honolulu in 2008 is making the stunning claim Barack Obama was definitely not born in Hawaii as the White House maintains, and that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Obama does not even exist in the Aloha State.
“There is no birth certificate,” said Tim Adams, a graduate assistant who teaches English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky. “It’s like an open secret. There isn’t one. Everyone in the government there knows this.”
Adams, who says he’s a Hillary Clinton supporter who ended up voting for John McCain when Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to Obama, told WND, “I managed the absentee-ballot office. It was my job to verify the voters’ identity.”
Is it wrong that the longer this goes on, part of me secretly hopes Obama really isn’t American?
CalD
The longer this goes on, the more part of me secretly wishes that I wasn’t.
Kryptik
…yes, yes it is wrong.
Because if Obama, against all odds, really was proven without a shadow of a doubt to be not-American, how much momentum do you think Republicans would be able to ride for the years to come? They’re already ridiculously in-charge enough right now to fuck everything up. Imagine the mandate they’d get with something like this.
Regardless, that won’t happen. The real problem is that Obama doesn’t even need to be proven to be ‘not American’. They just need to stain his legitimacy, and Dems/Liberals by proxy, in the eyes of enough morons to get their hooks into power again.
SP
PUMA Power!
Xero
“a Hillary Clinton supporter who ended up voting for John McCain”
‘Cuz they’re basically the same, right?
debbie
The man is clearly a fraud. There is no such thing as English at Western Kentucky University.
beltane
Ah, the sweet smell of PUMA in the afternoon. Does this fellow also have a copy of the Whitey tape, I’ve been waiting two years to see it.
Oscar Leroy
This guy’s from Kentucky??? No way! ! !
Liz
@Xero:
‘Cuz they’re basically the same, right?
well, the other one was brown. He ain’t voting for that one!
John Bird
I’d just like a constantly updated feed to my mobile device when any crazy person anywhere tells a website anything he or she believes about a public figure. We need that sort of unadulterated Web 2.0 accountability to preserve our country from foreign-born agents at the highest levels.
QuaintIrene
So if it was this ‘huge open secret’ how come nobody came out with this ‘stunning claim’ during the election year? Especially since this doofus seems to imply he’s got some kind of actual proof.
CalD
@debbie: I’m sure that English is widely spoken there as a second language, primarily by people who don’t have actually have a first language.
(Hey, I’m from Indiana. Hoosiers make Kentuckian jokes. It’s what we do.)
Zifnab
@Kryptik:
If Obama wasn’t really a US citizen, Bush Co would still be a pile of fuck ups in a bag. I think it would swing some sentiment. I don’t think it would change the overwhelming belief that Republicans are douchebags. You’re going to win any elections in the long run if all you can do is defame your opposition in the short run. If anything, people will begin to forget why native born Presidents are a good idea to have.
aarrgghh
meet tim adams
TomG
I always wondered what practical value it was for birthers to waste so much time on their nonsense. If I’m opposed to a president’s policies, focus on what is wrong with the policies themselves and try to stop them directly. I’m sure that Obama’s race is the main reason they are going about such an INDIRECT way to stop the policies they don’t like, but it’s so inefficient. Not to mention, I don’t think they are gaining any legal ground at all.
Are any of them making money off this conspiracy nonsense? Maybe I’m missing the obvious motive here.
Redshirt
See! Obama’s behind the BRITISH Oil spill, cuz he’s really British and this is all a plot to start worshiping the Queen and the Catholics again. Also.
Calouste
Wasn’t the official story from the state of Hawai’i that there are no long form birth certificates for anyone because they all got digitized some time in the 80s or 90s and the originals then got lost or were destroyed?
Note that Mr. Adams only claims that there is no paper sheet, but we knew that already. WingNutDaily turns it into Obama not born in Hawai’i. (Well, maybe there’s more in the article, but I don’t want my internets getting cooties from WND.)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Next they will be clamoring to dig up Obama’s dead mother, just to verify she wasn’t a goat.
Noonan
So that’s the guy who voted for Hillary and McCain.
dmsilev
Wait a second…
Since Obama is an Illinois citizen, why would anybody in the Honolulu elections office have any valid reason for requesting his birth certificate? It’s not like he’s registered to vote there.
dms
williamc
@CalD:
cosign this.
