This article refers to an interview with Paul Irey interview on Reality Check Radio in the second hour of the show. It’s a very interesting program. The radio show draws a sharp contrast between the first guest, Linton Mohammed, who is president of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners and has testified as an expert in court over 100 times, and Paul Irey, who is professional typist and commercial printer. Both know a lot about their respective fields, but Mr. Mohammed is a scientist and Mr. Irey is not, and that is the important difference. Mr. Mohammed didn’t comment on the specifics of any of the questioned Obama documents, but he did talk about what could and what could not be reasonably done with multi-generation photocopies.
Paul Irey seems to know a lot about typewriters and printing. He is familiar with the electronic tools available; he knew about scanning, PDF creation, resolution and accurately, so far as I could tell, stated good information. In contrast with a lot of birthers, he never seemed to overstate his case, make stuff up, try to evade a question or lie. I found him a straight-up guy who believed what he said. However, Irey presented a remarkable claim: that Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate is a fake made in collusion with the Hawaii Department of Health.
The first bomb shell in the interview was when Irey made no claim of objectivity, but rather stated unequivocally that he was certain the document was a forgery before he examined it. He says that he knew this because someone from the Secret Service told him that Obama had no birth certificate.
Here’s the transcript at this point:
Irey: … I started to study it, knowing it had to be a forgery, and just looking for what I could find.
Foggy: You knew it was a forgery before you started studying it?…
Irey: Yes, yes. I knew it was a forgery.
Foggy: How’d you know that?
Irey: I had information from a government worker who had a friend at one of the agencies who come back to me after we had a big debate during the time Obama had been, uh, announced for office [inaudible] legitimacy, where’s the birth certificate? We were talking about that way back when, and he debated with me. Went down to his agency and advised me that, uh, that I was right basically. That there was no birth certificate in the records. But his agency was not going to, uh, do anything about it more or less. So I kind of went in with his background. It sort of converted his attitude. I could tell how his attitude changed after that, because he was no longer supporting Obama. I was supporting Colin Powell….
Foggy: I’m not asking you to identify the guy, but can you tell us like what agency? Was it an intelligency agency? I mean can you give us a hint?
Irey: Yes, I can. It was the Secret Service.
Foggy: OK
Irey: As you know, the Secret Service is, one of their responsibilities is to vet. …
It is not at all clear what the friend, or the Secret Service employee said, and we know that the Secret Service does not have any responsibility to vet candidates and there is no reason to believe the Secret Service has birth certificates for any President in its files. So what actually happened in this exchange remains a mystery.
Irey determined to prove that the Obama long form was a forgery by finding flaws in it. The flaw that he believes he found is that some of the letters are of a different typeface (different typewriter model) than others. Now there is no reason to be certain that a normal birth certificate in Hawaii is all typed on the the same typewriter. It may be that different parts are typed at a different time — this is a point that Linton Mohammed made in his general discussion of the analysis of a typed document. A forensic scientist would never use words like “forgery,” “fake” or “fraud” in testimony but rather state with a particular level of certainty what is observed about similarities and differences. Irey, on the other hand, uses the “f” words liberally.
Let me briefly explain Irey’s argument, and it is really quite simple and can be shown with two images. I took these from my copy of a scan of the long form released to the press. It is generally understood that this is a scan of a second-generation photocopy, i.e., scanned 3 times and printed twice. The following image is “actual size” from the scan, i.e., it’s not blown up.
Irey points out that the horizontal bar in the letter “e” is slanted in one image, and claims that it is impossible for these two to have come from the same typewriter because they are different typefaces. He also says that some of the letters are of different sizes.
One interesting thing about the images here is that the first “e” (from the word “Male” in block 2) appears fuzzy compared to the second “e” (from “Student” in block 12a). This is probably because the birth certificate was not perfectly flat on the scanner glass because it was in a bound book. The first letter is from the left side near and the book’s gutter. Because of the proximity to the gutter a very tiny counterclockwise rotation is expected, however, not as much as the visual impression one gets from this image.
