Defend Our Freedoms Foundation
This is a reference article.
Orange County, California, has a system of registering “Fictitious” businesses. According to the County:
What is a Fictitious Business Name (FBN)?
For an individual, it is a name that does not include the surname of the individual or a name that suggests the existence of additional owners.
- For partnerships, it is a name that does not include the surname of any general partner or suggests the existence of additional owners.
- For a corporation, it is a name not stated in the Articles of Incorporation.
Defend Our Freedoms Foundation is such a fictitious business, owned by Orly Taitz, as shown in the county registration of the name. The Foundation claimed to be a non-profit organization and that it had obtained an EIN (US Federal Tax Reporting ID) that was once posted on the Foundation web site (this web site is no longer under control of Orly Taitz and the EIN has been removed). The EIN (26-4328440) was located from an old article in WorldNetDaily and corroborated by other sources including the Liberi v Taitz lawsuit filings. In a March 2009 article, I discussed the difference between a charity and a non-profit organization. DOFF is not a charity recognized by the IRS.
DOFF has a pending registration with the State of California as a charity, and a registration as a corporation. (Thanks to Politijab.com for the links to the California registrations.) The state filing address (also the address of Orly Taitz’s dental practice) is:
26302 La Paz
Ste 211
Mission Viejo, CA 92691
I searched for DOFF under its published zip codes of 92688 and 92691 at Melissadata.com’s Non-profit organization lookup, but didn’t find anything, nor did its EIN search return results. I also searched in the largest private database of EINs, EINFinder.com, for 26-4328440 and any California company beginning with “Defend our f”: no results were found. Various comments are found on the Internet that others have tried to verify this number with no success.
Caution: Orly’s web site is still on the malware warning list.
Is the natural born citizen argument over?
Walter Dellinger
Somehow, with the dismissal of Kerchner v. Obama and the retirement of Leo Donofrio (yet again), it rather feels like the debate over the attempts to redefine “natural born citizen” have fallen off the radar, leaving Obama Conspiracy fans with little more than the Taitz/Smith/Lincoln soap 0pera for entertainment.
However, before closing the box and taping it shut, I wanted to mention something in more detail that has been briefly mentioned before, and that is the 1995 testimony before Congress of assistant attorney general Walter Dellinger. The preceding link will take the interested reader to the full text. I’ll include a substantive citation here.
Because the rule of citizenship acquired by birth within the United States is the law of the Constitution, it cannot be changed through legislation, but only by amending the Constitution. A bill … that purports to deny citizenship by birth to persons born within the jurisdiction of this country is unconstitutional on its face. Second, … constitutional amendments on this topic conflict with basic constitutional principles. To adopt such an amendment would not be technically unlawful, but it would flatly contradict our constitutional history and our constitutional traditions. Affirming the citizenship of African-Americans that Dred Scott had denied, in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln’s attorney general wrote an opinion for the secretary of the treasury asserting “[a]s far as I know … you and I have no better title to the citizenship which we enjoy than the ‘accident of birth’—the fact that we happened to be born in the United States.” Today, in 1995, we cannot and should not try to solve the difficult problems illegal immigration poses by denying citizenship to persons whose claim to be recognized as Americans rests on the same constitutional footing as that of any natural-born citizen…. (more…)
International Law and the Constitution
In an article in the Yale Law Journal from June 2009, titled: The constitutional power to interpret international law, there is an interesting section dealing with the types of international law and their relationship to the Constitution of the United States. On this web site, we frequently refer to “The Law of Nations” by the Swiss philosopher and jurist Emmerich de Vattel, and it’s assertion that the indigenous people are those who are born in the country of citizen parents. (Later post constitutional English translations use the phrase “natural born citizen.”) The underpinning concept in his philosophical treatise is “natural law” as stated in the full title to the work: The Law of Nations or Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns.
The article talks about “customary international law,” which is the kind of international that de Vattel writes about. It makes it clear that the constitutional phrase “The Law of Nations” does not refer at all to the work previously cited, nor is de Vattel even mentioned in this article.
