The State of Hawaii is contemplating passing a law allowing its officials not to answer the requests of concerned Americans who are looking for proof from that State that putative President Barack Obama was born there as he claims. Officials there contend that many of the open records requests are repetitive and vexatious and they cause them to lose time and money in providing a response to others.We hope that the State of Hawaii will consider the state of affairs as they exist today regarding the question of whether Obama was born in Hawaii. It is probably these circumstances which causes concerned Americans to continue to pursue the State for a definitive answer. Let us review what we know.
Obama must be an Article II “natural born Citizen” in order to be eligible to be President. I have written that showing that he is a Fourteenth Amendment born “citizen of the United States” without more is not sufficient to show that he is a “natural born Citizen.” In any event, Obama must at least prove that he is a born “citizen of the United States” before he can prove that he is a “natural born Citizen.”
Was Obama born in Hawaii? What is the evidence for and against?
Obama supporters provide the following evidence as proof that Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and that he is therefore a born “citizen of the United States” under the Fourteenth Amendment. The comments in parenthesis are my response to the proffered evidence:
(1) He was a State and U.S. Senator (although we do not know what type of vetting was done for those offices);
(2) Obama posted on the internet a copy of what his supporters call his “birth certificate” (although the image is only of a 2007 Certification of Live Birth [COLB] computer form, which is a computer generated and easily forged form that was posted online in 2008 which is not a true Birth Certificate and is not a typed contemporaneous birth certificate from 1961 which would have the name and signature of the delivering doctor or witnesses to the birth. No witnesses or hospitals have ever attested to Obama being born in Hawaii.);
(3) John McCain and Hillary Clinton would have told us he was not born in Hawaii during the primary and presidential campaigns (although they might have had political and racial reasons for not doing so);
(4) The media would have discovered his not being born in Honolulu (although the media was afraid to properly vet Obama because of not wanting to be labeled racist);
(5) The FBI, CIA, and other security agencies would tell us if he was not born in Hawaii (although we do not know if they can legally even raise the question and who among them would);
(6) The Electoral College elected him President (although electors under most state statutes are beholden to their political party);
(7) A majority of Americans elected him President (although many of them may not have known of the constitutional issue of or even cared about where he was born);
(8) Congress confirmed his election (although political party politics and race sensitivity could have motivated it to avoid addressing the issue);
(9) Obama is currently the sitting President (although that defacto status is not proof of where he was born);
(10) No court has told us that he was not born in Honolulu (although no court has granted discovery or reached the merits of the question of where Obama was born);
(11) Obama has traveled internationally allegedly on a U.S. passport (although he has not ever publicly produced one);
(12 The Hawaiian Department of Health has confirmed that he was born in Hawaii (although its statements are incomplete and inconclusive and they have never confirmed the online COLB computer form image is genuine);
(13) There exists a birth announcement in two local Honolulu newspapers printed in August 1961 (but these announcements alone do not prove that Obama was born in Honolulu. See No. 20 below).
Those concerned Americans who question where Obama was born provide the following evidence as proof that Obama has not conclusively proven that he was born in Hawaii:
(1) Obama's step-grandmother, Sarah Obama, told Bishop McRae, who was in the United States, during a telephonic interview on October 12, 2008, while she was in her home located in Alego-Kogello, Kenya, that was full of security police and people and family who were celebrating then-Senator Obama's success story, that she was present to witness Obama's birth in Kenya, not the United States (the English and Swahili conversation is recorded and available for listening). She was adamant about this fact not once but twice. The conversation which was placed on speaker phone was translated into English by "Kweli Shuhubia" and one of the grandmother's grandsons who were present with the grandmother in the house. After the grandmother made the same statement twice, her grandson intervened, saying "No, No, No, He [sic] was born in the United States." During the interview, the grandmother never changed her reply that she was present when Obama was born in Kenya. The fact that later in the same interview she changed her statement to say that Obama was born in Hawaii does not change the fact that she initially stated twice that she was present when Obama was born in Kenya. One would think that a grandmother would know whether she was present or not at the birth of her American Senator and U.S. Presidential candidate grandson;
(2) The Kenyan Ambassador to the United States, Peter N.R.O. Ogego, confirmed on November 6, 2008, during a radio interview with Detroit radio talk-show hosts Mike Clark, Trudi Daniels, and Marc Fellhauer on WRIF's "Mike In the Morning," that "President-Elect Obama" was born in Kenya and that his birth place was already a "well-known" attraction;
(3) Ms. Odhiambo a Member of the Kenyan Parliament said in session and recorded in the official record of the Kenyan National Assembly on 5 Nov 2008 on page 3275 that Obama was a son of the soil of their country;
(4) Several African newspapers said in 2004 that Obama was born in Kenya. Also see this more recent one in Ghana. Africa's press knows what the American media refuses to investigate. There have also been other reports in the media that Obama was born in Kenya. A good list of these reports may be found at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=138293 where actual screen shots of the stories may be viewed;