This shite is getting embarrassing. Of all the problems in the world, and all the evidence pointing out that these folks are wrong, they keep going with it. Doesn’t idiocy have a sell-by date anymore? It used to be if you were proven wrong over and over, and your point was being validated by obvious nut-jobs (ahem, Oily Taints), you’d eventually get shamed into leaving the stage. At what point did that change?
sherifffruitfly
Makes sense, since it was Clinton supporters who came started birtherism in the first place.
Llelldorin
@CalD:
Quickest winning of a thread ever.
TR
@aarrgghh:
That is fantastic.
licensed to kill time
I’m sorry, WND, this claim is “stunning” in what way, exactly? Haven’t about 3,937 nutballs claimed this previously? Yawn.
D-Chance.
(OT) In which I tell Barney Frank, “More of this, please“.
Only I would multiply it by a factor of 5.
wmsheppa
@John Cole I really want him to claim to be from Kenya next April 1st as an April Fools.
Beyond that, I don’t think it’s wrong. Watching every republicans’ head simultaneously explode would almost be worth the destruction that would happen when they took over the country.
Martin
Obama should come out and just admit that he was born in Israel.
dmsilev
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I wish them luck with that; she was cremated.
dms
cleek
@aarrgghh:
holy crap.
the guy’s story has more holes than a Sierpinski Gasket.
Xero
from the piece @aarrgghh linked to, a statement from Adams;
He got the WND crowd all wound up for nothing.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@dmsilev: Ha!! How convenient was that/wingnut?
Mnemosyne
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Actually, they’ll try to claim she was a jackal. Because The Omen was 100 PERCENT TRUE!1!!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Martin: LOL, nice one.
JR
Just so we’re clear: the guy who checked voter registrations in Hawaii is saying that an Illinois resident’s birth certificate wasn’t on file with his office, so he voted for the guy who nobody has any doubts was born in Panama.
Makes perfect sense.
stevie314159
Not American? Part of me hopes he actually pulls off the human skin and starts to eat his enemies, like the bug in Men in Black.
Josh
@sherifffruitfly:
Actually, no it wasn’t started by the Clinton supporters. Like all things fringe on Obama, it was started by Ron Paultards (ZEITGEIST!) and later picked up by the PUMA pretenders to try to legitimize it.
Never, ever underestimate the power of interterians.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mnemosyne: Absolutely, and Jackals live in Africa. The dots are connecting themselves.
Tonybrown74
Oh, fer fuck’s sake, I am so tired of this stupid shit!
me
O RLY?
debbie
@CalD:
So do Buckeyes.
Scotty
@Llelldorin:
I agree!
Rosalita
@aarrgghh:
ZOMG!
Origuy
aarrgghh beat me to posting the link. This guy is a real piece of work. The Army discharged him for mental illness. At some point in his life he was a skinhead. The people who were pushing this are the Council of Conservative Citizens, most of whom probably also belong to another organization with three identical initials.
bago
@Zifnab: What you got against bags?
El Cid
Is the long form measured in feet or meters? Can it fit in a car? Do you have to roll it out and read it from a helicopter? How long does it have to be?
Mnemosyne
@me:
I’m not the only one picturing this guy’s co-workers deliberately fucking with him by claiming straight-faced that he’s totally right and Obama couldn’t have been born in Hawaii, right? It’s what I would do in their place.
PanAmerican
@TomG:
“I’ve been involved in a number of cults both as a leader and a follower. You have more fun as a follower but you make more money as a leader.” — Creed Bratton
Bill E Pilgrim
Was about to say way to go winning your own thread before it started, but someone beat me to the idea.
Whenever I hear these things, right after shaking my head in amusement at the craziness, the next thought is often “You know what would really be great though…”
The funny thing is, once you’re that crazy in public, it wouldn’t really even matter if it turned out to be true. It’s like it’s lose-lose for the crazy person, no matter what. I’m not sure how that works exactly, quantum mechanics must be involved.
drkrick
You leave poor Mickey out of this!
wrb
@sherifffruitfly:
Gets forgotten that most of the craziest and nastiest anti-Obama stuff- the stuff that is really impairing chances of getting good stuff done for this country now- originated with Hillary supporters.
