Hawaii Department of Health Obama FAQ
This web page has been up since last summer, but somehow I failed to publish a link to it. I suppose in response to the flood of inquiries about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, the Hawaii Department of Health has decided to put up a web page just to address questions about the Department of Health regulations.
“Birther” bill in Arizona
According to the East Valley Tribune, a new bill being introduced by Rep. Judy Burges in the Arizona legislature stems from the Obama “birther” controversy. The bill, according to the Tribune, would require candidates to provide certifiable evidence of their US Citizenship and place of birth to be on the ballot for president.
“With what’s happening throughout the world, we need to make sure that our candidates are certifiable,” Burges said.
I personally think that it would be a good thing, given all the rumors and doubts about the two leading candidates in the last election, that some of the states do take on the responsibility of verifying candidates’ credentials. I was troubled, however, by the article’s comment:
The kind of certification Burges wants, though, could be more difficult than simply checking for a valid birth certificate, as the arguments about his legal qualification go beyond whether he was actually born in Hawaii.
I cannot see each state independently defining “natural born citizen” for a federal office.
Berg v. Freeze
Conservative law student Jamie Freeze has written a scathing criticism of the birthers, those who believe Barack Obama was born outside the United States. Attorney Phil Berg, a leader in putting forward that version of the birther point of view, has replied in kind in a December 24, 2009 article, JAMIE FREEZE CALLS ANYONE QUESTIONING SOETORO/OBAMA’S CITIZENSHIP STATUS “INCOMPETENT IDIOTS” at his ObamaCrimes.com blog.
Berg, as an experienced litigator, immediately pounced on the weak point of Freeze’s article, it gratuitous insults, ridicule and name calling. Berg can cast himself as the wise instructor of the inexperienced student. He becomes a sympathetic figure, and quickly brings the jury over to his side. Whenever Freeze (or I for that matter), makes a gratuitous criticism or a sarcastic remark, attorneys like Berg (or Apuzzo) can pounce on it, answer it, and divert attention from the more substantial points.
For example, in a very long response, Berg fails to acknowledge and answer the fact that the head Hawaii Department of Health said unequivocally that Barack Obama’s birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii, but continues to claim that Obama’s birth in Hawaii is unsubstantiated. Berg continues to say that the COLB has been “deemed to be forged” while not admitting that those claiming it was a forgery were themselves fakes and forgeries (anonymous persons claiming credentials they never had and using fake analysis).
They cross swords over the situation that would be the case should Obama have been born in Kenya of a US mother and Berg continues to claim Obama’s name is Soetoro so that his campaign was a fraud. You can read it if you want. I’ve lost that fire in the gut to go swim in the sewers.
What attorneys must learn is to focus their message on what is necessary to persuade the audience, and not to try to appear sarcastic, witty, or irrelevantly well-informed.
Where is the Nordyke birth announcement? (Updated)
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…)
Palin birther faux pas creates media blip
Birther?
As anyone close to the Obama Conspiracy scene knows by now, Sarah Palin offered some peculiar words during her appearance last Thursday (December 3, 2009) on Rusty Humphries’ talk radio show:
Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?
Palin: I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers. …
I mean, truly, if your past is fair game and your kids are fair game, certainly Obama’s past should be. I mean, we want to treat men and women equally, right?
Palin: Hey, you know, that’s a great point, in that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about that Trig isn’t my real son. And a lot of people say, “Well you need to produce his birth certificate! You need to prove that he’s your kid!” Which we have done. But yeah, so maybe we could reverse that and use the same [unintelligible]-type thinking on them.
The suggestion that Palin had finally joined the birther movement set off major media alarms across the country, as did her Facebook “retraction”:
Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask… which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.
–Sarah Palin
The Los Angeles Times wrote: We’re still scratching our head as to what exactly Sarah Palin meant by her four-sentence blog post Thursday night on Facebook.
Me?, I’m not scratching my head. What I see is a political opportunist, happy to encourage others to smear the president, while being too cowardly to take a position herself. In my opinion, it was this very dishonesty and lack of integrity that lost her and McCain the last election in favor of a very inexperienced candidate, who was elected against all conventional wisdom.
Donofrio alleges Obama birth records amended!
Leo. C. Donofrio
Leo. C. Donofrio
Flash!
Leo Donofrio has made a stunning claim on his blog in a new article: Pending Litigation: Hawaii Confirms That Obama’s Vital Records Have Been Amended.
One has to translate that headline from “birther speak” to normal usage. “Pending Litigation” means “we haven’t filed a lawsuit” and “Confirms” means “we say so, but we won’t tell you why or how”.
Hawaiian law requires that certificates that have been amended be distinctly marked “altered”, and Obama’s Certification of Live Birth clearly is not marked “altered”. This fact justifies a high degree of skepticism on Donofrio’s claim. Of course the word “Amended” in birther speak might mean something totally different from the normal usage.
Donofrio says:
I will issue a full statement and press release on behalf of TerriK via this blog in the days ahead. This statement will include a complete history of correspondence between TerriK and Hawaii state officials in the Office of Information Practices (OIP) and the Department of Health (DoH). (more…)
A Certification is not a Certificate….
…but it’s just as good.
I’ve written on this topic before. Part of the problem with the language is that it is used imprecisely and terms with technically different meanings are used interchangeably. States are not fully consistent with the titles they put on their documents. I’ve done some research in consultation with professionals in the field, and want to give you, the reader, some guidance on using the terms correctly:
- Birth certificate. This is an original document generated in most cases by a hospital, but possibly by others when a birth happens outside a hospital and not on the way to a hospital (if mother and newborn arrive in a taxi where the baby is born, the hospital completes the certificate). Different jurisdictions have their own procedures for the creation of certificates for those born outside a hospital. (There are variations on the theme when the birth is registered later — delayed birth certificates, or in the case of a foreign-born adoption.) Certificates contain one important attribute, the signature of the person attesting to the event. The most common type of certificate is the Certificate of Live Birth for the timely registration of children born alive.Nowadays many births are reported electronically by hospital systems (as a stream of data), and there is no paper birth certificate. In this case, the birth certificate is the electronic data and the signature is electronic.
- Certified Copy. Unless you work in a hospital or a vital records agency, chances are that you have never seen a real Birth Certificate. What you got from the State is a certified copy. A certified copy is a photocopy or digital image copy of the birth certificate. I will be signed by someone attesting that it is a true copy, and it should also be sealed (either in multiple colors or impressed) by the agency issuing it. Of course, with a paperless electronic system, there are no certified copies.
- Certification of Birth. Modern vital records systems carry computer databases of birth registration information. Some may retain images of old records while newer records may never have had an electronic image. The Barack Obama Certification of Live Birth is an example of one of these.
Certified Copies and Certifications of Birth carry certain basic information, including the child’s name, date and time of birth, location of birth (city, state, county), the State File Number, Sex and the date the record was filed with the vital records agency. Some may contain more. The important thing is that from a legal perspective a Certified Copy carries equal weight as a Certification of Birth, and both are fully valid for obtaining a passport, joining the military, registering with Social Security, and getting a drivers license, and until the lunatics run the asylum, proving that you’re eligible to be President of the United States.