(5) Obama's wife, Michelle Obama stated in a video taped speech she made a couple years ago that Kenya is Obama's home country. During a speech that Michelle gave to an audience of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) delegates at the 2008 Democrat Party Convention on the topic of getting tested for HIV and in showing that Obama leads by example, Michelle Obama told them: "He has also spoken out against the stigma surrounding HIV testing, which is still plaguing so many of our communities, which you all know--a lot of that is due to homophobia. Barack has lead by example. When we took our trip to Africa and visited his home country in Kenya, he took a public HIV test for the very point of showing the folks in Kenya that there is nothing to be embarrassed about in getting tested.” “Home country” is defined as “the country in which a person was born and usually raised, regardless of the present country of residence and citizenship.” http://www.allwords.com/word-home+country.html. It is highly suspicious that Obama's transcripts of Michelle's speech now do not contain the reference by Michelle to Kenya being his "home country." http://www.thepostemail.com/2010/04/03/obamas-facebook-page-omits-michelles-home-country-of-kenya-remark/. Obama's facebook page has a transcript of her "home country" speech. The transcript omits the "home country" wording and says this instead: "He has supported full funding for the Ryan White CARE Act and has pledged to implement a national HIV/AIDS strategy to combat the continuing epidemic in the United States. He has also spoken out against the stigma surrounding HIV testing, a stigma tied all too often to homophobia. And he's led by example: On our trip to Kenya, (omission) we both took a public HIV test." The words "Barack's home country" are omitted;
(6) NPR public radio archived story says Obama in Kenyan-born;
(7) No hospital in Honolulu has yet to confirm that he was born there. One would think that given that Obama is the first African-American President elected in the U.S., that his birth in any hospital would be an historic event. One would also expect the birth hospital to be boasting about the birth there and naming the wing of the hospital where Obama was allegedly born after him. Why would any such hospital not make its claim to Obama and even publicize the event to increase its exposure and marketing appeal? It is only reasonable to ask oneself why all the secrecy and mystery?;
(8) Obama and his sister stated different Honolulu hospitals at which he was allegedly born. In a November 2004 interview with the Rainbow Newsletter, Maya told reporters that her half-brother, then Sen. Barack Obama, was born on Aug. 4, 1961, at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu. Then in February 2008, Maya told reporters for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that Obama was born at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children which is also located in Honolulu. Obama claims he was born in Kapi'olani Medical Center;
(9) Obama has refused to give consent to Kapi’olani Medical Center for it to release minimal documents confirming he was born there as he claims;
(10) No witness with any personal information has come forward to confirm he was born in Honolulu;
(11) New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson publicly stated during the 2008 campaign that Obama was an immigrant;
(12) Obama has refused to release to the public his education, work, and travel documents (including passports he used for international travel);
(13) Obama’s kindergarten records have allegedly disappeared;
(14) Obama’s application to the Franciscus Assisi Primary School in Indonesia states he was an Indonesian citizen;
(15) Obama has only produced for public viewing a 2008 computer image of an alleged computer generated June 6, 2007 Certification of Live Birth (COLB) which contains no independently verifiable information to corroborate his alleged birth in Honolulu as would be found on a Certificate of Live Birth (Birth Certificate). FactCheck.org web site has this to say about the COLB: "The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response." FactCheck did provide an "Update," on August 26, when they stated: "We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health." They go on to explain they did get some clarification from them to "some" of their questions. But they do not address why DOH did not answer their question as to why DOH "only offer the short form" COLB. http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html. It is unbelievable that a fact-checking organization such a FactCheck (actually a reading of their "objective" information on this issue shows that they are quite biased and prejudiced on the issue in favor of Obama) would allow such an important matter to just die with the excuse that the DOH did not provide a response to their request for information. Would any reasonable person call that responsible and thorough fact investigation? Hawaii Department of Heath has "affirmed that no paper birth certificate records were destroyed when the department moved to electronic record-keeping in 2001." http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=105347. For an explanation as to who at the FactCheck organization allegedly handled and photographed the COLB and "authenticated" the document (Jess Henig and Joe Miller) go to http://www.theobamafile.com/_eligibility/AnnenbergFactCheckers.htm;
(16) Various experts on documents and digital images state the digital image of the alleged 2007 computer generated Certification of Live Birth (COLB) placed on the internet by Obama's campaign in 2008 and the alleged underlying document later pictured on the internet is a forgery;
(17) Obama refuses to produce a contemporaneous birth certificate created in 1961;
(18) Hawaii Health Department has publicly released incomplete and inconclusive information which Obama supporters claim shows that Obama was born in Honolulu. Anyone who is only relying on the fact that Hawaii officials do not say that Obama was born in any place other than Hawaii is missing the point which is what sufficient and credible proof exists that Obama was born in Hawaii. We do not know what evidence Hawaii is relying on to simply say that he was born in Hawaii. If the underlying root "evidence" is fraudulent, then anything Hawaii says is of no value and surely not evidence that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii. In other words, in such a case, Hawaii would be picking fruit from a poisonous tree.