I suspect Republicans feel they’ve been given a license to go further than they might have.
kwAwk
Hmmmm…… in the primary Biden was my first choice, amazing how things work out in the end ehh?
kay
“I had direct access to the Social Security database, the national crime computer, state driver’s license information, international passport information, basically just about anything you can imagine to get someone’s identity,” Adams explained. “I could look up what bank your home mortgage was in. I was informed by my boss that we did not have a birth record [for Obama].”
Obama voted in Illinois, right? Why would the Board of Elections in Hawaii have a birth record?
Illinois wouldn’t either, by the way. In Ohio, you need a driver’s license, state ID, or SS number.
No birth certificate.
kay
He was a temp. Did he go there and get the temp job to run
records searches on Barack Obama?
This is why I don’t find these people amusing. They’re mentally ill.
Lurking Canadian
Ignorant foreigner question: Does Obama’s birthplace matter, legally, if his birth mother was American? Isn’t that enough to make him a natural-born citizen, or whatever the magic phrase is?
I mean, I know he was born in Hawai’i and this is all bullshit, but I like to learn things.
kwAwk
Second pass at this. Is there any other blog which still uses the word PUMA?
kwAwk
@Lurking Canadian:
The law at the time was complex. One had to either be born in the US or US territory, or your parents needed to have lived in the US for a certain number of years after turning 18 (I believe).
Obama’s mother didn’t fit the criteria because she had lived in Indonesia for a period of her adult life.
MikeJ
@kwAwk: Rumproast. They actually taunt them a lot more there. check some of the blogs that they link to to make fun of and see if the term pops up.
drkrick
@Lurking Canadian: That would be true now, but the law was slightly different when Obama was born. Because his mother was so young, he wouldn’t automatically be a US citizen if he was born outside the US.
Edit: The time in Malaysia doesn’t figure in because that was after he was born.
rickstersherpa
@dmsilev: Good spot. Obama was not an Hawaii voter, but an Illinois resident and voter (since you kind of have to be if your are the Senator and not named Alan Keyes). So he had no reason to look up squat and if he did, violated state privacy laws in the process. But this jerk will get his 15 minute of movement conservative fame. Believe, the birther allegation will be in the impeachment charges that Boehner’s congress will bring up next year.
Catsy
So let me get this straight. This guy is
1) a Clinton supporter
2) who voted for McCain when Clinton lost the primary
3) who is giving this interview to WorldNutDaily.
Nowhere in this chain of facts, of course, is anything that might suggest this person has an anti-Obama agenda that would affect his credibility on this subject as an impartial source of allegations which directly contradict every verified fact in the public record about Obama’s birth.
Good grief. Next on WND: Alleged UFO abductee claims government coverup, stocks up on Reynolds Wrap.
Sheila
This doesn’t reflect very well on the Hillary Clinton supporters.
wrb
@kwAwk:
Well, there is still Pumapac.org.
No Quarter and Riverdaughter are still as insane as ever.
Cheryl from Maryland
How can I believe anyone who left Hawai’i for Kentucky?
Ella in NM
@aarrgghh:
And that explains everything…a full-fledged white supremacist speaker at the Council for Conservative Citizens who has created novels from his violent, psychotic fantasies.
But he’ll get 50-50 on CNN, for sure!!! Cause there’s two sides to every story and both must be of equal merit!!!!!
Calouste
@kay:
I think the guy might be confessing to a few crimes there. Maybe he is just skirting it, but he is definitely giving the impression that he was committing unauthorized searches while he was working as an elections clerk, and quite a few people have been convicted for similar offences over the last two years.
kay
@Lurking Canadian:
?
That’s what’s so repellent about it, to me. They seized on the birth place, and demanded a birth certificate. He produced one. They then went to Plan B.
This is the standard order of operations for mentally ill stalker-types who harass people. Whatever the target produces, whatever steps are taken to assuage their insanity, nothing works.
You can’t negotiate with them. This is a personality type. It’s a way of thinking.
