Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

"Health Department about how he can release more explicit documentation of Mr. Obama’s birth "

really?!?!

Its a 5 minute job for most Americans to go get their birth certificate and prove where they were born.

what the hell does that even mean? "explicit documentation"? either show the birth certificate or NOT. And of course compare it to others from the same time period to see if it was printed on a printer from the '90s as they tried to do with the certificate of live birth.

My bet? Hard to release something that doesn't exist, if it did they would have released it immediately. Col Laskin has gone to jail because the WH cannot prove or refuse to prove that Mr. Obama is a natural born American.

So what happens if this democrat from HI cannot produce this said BC? will the unbiased/sarc NYT report on the absence of this non-released document?

This is honestly one of the stupidest things I have ever read, and I am probably now dumber for reading it. Because I'm not interested in denigrating Cornell University, I'll assume that you're completely dishonest as opposed to utterly incompetent.

You're a law professor, and based on what I said above, I will assume you understand the meaning of "intent." "Birthers" intend one of two things. Either: (a) to suggest that Obama is or might be an illegitimate president because he is not constitutionally qualified for the office; or (b) to suggest that he is somehow "foreign" or "other," and thus does not have America's best interests at heart. The governor's intent, as he stated in the article, is to "put this particular canard to rest" because he feels that "the memory of his parents [is] insulted by people whose motivation is solely political."

This is a really simple and easy distinction to make, and if I wasn't already familiar with your tendency to ignore facts and make arguments that fall apart under even the smallest amount of scrutiny, I would be shocked to see such intellectual dishonesty coming from someone who advertises himself as a law professor at a world-class university.

Democrats will do whatever they can to perpetuate Birtherism. It's a red herring, and it allows them to dismiss their critics as lunatics.

@Joshua -- thank your for proving that you are incapable of understanding a blog post, and have to resort to the usual invective of the left. And you do so quite nicely with a pseudonym. I take it you came here from Think Progress or The Atlantic. Try reading the post very slowly and carefully, and you will see that intent has nothing to do with it. If a Republican made exactly the same statement as the Democrat, that the birth records should be released to settle the issue, people like you would be calling the Republican a Birther.

I assure you it's no pseudonym. My name is Joshua, I'm simply not interested in giving out more personal information. I also did not come from Think Progress or the Atlantic, I came across this particular post via Memeorandum.

I'll note that you have not even attempted to respond to my point. You cite a story about an individual who was personally involved with the president's parents and suggest that somehow not calling this man a "birther" is unfair and representative of media bias. I argued that there is a very easily identifiable difference between those labeled "birthers" and Mr. Abercrombie. You have not attempted to defend your post on this ground. Instead, you resort to the tired "media bias against Repiblicans" canard.

Do you disagree that Mr. Abercrombie's motives, as stated in the NYT article, are different than political opponents of the president? If so, how? If not, how is it unfair to define Mr. Abercrombie differently than the other people who call for the "release of the birth certificate" in order to "settle the issue?"

@Joshua - it doesn't matter what the motives were. If a Republican, even acting on the belief that the records would suppport Obama, or on the neutral belief that such records should be releasesd for all presidential candidates, announced an intention to get the records released, that person would be ridiculed and mocked as a Birther. The attack would be unfair but as I have pointed out in the posts linked in "related posts," a person does not need to question Obama's birthplace to be termed a Birther. Just ask Scott Brown.

Point missed again...B+rry's father was a foreign national. That makes B+rry ineligible as he is not a natural born citizen.

Ok, I don't need to continue a back and forth in which you will openly refuse to respond to my point. My suggestion was that the motives do matter in labeling someone in this context.

I've been trying to avoid the merits of the "birther" debate, because it's a hopeless black hole of a discussion, but here's where I will leave it. I think there is a difference between a political opponent of the president implying in any way that this issue is anything but resolved, and a friend of the president's family deciding that he will do what he can to persuade the un-persuadable of a simple (already proven) fact. I see no problem in differentiating between these people, you seem to think it is evidence of bias to treat/label them differently.