Section 338-5 of the Hawaiian statute provides: "§338-5 Compulsory registration of births. Within the time prescribed by the department of health, a certificate of every birth shall be substantially completed and filed with the local agent of the department in the district in which the birth occurred, by the administrator or designated representative of the birthing facility, or physician, or midwife, or other legally authorized person in attendance at the birth; or if not so attended, by one of the parents. The birth facility shall make available to the department appropriate medical records for the purpose of monitoring compliance with the provisions of this chapter. [L 1949, c 327, §9; RL 1955, §57-8; am L Sp 1959 2d, c 1, §19; HRS §338-5; am L 1988, c 149, §1]."
Obama alleges he was born in Kapi'olani Medical Center. At no time during the ongoing public debate about whether Obama was born in Hawaii has any official from Hawaii at least informed the pubic that Obama's alleged vital records show that his birth certificate from 1961 was "completed and filed" with the health department in Honolulu by some official of that hospital or a physician or midwife associated with that institution. If Obama was born in a hospital as he claims, we cannot reasonably believe that his birth certificate would have been completed and filed by one of his parents. Additionally, under this statute, Hawaii has the power and authority to obtain medical records from Kapi'olani Medical Center to confirm Obama's alleged Hawaiian birth. At no time did Hawaii inform the American public that it in fact confirmed with that hospital that Obama was in fact born there which it can do under the cited statute. Hawaii has withheld this underlying evidence from the public. This withholding of evidence is a grave matter given that there exists such reasonable doubt as to whether Obama, the putative President and Commander in Chief of our military might, was in fact born in Hawaii.
We will know what the underlying evidence is about Obama's alleged birth in Hawaii only if we can examine Obama's contemporaneous birth certificate from 1961 which is readily available since Obama claims he was born in Kapi'olani Medical Center in 1961. That root document will tell us the name of the hospital in which he was born and the name of the doctor or midwife who delivered him. Those pieces of information are highly corroborative of the place and time of birth, for they provide a whole other dimension of contemporaneous facts that would support Hawaii's or anybody else's bare statement as to the place and time of Obama's birth.
Under Section 338-5, any birth certificate has to be completed and filed by some institution (hospital) or person (doctor, midwife, or parent). This statute also shows that Hawaii has the authority to confirm any reported birth by examining medical records. While Hawaii pretends to have come clean with the American public, it did not even provide such basic information or conduct such due diligence which would at least give the public greater assurance that Obama's birth record is genuine;
(19) In 1961 it was not very difficult for a family member to defraud the State of Hawaii by registering and claiming a child was born there when he or she was not and obtain a Hawaiian birth certificate;
(20) A newspaper birth announcement from local Honolulu newspapers was simply a confirmation that the Honolulu health department "registered" a birth as occurring there based on what someone told them. Given Hawaii's very lax birth registration laws in 1961, without independent contemporaneous evidence and non-family member witnesses, the registration of a birth as having occurred in Hawaii does not 100% prove the birth actually occurred there. The placement of the identical birth announcements in the Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser does not prove that Obama was born in Hawaii. The only thing the ads do is confim that someone at the time told the newspapers that Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama had a son, who was born on August 4, 1961. Simply telling a third party that someone was born in a certain place and at a certain time is not conclusive evidence that the birth in fact occurred there at that time. Corroborating evidence is needed to support such a statement. For in-hospital births such as is alleged for Obama, such evidence would be naming the hospital in which the child was born and the doctor who delivered the child. The birth ads that appear in the two newspaper are identical in content, with the same format and the same chronological order. The ads do not contain the name of the baby, for it does not give the name of the "son." The ads were not placed by the family but rather were generated by the Hawaii Health Department which would explain the format of the ads and why the same exact information appears in two separate newspapers. Finally, common sense tells us that if someone defrauded the Hawaii Health Department regarding whether Obama was born in Hawaii, the ads would be based on fraudulent information and would prove absolutely nothing. The August 13, 1961 ad in the Honolulu Sunday Advertiser announcing the Obama birth along with the August 16, 1961 ad in the Honolulu Advertiser announcing the Nordyke twins birth can be viewed at http://obamatrueandfalse.com/2010/04/16/true-1961-birth-announcements-reported-by-hawaii-bureau-of-health-statistics/. Note the heading of both of the ads says "Health Bureau Statistics" which confirms that the information was provided to the newspaper by the Hawaii Health Department and not any family member;