The third type of international law, what is (customarily) referred to as customary international law, is the foggiest type of all. It refers to the norms and practices of nations, apart from treaties or other written agreements. Within the regime of international law, it is “law” inferred from “a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.” It is, in effect, a body of unwritten international “common law” principles. As such, the system of international law regards it as just as binding as treaties or other written conventions. Before so much of international law became treaty-fled in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such customary international law, referred to at the time of the Framing of the Constitution as the Law of Nations, was the dominant form of international law. Indeed, it would not be far wrong to refer to international law, at the time of the Framing of the Constitution, as largely consisting of principles of natural law, applicable to the conduct of nations (and their citizens) toward each other on the international plane. What we today call customary international law was, originally, a body of principles of just, proper, and proportionate conduct–right conduct–deduced from general principles of natural justice. (more…)
Barack Obama, Son of Africa
Flag of Kenya
There has been much brouhaha over the phrase “Kenyan-born” applied to Barack Obama by a Nairobi, Kenya, newspaper back in 2004. But long before that, birthers were looking at phrases from Kenyan officials using phrases like “son of the soil” as conclusive proof that at least they know the President was born in Kenya, and indeed, so the birthers say, everyone in Kenya knows this. And truly, even born in the United States, Barack Obama was a dual Kenyan-American citizen for two decades.
This article is about news coverage (much from Africa) of Barack Obama–what they said, and the language they used. I offer my thanks to one of the visitors here for the research used in this article.
In my previous article, Obama Uncle Confirms – not born in Kenya, I presented a video of the President’s uncle Sayid Obama describing the President’s first visit to Kenya as an adult. These close family members know that literally President Obama was not born in the country of Kenya. His step grandmother said:
“When he came for the first time, it was to see the grave of his father and I was very pleased because, for someone who was born over there and spent all his time over there, it was impressive to see him identify so much with this place,” she says in Luo, the language of her tribe.
– “Kenyan village greets rise of local son Obama”, The Irish Times, November 4, 2004
In what follows, you will get the flavor of how Africans and others talk about Obama’s relationship to Africa in the language of metaphor and feeling. On occasion, the newspaper gets it wrong, saying Obama was born in Kenya. (more…)
Field rejects the legal status of natural law
The influential lawyer and legal reformer David Dudley Field gave an address to the Social Science Association in 1866. The title of his talk was “An International Code.”
In that address, Field made the following interesting comments about writers on international law, and I think it applies directly to the writings of Emerich de Vattel:
Who made these rules, or this international law if you so call it, is explained by the definition which I have given. It was made by the nations themselves, either through express compact with each other or through general practice; that is to say: by treaty or by usage. Publicists, I know, looking beyond the rules so made or sanctioned, have sought in those moral precepts by which nations, not less than individuals, ought to be governed in their intercourse with each other for guides in other circumstances; and statesmen and diplomatists have often fortified their arguments by reference to such opinions, and it has thus frequently happened that those precepts have been gradually adopted into the usage of nations. These views of the publicists are, however, to be regarded rather as suggestions of what ought to be the conduct of nations in particular circumstances than as a statement of established rules. They are entitled to the same weight in the decision of national disputes as a treatise on natural law is entitled to in the decision of a case by the courts of America or England. [Emphasis added.]
Check the answer book
Parody Civics book
I have had commenters here swear that they were taught in their high school Civics class that (a) anyone born in the United States could be President or (b) only those born in the United States to citizen parents could be president.
Now I personally don’t remember the subject coming up at all, but then that was a very long time ago and I don’t remember a lot of high school anyway. I think high school classes pretty much follow high school text books, and so the truth of the matter probably lies in those books. So I offer this challenge:
Come up with a text book published in the last 100 years that explains US presidential eligibility and in particular, what “natural born citizen” means.
Please, verifiable entries only.
I realize that a high school text book will not settle the legal question, but it will help settle the question of what the expectations of the American people were prior to the current marketing effort supporting a certain view.
Jon Stewart’s book, America (the book) Teacher’s Edition: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004), pictured above, does address the question by saying:
You must be a native citizen of the United States. Very important. Imagine having fought for years to win your independence from England only to have King George get on the ballot and win. Very embarrassing. (Page 40)
Stewart, as many writers and court decisions have, uses the phrase “native” and “natural” interchangeably.
Treatise on Citizenship
In my researches, I have come across a major work:
Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and Protection Abroad Letter from the Secretary of State, Submitting Report … By United States Dept. of State, James Brown Scott, David Jayne Hill, Gaillard Hunt Citizenship of the United States, Expatriation, and Protection Abroad Letter from the Secretary of State, Submitting Report … December 20 1906 Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and ordered to be printed. By United States Dept. of State, James Brown Scott, David Jayne Hill, Gaillard Hunt
Over 500 pages. Enjoy! I know I will.
Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for Obama eligibility deniers.