CarolDuhart
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Scary thought, Egali. I’m surprised they haven’t tried that, just to get her fingerprints so they could show they were on some Kenyan document. Fortunately, she was cremated, so she will forever be spared that indignity, and Obama’s father is buried in a distant Kenyan cemetery far away from those creeps. What’s next for those people? An Ouija board to conjure up Obama’s doctor? BTW, the doctor who delivered him died 4-5 years ago, thankfully before the birthers could kill him hanging around him.
I have a copy of my birth certificate, but I got it years ago when copies were on microfilm, and my hospital records while they were still on paper. How many years ago? At least a couple of decades before the internet and scanners. If I lost either, my records would come back to me in some digital form-and those would be the only copies left, the originals either in some massive vault or shredded. Storing paper records cost money, and the records themselves are hard to retrieve readily. It’s easier to scan the information and put it in a database that can also be updated if needed than to save the original copies in a moldy file cabinet.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
kay
@Calouste:
I think it’s huge if he did searched all those databases without cause. You’ll notice his weasel language, though. He never said he did the search. He says “I had access”. But that’s how the mentally ill stalker crowd works: they imply. They never know or say. The point is to discredit and defame the target.
PUMAS and birthers are not the most practical people. They seem to think records are a vague and complicated issue, with a lot of gray areas. My biggest area of amazement is how they got to adulthood without knowing how anything works. Imagine the paranoid fantasies they must labor under, imaging all kinds of nefarious forces at work.
Citizen_X
@williamc:
Given that we’ve had about 150 years of creationism, I’d say, “never,” because things never really were that way.
Mnemosyne
@CarolDuhart:
The Google is failing me, but I remember that in the run-up to the election some enterprising reporter tracked down a nurse in Honolulu who remembered the doctor talking to her about the birth at the time because he found the name Barack Obama to be so interesting and unusual.
But I’m sure the helicopters paid her to say that.
Allan
Parents of Kentucky: this man is teaching your children.
Oh, you’re good with that? OK, just wanted to point it out…
Allan
By the way, how insane and toxic is this story?
Even the conservative Free Republic has issued stark orders that referring to this story, or anything about the CCC (The C is hard, like a K) will get deleted by moderators.
William
1) Obama didn’t vote in Hawaii, so this guy would never have had a chance to look into his citizenship.
2) Obama was born to an American parent, making him a citizen regardless of where he was born.
3) The guy will have a book deal within a few weeks and will likely be kept around the fringes of the Republican Party until Nov 2012 (clearing 6 figures in the process).
vtr
@aarrgghh: After reading a couple of paragraphs from his blogs found on the link, I have question. Is it necessary to know how to speak English in order to teach English at Western Kentucky?
LongHairedWeirdo
I’ll give you this much – if Obama’s parents were canny enough to get *two* birth announcements in local newspapers just so that he could be shown to be born in America (I believe his mom’s citizenship already grants him native-born citizenship as well), while creating a statewide conspiracy to cover up the lack of a birth certificate, just in case he wanted to do the one thing that requires actual native-born citizenship, it would be a hell of a cool story.
And it would increase my hopes of a radiation accident turning me into a superhero, because that kind of shit only happens in comic books!
maus
@Mnemosyne:
TBQH even that could be post-hoc rationalization.
@Allan:
Holy crap, when even freep won’t touch a story, it’s beyond all.
Stefan
Obama’s mother didn’t fit the criteria because she had lived in Indonesia for a period of her adult life.
Obama’s mother only lived in Indonesia after he was born.
Ripley
“I had direct access to the Social Security database [Federal information], the national crime computer [again, Federal], state driver’s license information [how long since Obama’s been in the HI system as a licensed driver?], international passport information [again, Federal], basically just about anything you can imagine to get someone’s identity,” Adams explained. “I could look up what bank your home mortgage was in. I was informed by my boss that we did not have a birth record [for Obama].”
Why did a County Election Clerk have so much access to Federal databases? Why was he “informed by his boss” about this, if he had access to all these damning databases? And why didn’t his boss come forward?
PUMA HAKA! , that’s why.
gwangung
If they’re that good of planners, then, by gum, you WANT a scion of such a union in the White House!
Mnemosyne
@LongHairedWeirdo: @gwangung:
C’mon, you guys, you know that what happened is that Obama invented a time machine and went back to the day he was born to plant those ads in the paper. I mean, there’s no other logical explanation.