Linton Mohammed said that when a professional document examiner finds differences between a questioned document and an example that is not questioned, the examiner tries to explain the differences, and if they cannot be explained, then the examiner may conclude something like a different typewriter.
Professional document examiners undergo a course of study of the analysis of typed images. Irey claims expertise from long experience, however he admits that he never examined a document in this way before, nor did he claim to have had experience examining scanned second-generation photocopies. The one thing that would have helped Irey, a control, he didn’t do. Irey says that he would like to have performed a similar analysis, but he had no other comparable sample document of suitable resolution to work with. I agree with Irey that such samples are not easy to come by. My own birth certificate, for example, has a much lower image resolution than the Obama certificate. I did my own analysis on my birth certificate and someone else did a similar analysis presented in a YouTube video. Both exercises used lower-resolution documents, and both found wide variations between letters. Paul Irey, I’m sure, believes that if he had a comparable document to test, it would prove authentic and has Jerome Corsi to get him material to analyze. This remains on everybody’s “to do” list.
Let me offer this short outline of the factual content of the interview from memory:
- Irey is not, nor does he claim to be a professional document examiner.
- Irey volunteered that when a document is turned into a PDF, it is separated into layers.
- Irey claims to have extensive experience with typewriters, typography, and commercial printing.
- Irey believes that the State of Hawaii provided a color copy of the long form on security paper (upon which the PDF was based) and a plain paper copy on which the black and white press handout was based.1
- Irey’s analysis was based on the press handout scanned and published by the AP. Irey describes it as “150 dpi”.
- Irey did not attempt to compare his typographic analysis of the Obama long form with an analysis done on a similar document, saying that he didn’t have an example to compare to.
- Irey started his analysis with the certain belief that he was looking at some kind of fake, and was looking for confirmation of that.
- Irey said that he had inside information from the US Secret Service that indicated to him that the birth certificate was faked. However, I think careful reading of the transcript is necessary to parse out his exact claim as to what he was told.
- While Irey was certain that the various letters on the Obama long form came from different model typewriters with different typefaces, he said that the image quality was not sufficient for him to identify any particular typeface from his samples.
All in all, Paul Irey seems to be a straightforward guy. He did not give one hint that he was lying, nor did he seem to be making things up. It’s clear that he’s a hard core birther, bringing up things like the Hawaii Homelands program, and acquainted with the birther story. He stuck by his guns and did not concede anything of substance.
One of the comments made by Mr. Irey is that the AP high-resolution scan of the Obama long form is no longer on the AP web site. I don’t know about that, but I made a copy of one of the press scans, which is available. Mine appears to be something in the order of 400 ppi, though. A link to this scan is also to be found in the lower right corner of my site under Quick Reference. The scan is interesting because it appears that Obama’s short form birth certificate was behind the long form as it was scanned because you can see faintly the bleed through and can read “ISLAND OF OAHU” an “HOUR OF BIRTH” faintly.
Learn more:
- Fundamentals of Forensic Science
- Daily KOS defends typography of Killian letters as authentic (RatherGate)
- Forensic document examiners and the Killian letters
- Article on forensic typewriter analysis
1This is obviously wrong. One need only look at the darker portions of the form, at the page gutter to see the security paper. It appears that the photocopier used didn’t copy the light green background. Since it is security paper, one might expect it not to copy well.
as the State of Hawaii certified Obama’s document what is this smoke that Irey is blowing, could it be pot?
You think a Secret Service guy told him there was no birth certificate? Really?
.
He also admitted that he didn’t know how the jpg file he downloaded of the AP version was created. He assumed it was a “standard scan”, although jpgs can be created by digital cameras as well. He didn’t know what program had created the jpg, although electronic files frequently contain metadata with this information. In short, he admitted that he did not do any basic research into what techical processes had been applied to create the jpg that might also explain the anomalies he claimed.
Bill Bowman googled the AP image. Took him about 3 seconds.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Politics/2011/04/27/White-House-releases-long-form-of-Obama-birth-certificate.html
The highest resolution image I have come across was this shot, unfortunately taken with a camera rather than scanned, as it isn’t all in focus.
http://cbsla.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/113207051-e1303920915143.jpg
It is also of the photocopy handed out at the 4/27 press conference.