It seems we have reached an impasse, so I will leave it at that, and wish you and your readers happy holidays.

I never cease to be amazed at the ability of people to rationalize their ridiculous beliefs.

And oddly enough, he is talking about doing exactly what most Americans -- including those of us who are morally certain that Barack Obama was born here in the United States -- believe that Obama should have done in the first place.

This is the reason Obama isn't eligible, nor will Bobby Jindal be eligible, and possibly even Marco Rubio if his parents were not naturalized at the time he was born. As for the 14th Amendment, Section 1 says "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The Amendment does not describe these people as "natural born" citizens, only as citizens. Words in the Constitution have specific effect.

Graphic Defining Natural Born Citizens
http://jeffersonsrebels.blogspot.com/2009/10/graphic-defining-natural-born.html

Also see:

Dr. David Ramsay defined natural born citizens in 1789
http://jeffersonsrebels.blogspot.com/2010/08/dr-david-ramsay-defined-natural-born.html

"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."

I'm depressed to think that people like Joshua might be thought of as a thinking man in some circles. It's the thought of the rest of that circle that saps the soul.
The hilarious part is his continual assertion that Professor Jacobson hasn't addressed his point. I guess in his world the point is only addressed when you agree with it.
Joshua:
The Governor is seeking to do exactly what "birthers" wanted to do years ago - release the long form birth certificate.
He hasn't seen it. We haven't seen it. Both parties want to see it, yet the media calls one camp ignoble while they imply the Governor as a principled man "taking on the birthers."
He's not TAKING ON the birthers, we support him every step of the way.
Go Man Go!
Your lack of intellectual curiosity on this matter is stunning and shows a bias every bit as stubborn as any "birther."
I'm certain that if some important Bush document, a document necessary to keep him in office, was declared authentic, and a similar, but not the original document was put up on American Thinker you'd be satisfied with it.

@Joshua

The professor is really quite right about intent, the issue is facts. Your arguments are typical Democrat emotionalism gone mad. You like the Democrat's intent so his action, indistinguishable from a "Birther's' " is somehow good. You don't understand and can't combat the argument so you resort to calling people "stupid." The issue was always whether the president can prove he meets the stated qualifications for the presidency. Not that his campaign staff says he does or that something was posted on a website that says he does. Remind me when posting on a website became a substitute for the court as a finder of fact. This mess started with a lawsuit by Democrat Philip A. Berg. Berg's stated intent was to derail President Obama's nomination. The suit went essentially unanswered by the Obama campaign, which relied on Berg's lack of standing to defeat it and substituted people saying "we have the proof and it's all OK" or "we posted it on a website which somehow or other proves it because something called FactCheck.org looked at it" for confrontation in a court room. You Obama Democrats are destroying so much you don't even realize the exten of the damage. The court is the finder of fact in a lawsuit, not a website or the out-of-court untterances of a potential witness. When you are sued your prove facts in court, not on your campaign website. You Obama supporting Democrats turned a simple lawsuit that should have been resolved as quickly as the similar lawsuits against McCain were into "intent and sanity" battles. By the way, McCain was sued in 2008 by someone who claimed his birth in a Panama hospital rendered him ineligible for the White House. The suit was tossed out and McCain went to the effort of getting a congressional resolution declaring his eligibility.....in that I am just comparing one candidate's behavior with another. The suit against McCain was no more or less "crazy" than Berg's. But McCain settled the issue and Guess Who did not. Now another Democrat Birther has stepped forward. Great.

WHEN I SEE THE REAL PAPERWORK THEN I WILL MAKE A JUDGEMENT, UNTIL THEN BHO IS BORN IN KENYA

Honestly, and I mean this in the most condescending way possible: I don't engage in arguments with birthers. You people have proven that facts matter not to you, and logic and reason are foreign concepts. I wish you all a happy holiday season and a healthy new year, but I will not get involved in debates about birth certificates that have been settled - at least as far as the sane community is concerned - for a long time now.