Catsy
@Ripley: My takeaway from this is that one or both of these things must be true:
a) This guy is completely talking out of his ass and should be laughed off the stage, and/or;
b) he has committed a number of felonies on government property and should be vigorously prosecuted.
maus
@aarrgghh: A PUMA white supremacist? Gawrsh!
asiangrrlMN
@Xero: That wasn’t from Adams, though I initially read it the same way, too. It’s from some guy named Phil from some website called the Right Side of Life. Adams completely believes/is peddling this bullshit. The fact that he’s an ignorant asshole who has access to children scares the shit out of me/pisses me the fuck off.
This is why I have to say the whole Birther nonsense is sheer racism. There is no other explanation for this kind of batshitcraziness still continuing almost two years after the election.
@gwangung: I agree with you. If his parents had that much foresight and cunning at the time of Obama’s birth, then I DEFINITELY want him as my prez.
Just Me
As an English instructor, I’m a little dismayed to know Adams’ occupation, but not entirely surprised since some of my own colleagues are, yes, certifiable.
tim
I too kind of hope it turns out Obama was not born on American soil, just for the drama it would create.
I also hope there would be some means by which he could remain in office so that it would piss off all the usual suspects. Their resulting hysteria would give me great pleasure as well as provide much entertainment.
I wouldn’t care if our president was from Planet 9 if he or she would get this country steered in a better direction.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Not at all. I think it would be hilarious if the day before he leaves office Obama announced that he really wasn’t born in the U.S. Bring it on.
MaryS-NJ
Please. It doesn’t reflect well on that Hillary Clinton supporter.
This Hillary Clinton voted for Barack Obama in the general, as did all the other Hillary Clinton supporters I know.
Elie
@Lurking Canadian:
Yes. That is right. Even if he WAS born in another country, he would STILL be an American because of his mother
Xero
@asiangrrlMN:
Yes, it was a post at “The Right Side of Life.” The bit quoted above was Adams’ response toan email.
urbanmeemaw
The guy is in Kentucky. Nothing more needs to be said
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Elie: He would be a citizen by blood, but for the purposes of running for president, he would need to be born actually on American soil. Or a few other places like US consulate soil in other countries. I believe that is how the Constitution has been interpreted. Though there is a tangled web of legal opinions on exactly what “natural born” means, beginning with the infamous Dred Scott decision in the mid 1800’s/
Calliope
@kwAwk: and drkrick: NO, NO, a thousand times no.
The section of the law you are referring to applies only to NATURALIZED citizens. Obama’s mother was an American citizen, born in Kansas. It doesn’t matter how old she was, or how damn much time she spent out of the country, or where Obama was born. Her son is a citizen. Full stop. Period.
Please stop repeating birther nonsense.
Hob
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: That’s a weird interpretation that the birthers have been putting out there, with no support in the law as far as I can tell. The constitutional distinction is between people who were citizens from birth and people who were naturalized, i.e. immigrants who became citizens — not between “on U.S. soil” and “by blood”.
Unfortunately the birthers have managed to muddy the waters enough that non-insane people are now picking up on it as one of those “something I heard” things.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Hob: I have heard this definition long before the birthers came along. But like I was saying the SC has not made a definitive ruling on exactly what complies with Natural Born. The Dred Scot decision said it was born on American soil, but of course most of that was overturned later. And there have been subsequent tangential rulings and decrees by AG’s, but It is not a cut and dried issue, I think, and to my knowledge there has not been a case of an actual president, or candidate that has had it adjudicated. So say if for sake of argument, it was learned that Obama was born not on American soil, he would not have to immediately resign, I don’t think, it would have to be fought out in the courts with the SC to make the final decision and definition.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Here is the subsequent code for defining “natural born” for purpose of running for president. It still isn’t all that clear to me, but I am not a lawyer.
A couple of these come close to covering Obama if he’d been born outside a US possession, which I take as at least a territory of the US. But don’t fit him completely, unless I am missing something, which could well be.