What drives me nuts about Irey’s work is that it is a mindless extension of the “TXE” fixation, and to a degree, the “parallax” nuttery. By focusing on minutiae, and especially by regrouping all of the typewritten characters, these “experts” are taking the visual information out of context. Look at the image as a whole. Does anything really stand out? To me, not particularly. Looks like an image of a preprinted form completed with stamps a mechanical, ribbon typewriter, and ink pens.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=314717
It never, ever ends. They are presenting this guy:
http://www.theonlinefisherman.com/reports-guides-list/9-team-poyssick
…as an “Adobe Engineer” because he worked there 20 years ago supposedly, when the company was 14 employees strong.
I recall asking Mark Gillar why Corsi/WND weren’t able to produce any comment from software engineers from Adobe for comment on the PDF with such “obvious problems” … this isn’t what I had in mind.
I’m going to have to abandon this topic. I have to deal with so much stupid in real life, I can’t continue voluntarily consuming this stupid too. It’s been a fun research!
Why would a forger use two typewriters to type one word?
The “I knew it was a forgery and started looking for blahblahblah” was the best angle. Another cranky old white guy who insists he knows something. At least he acknowledge the OCR mess and the silliness of examining the PDF. When grandpa gets cranked up at family get-togethers, most of us just humor him and go on. Birthers gather ’round and pay homage.
Holy cow, I just hit the part of the interview where he completely fumbles on cameras v. scanners. He is at best 12 years out of date. Instantly referred to a film camera (I still miss film), and insisting a digital camera able to produce a 150dpi image of a lettersize document would be a 4×5 (reference to a medium-format film camera for all you kids) and cost $15,000. Poor guy. Repeatedly insisting “I am an expert! I am an expert! I am an expert!” and finishing with “I don’t think I’ve convinced you guys.”
He convinced me of lots of things! Just nothing he had in mind.
The one I have is higher resolution than yours.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/BirthCertificateHighResolution.jpg
No, and I think that if you listen to it very carefully, Irey didn’t say that. What he said, I think was 1) the Secret Service guy said that the Secret Service didn’t vet Obama, and that the Secret Service changed his opinion from positive to negative. I think Irey took these two as his proof that the Secret Service knows that there was no BC.
Wow, that’s clear… what was the source? Any idea how it was created?
I wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt so I checked out the areas he talked about on the hi res image. Not sure what he’s talking about. The doc looks good.
I have been thinking of how to headline my blog post on this interview. I think I will use this:
“Man with no experience in document forensics and extreme confirmation bias performs document analysis for the first time in his life and declares the LFBC a forgery.” I think that is accurate.
I’m not sure if we want to trust the validity of Doc C’s sources. Foggy from FogBow has already been caught being involved in the creation of FALSE Obama birth certificates. Since Doc C. bows to FogBow, it would be not unreasonable to suspect Doc C’s validity of his sources. Nevertheless, I am curious on exactly where the bleed through effect is seen on the long-form BC.
[Foggy was not involved in the “creation” of any false certificates. I don’t bow to FogBow. I always state who my sources are, so there is no room for speculation. I have added an image showing the bleed to the article. It’s pretty obvious. I looked at the document and saw “OAHU” first and wondered what that was, and after I while I could tell that it was in the right position to match the COLB and was able to pick out other parts of the COLB. Doc.]
Don’t forget he went into it thinking the LFBC was a forgery. He also claimed the state of Hawaii was in on it.
I haven’t had a chance to listen yet, so I’m just wondering if he was asked why the alleged differences in the letters he saw look like nothing more than the differences in ink one would expect from using a typewriter.
I think Foggy or Dr. Conspiracy caller brought up that point. He said that couldn’t explain the differences he found. If I find time this weekend I will blow up some of the preprinted letters (not typed) on the copy that Doc posted. I looked at some of the “e”s and a few other letters and I see the some variations like the ones Irey said prove a forgery. When I looked at the document AP posted I am actually impressed with the consistency of the letters. It is obvious to me that they are the same font style. I believe I am every bit as qualified as Irey to make an analysis.
