Leo. C. Donofrio

The latest being:

TerriK INVESTIGATION, Part 3: Hawaii AG Mark Bennett Approved Fukino’s Natural-Born Citizen Statement; All Records Should Be Made Public According To Law.

Usually I can follow what Leo Donofrio is arguing, but this latest foray into Hawaii has left me somewhat baffled. His mistakes are often subtle, but not so here. If I may summarize:

1) Hawaiian law requires that data supporting official statements be made public
2) Dr. Funkino made an official statement saying that she had examined Barack Obama’s vital records and that they show that he was born in Hawaii.
3) Therefore Hawaiian law requires the State of Hawaii to provide copies of Obama’s vital records to the public.

Before looking at the premises, I like to apply a rule of thumb I call the “smell test”. We know that in Hawaii vital records are private; they are protected from disclosure by law (§ 338-18 Disclosure of records HRS_0338-0018.htm). Now if state department of health director Fukino is prohibited by law from disclosing the record, how can she, by making an official statement permissible by law, (disclosure of index data) make herself suddenly not bound by the other disclosure restrictions of the  law? When one arrives at an absurd result, it’s time to inspect the validity of the argument.

The first problem with the Donofrio’s argument is that premise 1 is faulty. Real Hawaiian law (and Donofrio quotes it) says that disclosure is not required when it conflicts with privacy provisions. Therefore disclosure laws do not apply in this case.

The second problem is that the information Donofrio wants is not covered by the statue. Donofrio quotes the law: “(15) Information collected and maintained for the purpose of making information available to the general public” but vital records are not maintained “for the purpose of making information available to the general public” with the exception of very basic information (such as that released to the newspapers resulting in Obama’s birth announcement being printed). Other data, such as the name of the hospital, the name of the doctor and other non-index data, not collected and maintained for public information and is not included under the statute.

The final problem is that the conclusion doesn’t follow the language of the premises. Even if disclosure were required (and it isn’t) only what is necessary to support the public  statement need be disclosed, and there is nothing beyond the public statement’s name and birth location that is necessary to support the public statement. So again Donofrio gets nothing beyond the original statement.

The best Donofrio could expect to get out of Hawaii is a copy of the Birth Certificate completely blacked except for the words “Barack”, “Hussein”, “Obama”, “Hawaii” on them.

The State of Hawaii declared certain information should be disclosed and they made an exception in the case of private data, and other statutes prohibit disclosure of specific private data, that is, vital records. Donofrio claims that a state official has the power to override the law and change protected data into unprotected just by writing a note on some letterhead and signing it. That is just silly. “Gotcha” is not a legal principle.

Donofrio said:

TerriK locked onto 92F-12(a)(15) and applied it to the July 27th press release by requesting all relevant records thereto. It was a very intelligent and savvy analysis, especially for a lay person.

I say, it’s a pretty stupid analysis, particular for a lawyer to shill. It’s a legal argument only a birther could love.

The other silliness from Donofrio is the fantastic belief that anything he turns up in Hawaii could make the birthers change their minds. If Dr. Fukino’s plain statement did not suffice, nothing will.

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).

Donofrio is going to try the same avenue (Freedom of Information) that Andy Martin tried and failed, except that Donofrio is attempting to leverage Department of Health Director Fukino’s statement that Obama was born in Hawaii to force disclosure of the source of that statement. It won’t work. Leo may be a lawyer (not licensed to practice in Hawaii), but he obviously has no experience dealing with vital records. The lawsuit will go nowhere. And Leo, if you are going to spread all that Latin lawyer lingo in your writing, could you at least italicize it?

Donofrio says:

Let this post be fair warning… Leo Donofrio is now interested in the birth certificate… so that we can finally prove Obama was born in Hawaii and stop the never ending circus surrounding BIGFOOT – an official long form birth certificate for President Obama.

Leo, you have been at this long enough that you should know that no document will dent the birthers’ resolve. Let’s be realistic. Birthers are conspiracy theorists. Contrary evidence to a conspiracy theorist just shows how deep the conspiracy goes. If you get “bigfoot” they will be asking why Obama won’t release his grammar school hall passes.

Well at least this story perks up an otherwise dull birther news day.

Because of the threats of blood in the streets, mutinies in the armed forces, and a continuing of stream of lawsuits against every act of government until the certificate is produced, an action that would cripple the Government in this critical time of economic crisis, the President-Elect has taken this unprecedented action to end the controversy once and for all. 10,000 certified copies of the document have been ordered from the Hawaii Department of Health, allowing easy viewing by each of the one million persons expected to addend the unveiling.

In a prepared statement President-Elect Barack Obama said:

Barack Obama appears with long-form birth certificate

My Fellow Americans, I want to take this opportunity to explain some of my actions, which may have seemed odd to my supporters, and suspicious to my critics, regarding the release of my Hawaiian Certificate of Live Birth. Only recently, I obtained a certified copy of the “vault record” from Hawaii and learned something that I did not know before, and that my mother never told me. I do not know the reasons for my mother’s silence.

The revelation that I am about to make now, I am assured by my attorney and advisers, has no bearing whatever on my qualifications to be President of the United States: I was indeed born in Honolulu Hawaii, I am at least 35 years old and I have lived as a resident of the United States for 14 years. The birth certificate which my staff provided to the Daily Kos web site is authentic, but contains corrections later added. According to my original birth certificate, my first name is “Alan” and I was born in 1963.

Jumbotron

Impact Video will be providing 100 truck mounted “Jumbotron” screens to make it easier for the anticipated one million member crowd to get a closer view of the document. An unnamed Impact Video spokesman said that the company was pleased to get an order right now. “This made our year” he said.

Long time Democratic backer George Soros donated the $40,006 in request fees to procure the documents from Hawaii. Hawaii Department of Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said that that the department was very grateful for the windfall in fees in a tight budget year. “We’re going to use the revenue to buy a much-needed second laser printer and a new rubber stamp for Dr. Onaka.” She also expressed pleasure that her office would be able to get back to their real job instead of answering crank phone calls from birth certificate doubters. “And in any case, ” she concluded, “us folks with funny names have to stick together.”

Hawaii Vital Statistics Director, Dr. Alvin Onaka is reported to be hospitalized for treatment of a stress-related repetitive motion injury received while signing the 10,000 certificates by hand. The Kapi’Olani Medical Center refused comment regarding Onaka’s condition citing federal privacy laws.

Philadelphia attorney, Philip J. Berg, who is suing Obama over a range of eligibility issues and who had previously stated that he would drop his suit if Obama  provided proof of his natural born citizenship, stated that he would not be attending the certificate ceremony because “I’m making too much money on ObamaCrimes.com to drop the suit. So long as I don’t see the certificate, I can keep my word.”

Internet Powerhouse Andy Martin has filed suit in the Superior Court of Washington DC to halt the event. In his brief, Martin stated that it was his intention to write articles about why Obama should release the certificate. The move by Obama to release the document was against the “direct and tangible interests” of Martin to continue in his occupation as critic of Obama’s documentation. When contacted by reporters, Martin angrily quipped, “he’s still a Muslim.”

Leo C. Donofrio, on Plains Radio, told his supporters that the problems they may have had accessing his Natural Born Citizen web site were not due to any conspiracy, but that a chain email, mentioning his site as the place to get tickes for the certificate ceremony, resulted so many hits on his web site that the server was overwhelmed. Donofrio stated that “wordpress.com is working to move Natural Born Citizen to a new and larger server”.