When entering the U.S. from Canada, I need to show my Canadian Passport to the american customs officers. In order to obtain a Canadian Passport, I need to show my original birth certificate, not a certified copy, to the issuing office. So, when you think about it, there is a greater degree of scrutiny placed upon me as an occassional visitor to your great country than there is on your President. And he is the one who controls your nuclear arsenal. Quite stunning when you think about it.

Joshua, with all due respect, I don't engage in arguments with idiots. You people have proven that you don't care about the facts, and all you do is engage in insults rather than use logic and reason. I will not debate issues that I have determined have been settled (why should I care whether other people are aware of the facts?), and anyone who disagrees with my determination is obviously an idiot. The best way to prove that an issue is settled is to simply declare that it is beyond debate and must never, ever be discussed ever again. Ever.

The emperor's clothes are simply gorgeous, as any idiot can plainly see.

You can't make this stuff up. A Democrat starts the ball rolling with his lawsuit, long on debatable legal interpretations and short on evidence, and it is somehow a "right wing conspiracy." The president and his staff refuse to answer the lawsuit, unlike the Republican candidate who bent over backwards for a similar suit, and that is OK by Joshua and the Obots. Two years pass and now a prominent Democrat turns "birther" and says he will ask for the release of the very documents the first Democrat asked for two years ago, and he is somehow not a "birther" and very virtuous despite the fact he is doing exactly what the "birthers" have always asked and the "birthers" are cheering him on. And Joshua misreads the post, ignores the facts in the replies, refuses to recognize when his point is refuted and then walks away from a fight he started saying everyone else is crazy....those Democrats, somebody's got to love 'em!

Joshua is representative of a much larger problem with many on the left. For him, intent is all important, results are not. 1 gallon of ethanol takes 1.2 gallons of gas to make and results in greater carbon emissions? So what, the intention behind it was good. The welfare state has caused the virtual dissolution of the family as a cohesive social building block amongst the poorer segment of the population? Again, so what, it was intended to "help" people. And so on and so on. This is the true hallmark of the left: facts and results are meaningless, intentions and emotions are paramount.

@Joshua, BZZZT!!! If you "don't engage in arguments with birthers" (however you personally define that term), why did you come here and START an argument instead of ignoring those who like solid evidence of asserted facts because those people are supposedly beneath your lofty intellect?

"@Joshua - it doesn't matter what the motives were. If a Republican, even acting on the belief that the records would support Obama, or on the neutral belief that such records should be releasesd for all presidential candidates, announced an intention to get the records released, that person would be ridiculed and mocked as a Birther. "

Back in the day I made a couple of points that I suspect even the most close-minded would have a hard time refuting - there is in fact a more voluminous file than we have seen summarized by the document released by the State of Hawaii; Obama could cause that file to be released (but hasn't); and the contemporaneous birth announcements only prove that there was no belated conspiracy many decades later to establish Obama's bona fides - however, Ms. Dunham and her parents may have wanted to finesse Obama's citizenship against the day when a nasty custody fight might play out in a foreign court between a black father and a white mother.

The notion that the case was not closed got me labelled a "Birther" by the usual suspects on the left, who would rather label and marginalize than puzzle over facts and evidence.

On that topic, my personal fave - Andrew Sullivan, who was infamously indefatigable on the great Palin Birth question, happily declared that Obama has done all he could to resolve this controversy.

Whatever.

FWIW, I think Obama is hiding this file reflexively, just as he has hidden his college transcripts, his health records, his law firm billing records and every other thing about his life story that he has not written himself. "Obama" is the most tightly controlled brand since Mickey Mouse (and is becoming synonymous with it), and he is saving material for his inevitable eight-figure book deal.

My guess - the full birth file is a big nothing. Unfortunately for their strategy, as Obama's approval has faded the effectiveness of labelling his opponents as wacko has also faded.

Tom Maguire

methinks the good "perfesser" is being attacked. witness the attack by "Ema" in the "i don't care, but we all should" post.