I hadn’t realize that the Secret Service was in the habit of sharing inside information with retired typesetters from Hawaii. I guess they are the “Not So Secret” Service, then. Anyway, my inside information from the FBI, CIA, NSA, KGB, the Mossad, Chinese Intelligence and the Vatican says Irey is full of it.
Paul Irey is from New Jersey. You may be confusing him the Takeyuki Irei from Hawaii who World Net Daily claims is a PI and who was quoted to say that the DoH in Hawaii produced a forgery. No one has been able to find any person named Irei who is a licensed PI in Hawaii.
“confusing him with” …..
Thanks, Doc, for making that painfully obvious; you said it was under Quick Ref and I had managed to repeatedly click on every link but the “Press” one.
Oh, well that makes a HUGE difference! Yes, of course the Secret Service would share inside information with a retired typesetter from New Jersey, though they wouldn’t with one from Hawaii.
I am a scientist. All the secret agencies employ scientists, yet few employ typesettters. So, I assure you, my inside information is 100x better than Irey’s or Irei’s or any of these guys.
The whole BC issue is getting so old now.
The Holy Grail they were screaming about gets released and they STILL don’t believe it.
No sense in wasting my breath anymore, nothing will change their minds.
Have any fantasies about spanking federal judges lately, John?
Are you mad at Foggy ’cause you fell for the Bomford fake? (the way you fall for every birther lie).
I spent about 10 minutes and did an “Irey” analysis of the preprinted text on the LFBC. You will never guess what I found. 😉
http://www.thefogbow.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=4839&p=258049#p258049
Paul Irey made up his mind before he started. You and I probably have too. That is why I come back to the need for a control. We really need an unquestioned sample birth certificate from Hawaii. None of the examples I have is of sufficient resolution to do the analysis.
One thing I did was to copy one of the letters then paste it on top of the other letter with a 50% transparency, and then move the letter around. It’s very interesting how this kind of thing helps to avoid optical illusions. For example, I “see” the two letters are the same, only one is rotated. However, when overlaid, it doesn’t look at all that way, rather it looks like bits are missing in one and the other is typed stronger. Many of the letters, for example the capital “M” have little chunks missing, and they are not in the same place. This leads me to think that the ribbon was very worn.
I have to disagree with you here Doc. The extent to which I “made up [my] mind before [I] started” is based on the assumption that we have to have a certain level of trust on our state bureaucracies in order to have a reasonably functioning society. The assumption has to be that when presented with a document with a state seal, that it is legitimate. When the state goes out of their way to say, “Yes, this is a legit document” I assume it is. That’s just common sense. The courts adopt the same logic. So there is a world of difference from me approaching a document that the state of Hawaii says is legit, versus a birther approaching the same document saying it is a forgery. Unless of course, said birther has actual evidence of forgery. Some fairy tale about conversations with unidentified secret service members is just another heavy dose of b.s. It is not confirmation bias to approach a document as legit, when I would do so for every other person with the same document. To approach a document, with the conviction that it is a forgery, looking for “evidence” of fraud, when you have no evidence of fraud, is quite a different story.
I don’t know if you listened to the radio show. RC repeatedly pressed Mr. Mohammed with a question, phrased several ways, trying to elicit from him a statement that a state-sealed, and formally attested document was in a special class, “self-authenticating” and somehow subject to a lower level of scrutiny. The professional document examiner made it clear that he examines documents and the other facts of the case are something he avoids.
I agree that Mr. Irey’s preconceived notions of forgery are unjustified, and my preconceived notions of authenticity are very well founded. Nevertheless, I think in both cases (speaking for me and not for you) that we tend to see what we expect to see, to confirm what we believe and to decide ambiguous cases in our own favor.
It may be that because of your training, you are less prone to confirmation bias than I am.
