Archive | Selective Service

Obama’s Selective Service registration

New (old) attack on Obama’s Selective Service registration

By on January 30, 2013 in Old News, Orly Taitz, Selective Service, Zombies

The signer of Orly’s latest affidavit sounds a little more expert than the usual birther volunteer document examiner, 20 years as a special agent with Homeland Security  and 20 years as an investigator with the Coast Guard. For some reason, though, Coffman has had a thing about investigating Barack Obama dating back at least to his Senate days in February of 2008.

I have to start off by saying that I don’t know if this Jeffrey Steven Coffman has the qualifications listed on his affidavit. For the purposes of discussion, however, I will assume that he does. As with any expert testimony, a report is presented and the methodology is described, and it is the methodology that I will treat below.

Here’s the affidavit: Continue Reading →

Selective Service confirms: records not destroyed

By on May 21, 2012 in Mike Zullo, Selective Service

In a letter to Mike Zullo dated May 10, Richard S. Flahavan, Associate Director for Public and Intergovernmental, confirms that original copies of Selective Service registrations (the “record copy”) on microfilm are maintained in a secure facility, as well as a working copy. A computer database is also maintained for registrants born after January 1, 1960.

We’ve seen images of the microfilm registration form, and a screen shot from the computer system obtained in 2008 for Barack Obama.

In what appears to be a jab at the Cold Case Posse, Flahavan said:

…access is available to law enforcement organizations with Federal jurisdiction that are conducting an authorized Federal investigation.

I.e., “not you, buddy.”

The inquiry that prompted this letter is based an a birther’s silly reading of a Federal regulation that permitted destruction of non-record copies of registrations that weren’t needed any more. See my article: “Obama’s draft registration: conspiracies simmer”.

2012-05-10 – Letter – SSS to Zullo – Flahavan

Obama’s draft registration: conspiracies simmer

By on May 8, 2012 in Selective Service

In a big article authored by Alan Jones at the Washington Times Communities web site, further discussion of Barack Obama’s Selective Service System registration appears. The article is far too long and filled with WND-style innuendo and re-hashing of old grievances; however, there are two points I would like to single out for comment.

First, the author says:

Review of official documents posted on the websites of the Government Printing Office, NARA, and the Selective Service System confirms that if Obama registered for selective service in 1980, the original paper card would have likely been destroyed, but only after being transferred into original microfilm records, microfilm record copies, and computer storage systems.

Birthers seem to be averse to providing hyperlinks to government documents, but it wasn’t too hard to find and this information shows that demands to see original paper documents by various birthers are moot and in particular that Sheriff “Clueless Joe” Arpaio asked SSS director Romo to produce the original form.

The question then is reduced to whether the copy of the FOIA microfilm image of Obama’s registration issued by the Selective Service System in 2008 under the Bush Administration, is actually on the microfilm with all the other 1980 registrations.

The second point is an allegation/innuendo that the government changed the rules to allow it to destroy evidence. The article says:

The Selective Service System’s new privacy rules were published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, September 20, 2011, four days after the September 16 announcement by World Net Daily that the Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff’s Office “Cold Case Posse” was opening an inquiry with full subpoena power into alleged forgery of several documents concerning Obama’s birth and draft registration.

The obvious response to this nonsense is that if the Cold Case Posse had the authority to subpoena Selective Service records, why didn’t they? They have no such authority. Further, folks had been spreading rumors about Obama’s draft registration since 2008! No one knew, when Sheriff Joe announced his investigation, that an issue that had been debunked two years before was going to be dusted off as a main character in the result.

The article claims that the status of microfilm copies of Selective Service applications has changed, that copies that once were required to be retained can now be destroyed. Copies that must be kept are “record” copies and those that may be destroyed are “non-record” copies. What I see in Jones’ article is the typical birther inability to read. The original microfilm record must be retained until the registrant reaches age 85. The change in the regulation simply clarifies that copies of the original microfilm are non-record copies (it didn’t say before whether they were record or non-record).

The article is full of information; the conclusions are just wrong.

Canceling the Cold Case Posse

By on April 2, 2012 in Joe Arpaio, Selective Service

The birthers (and to a lesser extent the anti-birthers) approach the Cold Case Posse’s claims that Barack Obama’s Selective Service System is a forgery at a disadvantage. The difficulty is that they are introduced to the topic along with a set of “facts,” a pre-packaged way of interpreting those facts, exhibits with lines and arrows suggesting how to look at them, and a conclusion. No one who looks at the Cold Case Posse report has the opportunity to see the evidence with a fresh viewpoint without a pre-manufactured context.

The purpose of this article is not to refute the Cold Case Posse’s report, but to give folks the tools to look at the evidence independently with perhaps a fresh viewpoint.