(21) The proffered online image of the Certification of Live Birth (COLB) put on the internet states in the lower left corner a date of "Filing" the birth registration. It does not state that the birth registration was "Accepted." Computer generated COLBs obtained for other people registered in Hawaii have the word and date "Accepted" in that field. See these examples compared to Obama's COLB. This implies the birth registration was never finally accepted and that additional information on the birth registration was requested by the state but never received. If the state questioned the evidence in 1961 provided by the family to register the birth as occurring in Hawaii, that is all the more reason now to investigate the birth registration method and statements provided to the Health Department by the family back in 1961. What evidence was missing such that the registration was never "Accepted;"
(22) There is no public drive to commemorate Obama’s place of birth. This is even more suspect given that so many people have questioning his place of birth. One would think that Obama's supporters would want to make a public event out of commemorating his place of birth so that those who question his place of birth (who Obama supporters disparagingly call the "birthers") could be put in their place once and for all;
(23) No government, political, security, or police agency or media entity has confirmed for the American people that Obama was born in Honolulu;
(24) Attorney Phil Berg has filed with a Federal Court an affidavit in which an investigator recounts how he went to the hospital in Mombasa, Kenya and was told by officials there that Obama was born in that hospital;
(25) Susan and Gretchen Nordyke ("the Nordyke twins") were born at Kapi'olani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital Aug. 5, 1961, one day after Obama was allegedly born at the same facility on August 4, 1961. These twins produced for the public copies of their long-form birth certificates, otherwise known as a Certificate of Live Birth, issued by the Hawaii Department of Health. The Nordykes' certificates include information missing from the short-form document that Obama published online (a Certification of Live Birth or know as a COLB), including the name of the hospital where the babies were born and the name of the attending physician that delivered them. Apart from the fact that it is clear that a long-form Certification of Live Birth actually exists for the same time when Obama was born, the twins' birth certificates also raise an issue regarding sequential numbering of Hawaii birth certificates. One would reasonably assume that the Nordyke twins' certificate number on their birth certificate should be higher since their birth would have occurred after Obama's and their birth also increased the population. Susan Nordyke was born at 2:12 p.m. Hawaii time and was given No. 151 – 61 – 10637, which was filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961. Gretchen Nordyke followed at 2:17 p.m. and was given No. 151 – 61 – 10638, which was also filed with the Hawaii registrar Aug. 11, 1961. The Obama Certification of Live Birth (COLB) shows his certification number to be 151 1961-010641, which is three numbers later from the last born twin rather than being a number earlier than the first born twin. Raising more questions is the fact that Obama's birth was registered with the Hawaii registrar three days earlier, Aug. 8, 1961. How could his birth be registered earlier than the twins but be given a certificate number later than the twins? Another question is why the middle figure in Obama's purported registration is 1961, indicating the year of birth, while the Nordykes' is merely 61? WND was unable to receive a response from Hawaii officials regarding the state's procedure for issuing registration numbers and their providing a reasonable answer to these questions. The Nordyke twins birth certificate story was fully reported at http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=105347;
(26) A debate on the adoption of a new Constitution took place in the House of the National Assembly of Kenya on Thursday, March 25, 2010. The Official Report of that House, dated Thursday, March 25, 2010, provides the details of that debate. One of the speakers during that debate was The Minister for Lands, Mr. Erengo. Ironically, he expressed that "[i]f we do not live by the values and principles contained in this Constitution, all that is contained in this Constitution will be of no significance...." He continued saying that Kenyans must follow the rule of law and especially the Constitution, stating that the "unmaking of Kenya began by disregard and non-compliance of the law. We ended up in a dictatorship that we had to fight for so many years...." He further explained that under the new proposed Constitution, the "Executive authority of the President . . . is derived from the people...." He then explained that Kenya must overcome its problem of elements of its population excluding people from participating in Kenyan life because of ethnic factors. He asked that all Kenyans unite, regardless of ethnic or tribal affiliations, stating: "The other thing that we are addressing through devolution is exclusion. What