This typewritten sample might be helpful. It appears to have been typed with the same model typewriter as the LFBC (Underwood Standard if Leonard is to be believed). The fonts I checked all seem to be the same. It has the same squiggly-topped 8 but it looks likes the Zeros were typed by using a lower case “o”. Even the subject matter seems weirdly appropriate for the discussion.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lDHkH919w48/TavRb0BbjaI/AAAAAAAAA9k/tVqkSuW8698/s1600/POW2.jpg
H/T to Kai
Perhaps both you and Mr Irey are seeing only the trees (document) and missing the forest (the story). Pretend that all Hawaiian birth records were destroyed in a giant tsunami. You would then have a perfectly reasonable story-woman gives birth where she, her husband and her parents lived both before and after the birth, where first rate medical care is readily available-on one side and a wholly illogical pseudo-story on the other. It isn”t confirmation bias to demand a story that passes the laugh test, merely sound practice.
I understand Mr Mohammed’s perspective. Due to the nature of his job, he probably goes at things in a different manner than you nor I. He is not a lawyer, so he probably doesn’t know, or care much about the details of the FRE.
However, I only take issue with the use of the phrase “confirmation bias.” I don’t think it is confirmation bias for people like us, not in the business of forensic document examination, to look at a document like the President’s birth records, and assume that there is a reasonable explanation for what a person like Irey, who is looking to prove his belief that the document is a forgery. When we look at a state issued document and say, “it looks reasonably similar, that there is probably a good explanation for minor differences,” is not confirmation bias, it is merely living with the realities of the modern bureaucratic state. However, when a person challenges a state certified document, that is an extraordinary claim, that requires extraordinary evidence. Absent this evidence, I think it is perfectly reasonable to be dismissive of claims of minor issues. There is little need for strict impartiality in this matter.
Now if we were dealing with a document of unknow origin, that’s another story.
I was a bit taken aback that Mr. Mohammed seemed to be unaware of the term “self authenticating document” since Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 902 is titled “Self Authentication”. Among other things it says:
“Extrinsic evidence of authenticity as a condition precedent to admissibility is not required with respect to the following:
(1) Domestic public documents under seal. A document bearing a seal purporting to be that of the United States, or of any State, district, Commonwealth, territory, or insular possession thereof, or the Panama Canal Zone, or the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, or of a political subdivision, department, officer, or agency thereof, and a signature purporting to be an attestation or execution.”
I believe most state codes contain similar language.
Possibly Mr. Mohammed is in favor of more widespread use of document forensics for pecuniary reasons. 😉
Look at the word “affected” in the third section. There is kerning and the first “f” has a wider base. Mr. Irey is correct. Every typewritten document is an obvious forgery.
I think it’s just the concept is outside of his scope of expereince. He probably has very little experience with the subject since no one is going to waste their money having someone of his profession examine a self authenticating document. It’s kind of like bringing an expert to an authograph signing event to make sure no one is forging their own signatures.
“. Mr. Irey is correct. Every typewritten document is an obvious forgery.”
if you download the jpg. convert it to pdf using acrobat then OCR it in acrobat, you know what you get?
Complete destruction of Irey’s proof.
That was fun! All of you that have acrobat (not the reader) can do the same thing and laugh. Can someone send this jpg/pdf to Irey?
It must be wonderful to be able to spew utter nonsense and not feel the slightest twinge of shame. I envy you. I always beat myself up and feel stupid when I make a mistake. But you, you just keep chugging along.
And then there is typewriter ribbon, twice used typewriter ribbon, and thrice used typewriter ribbon.
Hey folks, take a look at the Constitution at http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html . The document has kerning. Must be a forgery.
Yeah…and what the heck is a “blefsing of liberty”?
I think the point there is that he’s a document examiner, not a lawyer. He only sees questioned documents.
I wonder the feasibility of hiring a certified document examiner to look at the Obama long form and answer the question of the number of typewriters and the level of certainty.
I was joking about Mr. Mohammed’s motivations of course. I was just surprised that someone who spends that much time around court rooms would have never heard of the term.
That is an interesting idea, Doc. Maybe Mr. Soros would be willing to fund it?