@joshua: Honestly, and I mean this in the most condescending way possible: I don't engage in arguments with self delusional fools.

My guess - the full birth file is a big nothing. Unfortunately for their strategy, as Obama's approval has faded the effectiveness of labelling his opponents as wacko has also faded.

I would guess the same way, but honestly, I think a lot of people are missing the political brilliance of holding his birth records private. It gives Obama a club to use to dismiss any legitimate questions raised without dealing with them, and keeps the specter of a giant, unfounded conspiracy theory hovering over his opponents points, discrediting them. He's used this political capitol brilliantly, although he's started to spend it, finally (remember in his speech a few months back "Some of them don't even think I was born here", I think it was his "treat me like a dog" speech). Hopefully this yahoo Hawaiian Dem can let this cat out of the bag for good, putting this silly "controversy" to rest and depriving Obama of one of his main tools used to demonize his opponents rather than addressing issues going into 2012.

re: the Sullivan/Palin (non)birth issue....

..... imagine if someone were to try to claim one or both of Obama's daughters weren't born of Michelle ..... based on some pictures they thought didn't make her look pregnant enough.

Imagine if that someone was purportedly a respected opinion-monger writing for a fairly high-profile publication. Would he/she still be in that position?

I find the coincidence fascinating that the new Governor of Hawaii would initiate such interest in clearing up this BC mystery only days after the long time and controversial Director of the Dept. of Health in Hawaii, Dr. Fukino, resigned from her position. Dr. Fukino, for those that might not be familiar, issued a statement back in July '09, indicating that she personally viewed Obama's "vital records" and determined that he was born in Hawaii and was a "natural born American citizen." She never said she saw his BC, just vital records, whatever they might be. Interesting too, that she could determine Obama's natural born status from these documents, given that geographic birth details do not, by themselves, determine such status. In any event, her sudden departure from the DOH is puzzling.

@matthew let the governor release the records that Obama has spent a fortune on lawyers concealing. Who knows what's on the birth certificate? Perhaps his father isn't his father? Who knows, who cares? What would interesting to know if the triple-citizenship dude ever surrendered his two other citizenships or as an adult ever travelled under another passport.

In the meantime do the world a favor and kill yourself in an environmentally, Gaea friendly manner today please.

I think the telling thing about birtherism is when you compare it to liberal insanity. Take Bush's military service. It's not even a requirement to be president, and missing drill doesn't disqualify one to be president. Yet there were numerous public investigations into his service by leading Democrats and mainstream journalists, and liberals even forged documents to support their case. Even after the forgeries were revealed, Dan Rather, a journalist for 30 some years, continued to push them as legitimate, until he finally torpedoed his career over them.

"If Obama were white, or republican you never would have even asked where he was born."

Such a short memory... We asked where McCain, who is white and republican, was born. It was a significant issue in the primary. Democrats naturally brought it up. McCain ended the issue by making his documents publicly available.

Since Obama has taken office, the only mainstream figures to bring up the birther charges are liberals and Democrats. The GOP and Tea Party leadership have dropped the issue.

@Matthew

I am sorry, very sorry your life is such a burden and you are so full of hate and anger...I am sorry that Bush didn't steal any elections and that the war in Iraq is far from illegal, I guess I am just sorry for you. We were and are conducting a discussion about a very simple political matter that is apparently about to be resolved in precisely the way the "idiots" asked for more than three years ago. A matter that has "Democrat" written all over it and here you are bursting in and ranting and raving. Take care, God bless....

"Imagine if that someone was purportedly a respected opinion-monger writing for a fairly high-profile publication. Would he/she still be in that position?"

The worst I've heard about a President's daughter(s) from the right were Limbaugh's remarks about Chelsea Clinton, though he never claimed she was illegitimate (let alone any bizarre mother presenting her daughter's baby as her own), just ugly.

Obviously he's the owner of his high-profile publication, so he didn't fire himself. But he was roundly condemned at time.