has made us suffer as a nation is exclusion. Once people feel excluded, even when you want to employ a policeman or constable or you want to build a dispensary, it must come from the centre. In the colonial days, these things were being done on the ground and they could give bursaries and build roads. I commend devolution. Those who fear devolution are living in the past. They are being guided by their ethnic consideration and objectives. They are living in the past. If America was living in a situation where they feared ethnicity and did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation, how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the President of America? It is because they did away with exclusion. What has killed us here is exclusion; that once Mr. Orengo is President, I know of no other place than Ugenya. That is why we were fighting against these many Presidencies in the past. I hope that Kenya will come of age. This country must come of age. People want freedom and nations want liberation, but countries want independence." Mr. Erengo's statement to the Kenyan Assembly in session is recorded in the official record/minutes of the Kenyan National Assembly meeting on the 25th of March, 2010, that the President of the USA was born in Kenya and is not a native born American. Scroll down to page 31 in the official record of the Kenyan Assembly meeting of 25 March 2010. There we have it clearly stated by a current member of the Kenyan Cabinet that Obama was born in Kenya and is not a "native American." It is unbelievable that a high-ranking member of the Kenyan government would make such a matter-of-fact statement, given the debate that is raging in the United States about whether Obama was born in Hawaii or Kenya. The full report may be found at http://www.bunge.go.ke/parliament/downloads/tenth_forth_sess/Hansard/RDRAFT25.03P.pdf. The speech of Mr. Erengo starts at page 29 and ends at page 31. The above quote is found on page 31;
(27) Another Kenyan Minister on April 14, 2010, made a statement about Obama's origins and says that Obama should repatriate himself to Kenya. "What commitment did they make about compensation and more importantly, the biggest artefact [sic] in the USA today that belongs to this country is one Barrack Obama. How does he intend to repatriate himself or part of the money that is realized from all the royalties that he is attracting across the whole world?" Kenyan Minister Khalwale Asks When Obama Will Repatriate Himself @ Jefferson's Rebels http://jeffersonsrebels.blogspot.com/2010/04/kenyan-minister-khalwale-asks-when.html.
None of these factors alone would be sufficient to disprove that Obama was born in Hawaii. But the totality of them raises legitimate doubts which Obama should dispel by providing corroborating evidence supporting his claim that he was born in Hawaii. That evidence must be more than just posting a computer image of an alleged 2008 COLB which at best is only prima facie evidence that he was born in Hawaii, for it does not contain the name of the birth hospital in Honolulu or of the delivering doctor there or other corroborating evidence.
Given America’s military might and who her current enemies are, Americans know that an attack upon America will most likely not come from without but rather from within. They also know the amount of power that the President and Commander in Chief of the Military wields and how that power affects their lives every day. Given these circumstances, it should not be difficult to understand why Americans, concerned for their life, liberty, safety, security, tranquility, and property, want to protect themselves by making sure that their President and Commander in Chief was born in Hawaii as he claims he was and that he is a “natural born Citizen” to whom they can entrust their very lives.
It is Obama who chose to run for President. We cannot imagine that he does not realize that he has no reasonable expectation of privacy as to his place of birth and as to what he has done in his life. Regardless of where Obama was born, he has lost what he probably perceives to be nothing more than a little birth certificate game given that he has disrespected so many Americans who have every right to know who their President is. Obama is supposed to be a constitutional scholar. Maybe he never learned or he forgot that the President works for and answers to the people who under our Constitutional Republic are the sovereigns.
We hope that Hawaii can understand the frustrations that these concerned Americans feel when they turn to that state for confirmation regarding Obama’s place of birth which Obama himself could easily provide. Obama’s refusal to provide basic credible information showing where he was born can only leave us thinking what is Obama hiding.
Mario Apuzzo, Esq.
March 17, 2010
Update: April 25, 2010
http://puzo1.blogspot.com/
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A comment about the Hawaiian birth certification issue by Commander Kerchner: Birth certificate registration fraud is more common than people realize. Here is an example of how people born in other countries were being falsely registered as born in the USA.
Birth Registration Fraud. It's Been Done Before | by WND.com
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=107200
Charles Kerchner
Commander USNR (Retired)
http://www.protectourliberty.org/
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