We’re just approaching the problem from different directions. Let’s call your approach “legal” and your argument has to do with what a reasonable person would conclude. Certainly a reasonable person would require a much, much, much higher standard of evidence to say that the LFBC was a fake than the other way round.
The other approach we might call “scientific.” Here the question is not whether the document is authentic or not, but how many typewriters typed it. Forensic science can answer that question, through laboratory analysis, with some specified some degree of certainty.
One might compare the two approaches as “finding the truth” and “getting facts.” The danger, where confirmation bias may come in, is an unconscious bias towards making the facts fit the truth. Science brings a methodology for removing confirmation bias.
If Mr. Irey is the best that the birthers have — and it appears he is — then they need to rethink whether they really want that trial on the merits they’ve been yammering about.
I wonder what makes him think that it is the Secret Service’s job to vet the President.
But that doesn’t say the document is real or fake. Suppose it was typed on a single 1961 typewriter. Unless you had the exact same typewriters that Hawaii DOH used back in 1961 (extremely unlikely) all you could say is that either it is real or the forger obtained a 1961 typewriter (probably not that hard to do). Even if it was typed wiith 2 different machines, you could say that DOH sometimes did half a form and then returned later to complete it, possiibly on a different typewriter (possible). I suppose if it was typed by 8 diifferent typewriters that would be suspicious, but why would a forger do that?
In the end, I don’t think the conclusion will satisfy those who remain unsatisfied. And frankly,who cares? They may deserve the right to persue satisfaction, but not the guarantee of finding it.
The chain of custody is at least as important as the document itself. If I claim the painting in my living room is a Michelangelo (there is a guy in Buffalo who is claiming exactly that).art experts can examine it and say that it is of the era and style of Michelangelo, but unless there is some credible story as to how I got it, no museum will be willing to pay me $50 million for it.
I’m no expert on documents and forgeries and all that, but I am an expert on global warming. Being as I have 30 years of experience living on the planet Earth, I can say definitively that global warming is a hoax.
Step outside and look into the sky on a cloudless day. What color is it? It’s blue. The sky should not be blue. A blue sky means global warming is a hoax.
Short of fraud, one of the primary purposes of such government documents is to create finality, thus the practical function of drawing a line called self-authentication. The point of such practices is to provide order, not prove reality is outside the matrix. The government says x is true, so that we can get on with life, instead of arguing about (or living) Zeno’s paradox, at least when we are on a long line at the DMV or post office to get a driver’s license or passport.
This is not an excuse for fraud but a stopgap against those who would bring life to a halt for oh-so-many illegitimate reasons. That is why we say such things as “innocent until proven guilty” and “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
@Scientist — Oh well, might as well throw out this old da Vinci. If no one is going to pay me for it, I don’t even care if it is the real thing! ;-}
I hate to admit it, but I probably got the file from TheObamaFile blog. It’s most likely scanned with a flatbed scanner.
So to follow up, given Doc’s distinction about law and science, government has a far different purpose than science. It’s processes are not designed to the level of a triple blind study. Science will tell you that going from a 98% safe bridge to a 100% safe bridge will require a forbidding amount of work and what would be needed to even approach 99.999999%, but government’s purpose is not to build a 100% safe bridge. It is to keep traffic moving over the river as much as possible.
Legal self-authentication merely means that you won’t need to drag the Hawaii custodian of records into court to testify that the document is a true and correct copy of the original in the vault. The certification creates a rebuttable presumption that it is a true and correct copy. If someone in an active lawsuit has a relevant reason for attempting to prove the copy is NOT a true and correct copy of the vault document, they may present admissible evidence to rebut it. Mr. Mohammed was not expressing his pecuniary interest. He is a document examiner and the legal standard for authenticating evidence is not his area of expertise.
Thanks, Raicha. I think the key phrase is “admissible evidence”. Neither Mr. Irey nor Mr. Vogt would be admitted as expert witnesses.
“The radio show draws a sharp contrast between the first guest, Linton Mohammed”
This guy’s name is Mohammed?!