And Sully's defense for his insane allegations was "I never actually alleged it, I was just asking." I'm sure that's enough legal cover, but the morality of it is entirely debatable. BTW, I just want to know if he's been beating his boyfriend; I'm just asking! (For the irony-proof left: I'm referring to the classic loaded question to demonstrate how a question can introduce a premise into discourse.)

From the NYT article:

"The birther movement began during the 2008 campaign when some of Mr. Obama’s critics claimed, without offering proof, that he was born in Kenya..."

If memory serves, was it not his opponent in the 2008 Democratic Primary, one Hillary R. Clinton, that originally voiced this accusation?

Even though this accusation could have been easily dismissed, by not doing so Obama only fanned the flames and provided ammunition to the birthers.

Personally, I find the whole argument ridiculous and pointless, as Obama is now in the last half of his one, and only, term. It really is a bit late to worry about his qualifications.

Regardless of his constitutional qualifications to hold office, his actions have left little doubt he is not the right man for the job, and that he is definitely not the same man who ran for the office.

Does the left believe that this latest "proof" will somehow lead the 112th Congress into joining Obama's march toward Socialism?

The task at hand is to limit the damage that Obama, aided by toadies Reid and Pelosi, is able to inflict before the next great purge in 2012.

Until the long form birth certificate is released, there will be people who will continue to make the claim that Øbama was born in Kenya. These people include members of the Kenyan government, who even last year made statements that indicated that Øbama was born in Kenya. I remain sceptical until the records are produced.

However, Øbama is not a Natural Born Citizen, which is the requirement for the Presidency. To be a Natural born citizen, the parents, not parent must both be USA citizens at the time of birth. Øbama claims B H Øbama sr. as his father. Since this is what he claims then he cannot be NBC but is in fact a British citizen because his father, being a native of Kenya was a British citizen, and under British law at the time, it was the father that gives citizenship, not the under age mother.

The other doubt that I have is whether or not Ann Dunham could confer citizenship since she was a minor (infant) according to the law at the time.

In John McCain's case it was known that he was born in Panama, but of citizen parents who were on posting in Panama. McCain did not receive Panamanian citizenship just because he was born there. He is an American citizen, but he did not necessarily meet the strict conditions of NBC because he was not born of the soil. The Senate resolution which was not sought by McCain but was agreed by Øbama still requires that the person is born of citizen parents.

It is interesting that Neil Abercrombie, the one person who knew Barack Obama Sr. and was even a drinking buddy, is now the one who is attempting to release the records. Neil Abercrombie is the only one who has been able to place Ann Dunham with Øbama Sr. He is the only one who stated remembering that he saw her at some of their Communist meetings.

I do think that the NYT and the Washington rag are being hypocrites on the issue. If the records do get released, then that will simply end the issue of where he was born, but it does not resolve the NBC issue because that requires two people to be citizens not a minor female plus a British subject who had no intention of being an American citizen.

@ A. Dumas

I am pretty sure the ball began rolling in the summer of 2008 when Democrat Philip A. Berg, a Hillary Clinton partisan, sued the Obama campaign alleging he was not a Natural Born Citizen. Berg was not shy about his motive: to derail the Obama nomination at the convention. he was, to put it mildly, dramatic, verbose and self-obsessed. A typical Democrat. Previously, he had sued based on an allegation that President Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 attacks. A true Democrat. He seemed convinced that the fed court would drop everything and rule in his favor instantly and thus deprive Obama and enthrone Hillary. A true Hillary partisan. Instead, the fed court judge did not issue his ruling until late October. Democrat Berg tried every means of grand standing known to lawyers and shouted "constitutional crisis" every day. Now, years later another Democrat is stepping forth to change Hawaiian law to, in effect, require the president to turn over documents he clearly does not want to turn over. Since the burden of proof rests on Berg and his fellow dissident Democrats, President Obama has no obligation to turn over the documents. So, if the governor does succeed in getting the documents I will nominate him for King Birther and urge that he be given the Birther Cup trophy by unanimous consent. ;}