True. I agree, but you also don’t need to respond to every wild statement out there. I think the broader political problem is overstated. Other then the birthers is this really a political hindrence to the Obama team? Other then the fringe element of the right who will never believe anything that is produced there seems to be no upside for him to address this. By addressing it you provide legitimacy to these loons in my opinion. Even the vast majority of the right has distanced themselves from this group. I think addressing it now would be the worst thing they can do. It will die, albiet a slow death but if it had any political teeth I think the Obama team would have been bitten by now. Just my opinion but I honestly see no upside to addressing this.
The Obama campaign thought it important enough to release a copy of a database printout certificate. They should have released a photocopy of the original, instead.
Look, neither you nor I know who will be convinced and who will not be convinced. As of July 2009, a whopping 58 percent of Republicans either thought Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US (28 percent) or weren’t sure (30 percent). Using the tired argument that because every skeptic will not be quelled, why make the effort, is seen as dissembling. And, in effect, letting the most extreme element control the less extreme element of the skeptics.
That was during the campaign and in my opinion they made a calculated decision to release what they thought would quell the rumor. Again just my opinion, but to reopen the issue now seems more problematic.
Guess we just don’t see it the same way as I don’t believe it appears dissembling, obviously you do. I know that “I” personally would not release my birth certificate unless I felt it was politically necessary. In my opinion it isn’t politically necessary, the downside is worse then the upside. The republicans are never going to vote for Obama so, in my opinion, what they believe is not relevant. Just like many of the democrats had their beliefs about Bush and there was no upside for the republicans to address those issues either. Swing voters perhaps might be swayed one way or the other, but again unless this is an issue with independent voters it isn’t worth addressing in my opinion. And as an Independent/moderate voter I don’t see it as an issue. Perhaps other independent voters do, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that. Frankly the issues of government spending, etc are more important to independent voters then this issue–in my opinion.
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It would not be Biden. The entire obama/biden ticket would be disqualified. The person with the highest number of votes running for president in 2008, AND, who was qualified to hold office, i.e, John McCain, would take office. Obama would be tossed out on his ear, he would be escorted out of the White House, arrested, and then taken into custody to await formal charges and trial.
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obama knowingly and willingly committed fraud, and took money on false pretenses. So, yes, there certainly would be criminal charges.
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Obama is not eligible for Secret Service protection since he was never legally a President. However, he would get protection from the US Marshalls as a defendent and a prisoner while awaiting trial for fraud.
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Personal insults are not allowed in the GQ forum. Calling out two posters by name and saying they are in the “army of the dumb” is a blatant violation of the rule. This is a formal warning. Stop it now.
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I dont even know why you need to try to make personal attacks. Isnt that against some rule at Straight Dope? Is that the best contribution to the topic that tyou can make? is trying to personally attack other posters? If that is the best you got, then you already lost.
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Secondly, saying obama is a blakc man, is the most ridiculous and irrelevent thing I ever heard. I think it is common knowlege that obama is, AT LEAST, half white, which would therefore make him at least as much of a white man as a black man. What has being black or white got to do with it?
If you cant discuss a topic without going off topic and making racist comments or trying to bring racism into this question, then …enough said.
OOOps!
You beat me by just a few seconds!!
Thanks for trying to keep everyone on topic.
Well, the topic was set up as “if Obama was not a natural born citizen”, not whether he is, and that is specific in the OP. Stuff about whether Hawaii’s records departments have fulfilled their duty in this specific case is irrelevant. The situation would required that the burden of proof be carried by the proponents of the racist proposition: namely that Obama was born outside the United States and to two non-American citizen parents. His mother as an American citizen qualifies him as an American citizen, even if his father had been Lucifer and he had been born on another plane of existence. So people who want to derail the thread which is about remedies, should, if they still want to derail the thread, start going on about how Barack Obama was not in fact the natural child of his mother or how her birth certificate was forged and how she was not a natural born American citizen.
In the meantime this thread is not about Birthers, who are all racist scum, but rather how to remove a President who has snuck into office without being an American citizen, despite the fact that there is no evidence that anyone has ever tried to do this. The closest someone has ever come to running who was not actually born on American soil (as far as I know) was Sen. John McCain, who was born in Panama to two US citizen parents.
It remains that electoral votes are counted and accepted in the Senate and the winner declared by the Senate, so an objection must be raised in the proper fashion there. This was actually a possibility in 2000 where any Senator could have raised the objection that both the President and Vice President were citizens of Texas and only Cheney’s moving his residence to Wyoming was enough to satisfy every Senator that no objection should be raised.
