Archive | Ask a Theorist RSS feed for this section

Yes, Pamela, they reuse them

by Dr. Conspiracy on 12. Aug, 2010 in Ask a Theorist

Pamela (holding sign) and Pastor Manning

As a educational feature of Obama Conspiracy Theories, we sometimes answer general questions for the public. This question comes from Pamela, posting on the Orly Taitz web site. Pamela is having a problem searching for material at the congressional web site, thomas.gov. Pamela writes:

I am pretty sure that they [the United States Senate] do not repeat numbers for their Resolutions or Bills.

Actually, Pamela, they do. In each session of Congress, they start over from numero uno otherwise the numbers would get very large because many, many bills are introduced in Congress every year. When searching for a bill by number, you need to know the year.

The search bar on the main page at thomas.gov is labeled “Legislation in Current Congress.” Every 2 years, we get a new Congress! Isn’t that exciting! But that means a little extra work for you because you will have to click the “Advanced Search” link for older information. The current Congress is the 111th, and the one serving from 2007-2008 was the 110th. (See the tutorial below on how to compute the Session of Congress.)

For the particular search you had in mind, Senate Resolution 511 about John McCain (an important American leader), you will need to select the 110th Congress since that resolution was from 2008. Right below Enter Search, you can select “Bill Number.” Now a Senate Resolution isn’t a bill, and so they use a special prefix, “S.RES” for Senate RESolution. In this case you can enter “S.RES.511″ for the Bill number, and it will go right to the resolution you want. It’s easy once you get the hang of it.

To see number reuse in action, you can search in the 109th Congress and find that Senate Resolution 511 was “a resolution commending and supporting Radio Al Mahaba, the 1st and only radio station for the women of Iraq” sponsored by Senator Clinton.

Tutorial: Computing the Session of Congress

Members of the House of Representatives serve two year terms, and that period makes up a “session”. You will have to do a little arithmetic to figure out the session by the year. It’s really fun do to.

Just take the year and subtract 1787 (the year the Constitution was written) Divide that by 2 and throw away the fraction and voila, you have the session. 2006 – 1787 = 219. Divide by 2 and you get 109.5 (don’t forget to discard the fraction) and the answer is the 109th Congress.

Read Pamela Barnett’s full comment: (more…)

Read full story • Comments { 13 }

Where is the Nordyke birth announcement? (Updated)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 19. Dec, 2009 in Ask a Theorist, Birth Certificate

UPDATE! The answer to the headline question has been found. The Announcement is in the August 16 issue of the paper.

This question arrived in email, and is related to a YouTube video from Lucas (Inspector) Smith. The claim is that the Nordyke twins (born at the same hospital reported as Obama’s birthplace and one day later) do not have a Honolulu newspaper announcement for them.

While the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed that newspaper birth announcements, such as that for President Obama, came from the health department, the argument goes: if that’s true then were is the Nordyke announcement?

On the surface that looks like a good question, but like many of those tough sounding questions from the denialists, it has a flaw. How do I (and you) know that the Nordyke announcement is not in the Honolulu newspaper? Are we somehow supposed to take the word of con artist and forger Lucas Smith?

Barack Obama was born on August 4, his birth was registered on August 8 and his newspaper birth announcement appeared on August 13. Nordyke gave birth on August 5 and her twins were registered August 11. We don’t know how long the delay was between registration, batches to the Hawaii News Service, distribution to the newspapers, and how often the newspapers ran them. In order to say with any certainty that the Nordyke twins were not announced in the newspaper, one would have to examine newspapers from August 11 to August 20 (and perhaps more). (more…)

Read full story • Comments { 78 }

Executive Order 13489 – Presidential Records

by Dr. Conspiracy on 19. Aug, 2009 in Ask a Theorist, Misc. Conspiracies

Obama Conspiracy Theories received an email from a visitor expressing concerns about an executive order by President Obama:

I’d like for OCT to comment on Executive Order 13489, one of Obama’s first official acts in office, and which is largely interpreted as banning the release of his records without his permission and which also revokes Section 6 of Executive Order 13233 so as to ban Congress and the courts from interceding.

The preamble to the Executive order says:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures governing the assertion of executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents in connection with the release of Presidential records by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, it is hereby ordered as follows

The key point in understanding what’s going on here is the definition of “Presidential records”. Here is the relevant passage from the Presidential Records Act (44 U.S.C. Chapter 22):

§ 2201 Definitions… 2) The term “Presidential records” means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, his immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise and assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

from which it is obvious that “Presidential records” are not those records being sought by eligibility doubters, documents created before Obama became President.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Read full story • Comments { 73 }

Is OCD a Delusion?

by Dr. Conspiracy on 03. Mar, 2009 in Ask a Theorist, Birthers

Dr. Conspiracy

Is Obama Citizenship Denial a delusion?

The DSM defines a delusion as:

A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture. (more…)

Read full story • Comments { 137 }

Date Filed v. Date Accepted (Update 3!)

by Dr. Conspiracy on 28. Feb, 2009 in Ask a Theorist, Birth Certificate

This came in the mail:

I ran across a birther argument [on Free Republic] I could not answer. Obama’s COLB has a “Date Filed,” whereas other COLB’s posted on the internet have a “Date Accepted.”

The birthers seem to be attaching a lot of significance to this discrepancy. I briefly searched the Hawaii DOH websites to see if I could find any information on what it might mean, but was unsuccessful.

If you have time, you may want to explore this further. I’d be curious to know what you find. (more…)

Read full story • Comments { 37 }

The Birth Certificate is a forgery!

by Dr. Conspiracy on 27. Feb, 2009 in Ask a Theorist, Birth Certificate, Evidence

Fake Birth Certificate

Obama Conspiracy Theories forensic document analyst Dr. Conspiracy [not a real doctor or a real document analyst] has ruled the John McCain “birth certificate” submitted as evidence in the Hollander v. McCain lawsuit a forgery.

For those who know this web site well, let me assure you that this is a serious article from now on, and not a joke, spoof or satire.

The question of where John McCain was born did not carry much interest in the last election; however Fred Hollander brought a lawsuit (dismissed for lack of standing) asserting that John McCain was not eligible to be president because he was not born in the United States. Conventional wisdom (and newspaper articles including Citizen McCain – Washington Post) assert that McCain was born on a US Military Base in the Panama Canal Zone. While some have argued that this is insufficient to make McCain a natural born citizen, Fred Hollander went one step further, claiming that John McCain was born not in the Panama Canal Zone, but rather in the Republic of Panama itself (and not under any US jurisdiction whatever). (more…)

Read full story • Comments { 52 }