I collect postage stamps, some on envelopes. As a result, I have a number of old covers (that’s what stamp collectors call them) from the 1980’s and a few of them are hand-canceled. So let me share what I have. But first, let’s look at an exhibit from the Cold Case Posse report, their Exhibit G. The mark on the left is Obama’s registration and the one on the right is a from some other form.

image

Cold Case Posse Exhibit G

You notice that some lines have been added to show that the placement of  the “80” on Obama’s form is too far to the right compared to the “authentic one.” But look again. the “authentic one” isn’t centered. The CCP is prejudicing you to believe that a badly-centered date is normal. Below is one from my collection centered the way it obviously should be. See how the “8” is perfectly centered under the day digit, just like the Obama registration stamp. The CCP, on the other hand, clearly has the “8” not centered—far to the left of where it belongs. Does this mean that the CCP “authentic image” is a fake? By their standards, I guess it is. In fact the date slugs are mechanically inserted into the stamp and don’t have to be perfectly centered.

scan0005

Properly-centered year slug

Continue Reading →

Selective Service to Arpaio: You can take your evidence and …

By on March 29, 2012 in Joe Arpaio, Selective Service

Selective Service logoIn a letter dated March 22, Richard S. Flahavan, Associate Director of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs with the Selective Service System responded to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s request for an investigation of Obama’s selective service registration. Flahavan wrote:

This Agency has no evidence that President Obama’s 1980 registration is not authentic. However, if you have any credible evidence to the contrary and believe that a Federal crime has been committed, we suggest that it be turned over immediately to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to pursue.

You would have thought that Sheriff Arpaio would have already known how to refer a case to the FBI.

AZ: Sheriff Joe asks for Selective Service investigation

By on March 21, 2012 in Joe Arpaio, Selective Service

Joe Arpaio photoIn a press release today, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says that he has sent a letter to Director Lawrence Romo of the U. S. Selective Service System, asking him to investigate Obama’s draft registration in the wake of the MSCO volunteer band of birther report that it’s a forgery. This is reported by E. J. Montini at AZCentral.com. Arpaio also wants Romo to “produce the original form so forensic document examiners can analyze the document to determine if it is authentic.” I would assume that the original form is long gone, having been filmed or scanned. I also have seen no information that leads me to believe that the MSCO has any qualified forensic document examiners.

If this were a legitimate inquiry, it would have been made privately and before the Cold Case Posse investigation went public with its own allegations. Doing this now  proves that the MSCO investigation wasn’t legitimate in the first place, and this letter is just for publicity. Now that the Maricopa County Sheriff appears to be acting as an agent for WorldNetDaily, we can reasonably expect a regular stream of such announcements about Obama’s birth certificate and related conspiracy theories from him, just has we have seen from WorldNetDaily for over three years now.

An interesting possibility, however, is that due to some strange planetary alignment, the Selective Service System might just reply. If they do, what impact will this have on the credibility of the Arizona investigation? Probably none. Most people think the investigation is bogus already, and the rest will just say the conspiracy is bigger, including the Selective Service.

Read more:

Sheriff Joe’s Selective Service fraud debunked

By on March 2, 2012 in Joe Arpaio, Selective Service

Sometimes I’m a little slow but I get there.

The birther dog and pony show sponsored by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio raised as one of its big points, the Selective Service System registration of Barack Obama, and the obvious fact that the Post Office circular date stamp on the form has only two digits for the year. There are many possible explanations for this, but the Cold Case Posse said that the stamp was faked by taking a real Post Office date stamp from 2008, cutting off the “20” and turning the “08” upside down to make the “80” that is seen on the form. Of all the possible explanations, they picked one which is utterly impossible. Follow along.

Here is the date stamp from the Obama registration form (rotated for easy viewing):

Selective Service USPO Detail

Look closely at the bottom of the date stamp. It shows “USPO” (for United States Post Office). The USPO became the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 1970. The Cold Case Posse’s theory that a “2008” USPO hand stamp was altered to make the image above is impossible: There are no “USPO” hand stamps from 2008 –The USPO ended in 1970!

Sheriff Joe’s Cold Case Posse took 6 months to figure their crazy scenario out. It took me half day to disprove it. It is clear to me that the Cold Case Posse has a profound lack of objectivity and common sense.

Of course, it the faker had managed to obtain a date stamp from the USPO era, it would have already had the “19″ in it.

I might add that the document that Sheriff Arpaio considers a fraud was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Selective Service System under the administration of George W. Bush, October 29, 2008.

See also my original article on the form and the comments that follow.

Older posts

Powered by WordPress. Designed by Woo Themes