Neither was Reagan. Nor Abraham Lincoln.
ORLY?
Ya rly!
Susanann, in posts #33 and #44 you are making some claims about procedures and about Obama without giving any sources for the information that you have. You were asked for a reliable resource for post #33, but you did not provide one.
I would like to see some evidence for both of these posts. The rules for General Questions says that you are supposed to provide this information when asked. If your claims have any merit, then you shouldn’t have any difficulty backing them up with reliable resources from the internet.
All we are looking for is the truth.
I know this is what many birthers would like to see happen, and what the intention of the lawsuits is, but is there any legal precedent for this at all? The United States Constitution certainly does not provide for disqualifying an entire ticket.
The Miss America Pageant offers a special status to the first runner-up, but this isn’t the Miss America Pageant.
What about if a person is affected by a poilicy change or decision. For example, Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, fines Toyota $1,000,000,000. Could Toyota bring the case to court that LaHood is not the SoT since his appointment is invalid since Obama is not an NBC?
Whoa! Is this true about Obama’s sister? If so, it certainly seems to establish that a Certificate of Live Birth doesn’t prove that you were born in Hawaii.
Also, I have to think that the courts would be more inclined to get involved if actual evidence of malfeasance surfaced. Let’s say a journalist goes to Kenya, does some digging in that country’s archives, and finds a birth certificate saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya. That’s a whole different kettle of fish than unfounded accusations that something might be hinky.
It isn’t true, I asked this question in post #34 and Susanann didn’t respond. If there is some proof of this out there it should be easy for her to provide that info. Finding idle speculation on a birther or right wing site is not proof. I can post that Susanann or you were born in Kenya–doesn’t make it so. The burden of proof is on her as she was the one who brought up the accusation. She has had plenty of time to provide proof so I think we can conclude this is NOT true. So her whole statement that Hawaii hands out Certificates of Live Birth like candy is thus a total falsehood and what RealityChuck posted was accurate. If she would like to post some verifiable instances of Hawaii just issuing fake Certificates I would love to see and research them, without that it is rumor mongering and nothing more.
Is probably what they are referring to. I think that they are referring to the portion where if resident Hawaiians give birth in another country they can under some circumstances get a certification of birth, as happened with Obama’s mother and her daughter (his half-sister). Supposedly this proves that Obama was born in Indonesia too. How that connection is made seems kind of odd as there is still ample proof that sister was born in Indonesia and the President was born in Hawaii.
The sister is also eligible to be President because her mother was an American citizen. Doesn’t matter where they were born. John McCain was born in Panama to American parents.
In fact, the constitution specifically provides that disqualification of the president does not disqualify the vice president (or vice president-elect).
The twelfth amendment clearly states that the electors vote in distinct ballots for president and vice-president. Hence, in the electoral college (which is the only vote that, from a constitutional standpoint, matters), there is no “ticket”–there is one vote for president, and a separate and independent vote for vice president.
Further, as seen in the twenty-fifth (since the twentieth only applies to disqualification before the date for the president’s term to start–but it has the same effect), if the president is removed from office, resigns, or dies during his term, the vice president becomes president–not the loser of the general election.
Well, I have a Certificate of Live Birth from New York that certainly doesn’t suggest that I was bron in Hawaii! 
Seriously, whatever may be the case about certificates attesting that someone was born, or claims to have been born, on a given date somewhere outside the forum state, Mr. Obama’s, nd my own, certificate attests that a record of birth at a specific time and place is on file with the Vital Statistics people in the relevant state – that, in short, Mr. Obama was born in a specific hospital in Honolulu.
As for Obama’s stepsister (and would be the case for him if the Birther allegations were true), at the time of his birth his mother had not met the residency requirements to pass citizenship on to her children as a single Americcan parent. Whether the law had been changed by the time of his stepsister’s brith, I do not know. A boy born in Kenya today to a couple with the nationalities of Mr. Obama’s parents would in fact be a natural-born U.S. citizen, presuming that term to mean “citizen by birth” (pace Tom Tildrum and the points he makes)
And yes, ignoring the allegations about Chester A. Arthur, McCain is the closest we have come to having a jus sanguinis-only “foreign born” President. George Romney, serious contender for the 1960 Republican nomination and father of Mitt, was born in Mexico to an American missionary couple. All three were definitely eligible under jus sanguinis regardless of place of birth.