I hope the asterisks don’t fuck up the thread.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
This one fits him, even if he was born in Kenya.
tballou
If this actually was true, it would be a relatively quick end to the national nightmare that Obama has become. I guess Biden would become President – could he be any worse?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: Damn Kay, your good. Wanna join my blog as a contributor, or author. I been meaning to ask you this for a while and have no other way other than like this. It’s a lounge lizard blog, not to compete with BJ. Just a place to blather and pontificate when you feel like it. If so click my handle and send me an email which is on the sidebar. If not that’s okay too.
Yutsano
/ facepalm
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: NO ONE BORN IN HAWAI’I GETS THEIR BIRTH CERTIFICATE. EVAH. IT STAYS IN THE BUREAU OF RECORDS AND NEVER LEAVES. THIS IS HAWAI’IAN LAW. YOU GET A CERTIFICATION OF LIVE BIRTH. PERIOD.
I know this because I was hatched in Hawai’i and I also got a CoLB when I got my passport for the first time. And when I renewed it. And it looks exactly the same as what Obama has. But I guess I’m just in on the conspiracy. Or something.
kay
@tballou:
This whining isn’t at all attractive. There’s a solution, you know, and it doesn’t involve a court. Win an election. You’ll get another shot at it in 2012.
cat48
@Yutsano:
No you’re not in on the conspiracy; you are just a Kenyan, too! ; )
kay
@Yutsano:
I’m not sure they recognize your state as legit. Do you have the long-form copy of the incorporation handy?
Birthers are a type of person. The people who file harassing lawsuits? Who call the cops on neighbors, with vague allegations? Who spend years in family court, or will contests, engaged in some vendetta?
The sort of people who have a ten year battle over a property line or a fence that’s 6 inches off surveyed property line?
That’s them. People who hold a grudge. You can’t win.
The Other Chuck
@Ripley:
Simple: he didn’t. Especially not as a temp. When making shit up, most people start with some fabricated claim to their own authoritative knowledge and access.
Oddly enough, the guy’s not himself a birther, he’s just claiming the documents aren’t there. Actually I’m even more inclined to believe WND just made shit up and put the words in his mouth.
kay
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
I am flattered, Stuck, so thank you. If I come up with anything original to say, a topic, I will email you.
Uloborus
@vtr:
I’m sure he’s completely fluent in English. However, correct spelling, the use of proper grammar, and the use of words of over two syllables attract profanity and sometimes violence in Pigfart, Kentucky.
And there are only two cities in Kentucky. Louisville, and Pigfart. And as Kentuckians will tell you, Louisville ‘isn’t really Kentucky’.
kay
@Yutsano:
But, screw them. You have the US House:
On July 27, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 593, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii’s statehood, including the text, “Whereas the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.”
There were no “nay” votes. You’re in!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@kay: What you say seems quite original to me. it’s there if and when you want:)
maus
@tballou:
Obama is a frustrating dream. The state of America’s politics, media, and decline is our nightmare.
asiangrrlMN
@Xero: Oh, shit. I misread my misread! Damn. Thanks for the correction. Now I get what you’re saying, and I have to agree. Fuck WND.
@Yutsano: Yes, well, apparently I, too, am not eligible for Prez, then because while I was born in the states, my parents were not. Oh, sure, they were over 18 when I was born, but you know, shut up, that’s why! I would make a shitty president, anyway.
Yutsano
@kay: I can get you the copy of Lili’uokalani’s abdication which created the territory of Hawai’i does that count? Although once you have the House you’re in like Flynn.
@asiangrrlMN: ANCHOR BABY! ANCHOR BABY!! :)
Evolutionary
@kwAwk: @drkrick: It is very interesting about this birtherism thing. No LAW can trump the US costitution, period. The phrase “phrase natural born citizen” should be interpreted to mean what the authors of the Constitution meant by it or maybe by the original public meaning but not what Congress wrote in the 1950’s to keep out undesireables. The only way to change that would be by a constitutional amendment or a ruling of the Supreme Court.
As for the meaning of the phrase “Natural born Citizen it is somewhat unclear exactly the Founders meant by it. They made it up based on the concept of “Natural Born Subjects” of the British monarchy. The article from the Michigan Law Review mentioned above is a good placed to get some background and discussion. here.
The incredibly ironic part is that this subject became a point of active debate only because “John McCain” was born in Panama! It just got re-purposed by the birfers because it sounded serious and important to them and they thought it would be a good distraction for the MSM. It took a while but the MSM finally rose to the nice shiny lure.
