I heard secondhand that those nutty birthers don’t think the birth certificate that’s been examined and passed around the net is a “genuine” birth certificate, In other words, a “certificate of live birth” like that could be obtained fraudulently, and no one’s seen Obama’s REAL birth certificate. Sorry if that’s kind of vague, but I haven’t seen a primary source.
Anyway, has anyone looked into this? Let’s be clear - these conspiracy nuts are bonkers - but I’m wondering what the story is with “certificate of live birth” vs. “birth certificate,” whether it’s just a Hawaii thing, whether it’s absolutely and completely false, or whatever.
What they want is the certificate handed to his mother at the time of birth. That’s not likely to turn up.
The “certificate of live birth” is a perfectly legal Hawaiian proof of birth. I believe other states have similar records.
For instance, I have my own “Certification of Birth” from New York; it would not pass muster for the birthers, since is doesn’t give any parental information – just name, sex, DOB, Place of Birth, and filing date. However, it’s plenty good for the State Department and the State of New York.
Which is odd, because hospital birth certificates are not accepted by many government agencies as proof of birth. They are decorative mementos, not legal documents.
It’s my understanding that most of these records are not originals in the sense that we think of the same piece of paper and not a copy or microfiche print.
The birthers wouldn’t like my birth certificate either. It is “only” a certificate of live birth, and contains two errors regarding my parents details. Never the less, it was fine to get me a driver’s licencense in two states, a social security card, a passport and renewal of such. If I were to run for president, I’m sure it would be satisfactory for that too…but then I’m not half black, so it’s OK.
It’s not that it won’t turn up, just that the State of Hawai’i won’t release it except to Obama or his next of kin. Strangely, the birthers are not demanding that the Congressional delegation from Hawai’i present their birth certificates…
Well, see, Obama wanted to be born in the U.S. His nine-month totally broke pregnant mother suddenly decided to leave the country and fly a zillion miles to Kenya to give birth there. We know this because his grandmother admitted it. Now even though she’s an American, there was a clause at the time that granted natural born child status only to children whose mother had been in the country a certain amount of time, And she was so young she didn’t qualify. And his father was a British citizen, so BO would take British citizenship himself, and possibly dual citizenship, but he couldn’t have natural born citizenship status.
But. There’s a loophole. For some reason non-Hawaiian births of Hawaiians could be reported and give a COLB, a certificate of live birth, which is somehow different from a birth certificate. So the mere fact of a COLB means nothing. It might mean he’s non-American at birth. We need the actual state form, the birth certificate to decide. What’s that you say, you say you’re a state official authorized to deal with such matters and you’ve looked and seen it? Where it is? What do you mean that by policy you don’t give it out? I’m a person that believes that a scared 18-year-old girl without the cash to buy cross continental airline tickets, would do so and would leave her family in the ninth month of pregnancy just to deliver a baby in primitive conditions before bringing him instantly back to the U.S. even though no records exist of her ever leaving the country at that time. Doing this gets you only a certificate of live birth on your return, not a true birth certificate. What, you say Obama has a true birth certificate? You’ve seen it? Hawaiian officials have seen it? But we can’t see it? Conspiracy, Man, what are you hiding?
And the grandmother who saw it said that the birth was in Kenya. We have the tape. And we’ll keep quoting the tape right up until the part when the translator figures out the grandmother hadn’t heard the question right and tries again, at which point the grandmother is vehement that Obama was not born there. But that a correction after a prompting so who would believe that. And it gets worse, His mother brought him to Indonesia and later took him home and they didn’t go through immigration because she fooled the government by a claim they were both Americans. But BO therefore now is an illegal alien because he wasn’t a citizen and didn’t enter the country through immigration, and an illegal alien isn’t illegible to any of the posts he’s had.
Which just goes to show that the conspiracy is even more pervasive than you thought. Please report to the Ministry for Culture and Propaganda forthwith to have your tinfoil hat calibrated.
the real issue has nothing to do with the birth certificate IMO. To me the issue was that there doesn’t seem to be any checks to ensure the Constitution is being adhered to in terms of the qualifications for president. At a certain point, if the Constitution is being violated, it hurts everybody. What if Congress declares an amendment passed with only a majority of the states approving it? Suppose Congress refuses to call a Constitutional Convention even if all of the requirements of Article V is met? An American citizen can do nothing because they do not have standing - I guess a state would have to file in those cases and in the case of Obama being a NBC a suit would have to be filed by a presidential candidate.
Not to say it’s wrong, but it showed a huge flaw in our system - who protects the Constitution when the government won’t?
The definitive record is the entry in the Register of Births. In the Good Old Days that would have been a line on a page in a big paper ledger. Or it could be an original form, giving details of the birth and signed (usually) by a hospital official, delivered to the Registry and bound up in a big binder. Whatever form it takes, it never leaves the Registry.
A “Birth Certificate” is a certificate that the details set out in the certificate are recorded in the Register of Births. Assuming you are entitled to get somebody’s birth certificate, then you can get as certificates as you like, as often as you like. They write certicates up when you ask for them, and they will be signed or otehrwise authenticated by a current official of the Registry. Each of them is a certificate, not a copy of a certificate. (If you photocopy one of them, that’s a copy of a certificate).
In many places both short certificates (stating name, date and place of birth) and long certificates (also stating names, occupations, etc of parents) can be obtained. This is so that if you only want to prove, e.g., your age, you don’t have to disclose what may sometimes be sensitive private information, like the fact that your father was unknown).
In some places they will routinely issue the parents with a birth certificate shortly after the birth is registered, without their having to ask. In other places, they won’t issue until asked.
The first certificate that gets handed out (what somebody might think of as the “original” birth certificate) has no particular status or priority over the others. Barring error they will, in any event, all say the same things.
I don’t see what the problem here is. The government body charged with selecting the President is the Electoral College. It is for them to satisfy themselves that the candidate they select meets the constitutional age and citizenship requirements. By the time the Electoral College sat, a birth certificate showing Obama’s place and date of birth had been widely circulated. Was there something more they should have done but didn’t do?
At this point anything that was released would be immediately said to be a fake created by the Democratic Hawaiian administration and the CIA, etc. Thus, numerous groups would demand to be personally given access to the certificate so they could run extensive tests on the paper and ink to prove its validity. If they couldn’t find anything wrong with it, that would be because the fake was so well crafted that it must have been made by the master counterfeiters in North Korea who blackmailed Obama into giving them nuclear secrets. In other words, there will always be another reason that they can come up with.
But the term “natural born citizen” is defined by Congress, not the Constitution. All the laws cited by birthers as showing Obama’s not a citizen are federal laws, not Constitutional requirements. By any sane measure, the certificate is a legal proof of US birth – the State Department recognized it when Obama got a passport.
Well, what about the state officials in Hawaii, the people have the legal requirement to keep the records and to provide copies? They have said that the certificate of live birth provided by Mr. Obama is valid, as reported by FactCheck.org:
Since it is the State that has the primary responsibility for keeping those records, and the state officials have confirmed its validity, that seems sufficient. From that point on, the onus is on those who would challenge Mr. Obama’s citizenship to come up with some proof.
Hey, I hate Obama as much as any sane person does, but I had no idea this “birther” movement existed. What a bunch of loonies; all they do is discredit the normal regressives such as myself.