Since President Barak Obama’s Mother was a US citizen, This would have to go to the Supreme’s for a decision.
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: ‘Cept I got bigger juggs and a nicer smile.
Joe Max
@MaryS-NJ: This Hillary Clinton voted for Barack Obama in the general, as did all the other Hillary Clinton supporters I know.
Including this one. I voted for Clinton in the primary (mostly because I preferred Clinton’s positions on health care) and Obama in the general. Like all the other Clinton supporters I know.
Johnny Pez
@asiangrrlMN:
I disagree. It would be impossible for anyone who thinks in complete sentences, as you clearly do, to meet the current definition of “shitty president”.
asiangrrlMN
@Johnny Pez: Aw, thanks! Does this mean I would get your vote?
Johnny Pez
@asiangrrlMN:
As many as ACORN can get me.
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
More interesting than Kapoʻoloku Poʻomaikelani? Keōua Kalanikupuapaʻikalaninui Ahilapalapa?
Not to mention various Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese names.
We’re talkin’ about Hawaii here.
Zuzu's Petals
@Zuzu’s Petals:
Blockquote fail. First para was quote from Mnemosyne. Duh.
Zuzu's Petals
@kay:
In 1961, the provision required that the citizen parent have lived in the US for at least five years after age 14. Obama’s mother was age 18 when she had him.
That’s what makes the birthers run completely off the plausibility track claiming he was born overseas.
Yutsano
@Zuzu’s Petals:
You answered your own question here. Hawai’ian, Filipino, Japanese, and Chinese names are all rather common, including some of the longish ones. But a Hebrew/African name? That would stand out to the nurse.
Zuzu's Petals
The dedicated researcher who runs the Obama Conspiracy Theories website actually bothered to call up the office in question. The official he spoke to said:
So there. Confirmation that Adams did not have access to birth records as part of his job.
BTW, I’d follow this site for all the birther “developments.” Guy does a first-rate job researching, analyzing, and blowing up these crackpot claims.
Zuzu's Petals
@Yutsano:
Sorry, I doubt it. There’s just too much variety in that spicy part of the world.
asiangrrlMN
@Johnny Pez: You made me laugh! I like that. Glad I can count on your votes.
kay
@Zuzu’s Petals:
I’d have to see the whole 1961 statute. Birthers can’t read statutes. They read past exclusionary subheads, and apply provisions that they should have excluded.
I’d have to read that whole section of the 1961 code. For a period they were relying an a provision that applied to naturalized citizen parents, applying that to Obama’s mother, and that was impossible to determine without going from main to sub, if I remember the original battle, here, during birther frenzy.
jake the snake
@debbie:
Hey, watch it, that is my Alma Mater. And, I was an English minor. We do have English, but apparently we also have birfer PUMAs.
jake the snake
@CalD:
Hey watch out what you say, we will redirect the Ohio south of Jefferson County and give you Louisville.
jake the snake
@Uloborus:
As a historical record, My older brother and sister were born a home, on a farm outside Pigfart. I was born in a hospital inside the proper Pigfart city limits.
Zuzu's Petals
@kay:
This is probably the easiest way to find out what the statute required in 1961.
8 USC Sec. 1401 provides, in pertinent part, as follows:
The history notes for Sec. 1401 show that it was amended in 1986 to make this change:
Subsection (g) was originally para. (7) of subsec. (a); the section was reformatted in 1978. Other than that, there appear to be no relevant changes to this particular provision after its enactment in 1952.
If you wanted to see the full text of the prior laws, you could use the cites at the history notes page to look up the relevant Public Laws (the US Code databases only seem to go back to the ’90s). The links to Thomas.gov aren’t helpful, as the database doesn’t go back that far. If you can’t find another online source (Lexis/Nexis?) you may have to go to a law library to look it up in the bound volumes.
Hope this is helpful. Good luck!
Zuzu's Petals
Blockquote fail. Subsec. (g) was obviously supposed to be part of the first blockquote.
Not that I didn’t try …. sigh,
Tallulah
@debbie:
Of course there is a school at WKU that teaches English. It’s called the Potter College of Arts and Letters.
http://www.wku.edu/pcal/faculty
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