Sorry, but with that name, everything he says or does is subversive. He’s probably making a bomb in his basement right now. And he is definitely protecting that Muslim in the White House.
You can’t fool me. No, wait: There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.
The court system is stacked against cranks.
However, I am not going out on a limb by saying that Irey and Vogt wouldn’t be allowed to testify in some jurisdictions.
RC, you are confusing legal terminology with forensics.
I didn’t listen to your program, but when there is an allegation of fraud or forgery in a legal case, the proper type of expert to call in is a QDE — “questioned documents examiner”. That expert will generally want to look at the original document as well as whatever exemplars may be available of genuine documents for comparison. For example, if there is a question as to whether a signature was forged, ideally there would be known examples, in an original form, of the person’s real signature.
I doubt any QDE would offer a firm opinion that a document was genuine — that’s not how real experts phrase things — but it is likely that the QDE might say something along the lines of, “I have examined the document, and can find no basis to question it’s authenticity.”
So when a QDE is asked, is a document “authentic”, s/he is being asked, “is it real?”
The rules of evidence deal with the legal process of admitting a document into court, generally in contexts in which there is not an allegation of fraud or forgery, but simply of legal admissibility. When introduced to prove some item of fact that is asserted in print, a written document is hearsay, always. (Hearsay is any form of evidence other than a live person testifying in court, subject to examination).
So that document has to come in under some exception of the hearsay rule. To get that document admitted, the lawyer has to show the court that the elements of the hearsay exception have been met — that process is referred to as “authentication.” Ordinarily, in the absence of a Rule 902, a birth record would come in under the vital statistics exception to the hearsay rule, Rule 803 (9). But without rule 902, a person employed in a responsible position in the public records office would have to come to court to testify as to the document, to say that indeed the records produced were made in accordance with the law.
Rule 902 simply comes in and says that the certification stamp eliminates the need to bring in the witness. Without 902, Alvin Onaka needs to come to court to “authenticate” (i.e., testify that this indeed is a copy of the document kept in the bound book in accordance with the legal requirements governing his office). With 902, Alvin Onaka stays home.
But Alvin Onaka would never have to prove a negative – that the bound paper in the book in the Hawaii DOH office is not itself a forgery — the fact that it was there, coupled with the fact that it should be there according to the practices followed by the office, would be enough to satisfy the section 803 requirements. “Authenticate” means prove that the document is genuine within the context of the specific hearsay exception, not to rule out possibility of fraud, forgery, or alteration.
So again, I didn’t listen to the interview, but asking a QDE a question about “authenticity” based on legal requirements concerning “authentication” is confusing apples and oranges.
Is there a court in the country that would ignore Hawaii’s certification and allow a document expert in court on this document? Is there a court that would ignore the “full faith” clause of the constitution, Is there a judge in the country that would allow a birther expert near a court without an antidote to laughing gas?
Certified copies can be challenged.
The certificate creates a rebuttable presumption that the original vault document looks like the certified copy. But let’s pretend that the attending doctor on the certificate was still alive. Let’s pretend that the doctor submitted a proper affidavit in a proper case on a relevant issue that said: “I am the doctor named on that form and I did not sign it. I was on vacation in Michigan on August 4, 1961”. Or the doctor might testify in person to that effect.
That evidence could be used to “rebut” the legal presumption that the original vault document says the same thing as the certified copy. The court might, under these or similar limited circumstances, order an examination the original vault document. A QDE like Mr. Muhammed would then be hired to conduct the examination and he would report his findings. He would detail his methodology, what he found to be consistent with an original document and what he found to be inconsistent. Mr. Muhammed specifically discussed this toward the end of the first hour of the RC radio program.
But Mr. Muhammed would not be the one drawing the legal conclusion of the validity of either the certified copy or the original document. The trier of fact (either the jury or the judge if there isn’t one) would consider the word of the custodian of records of the State of Hawaii, the conflicting testimony of the doctor or other admissible evidence contradicting the State, and the findings of the QDE. The trier of fact determines whether the document is valid or a forgery.
The birthers will never get this far because a) they have no standing for a lawsuit b) they have no legal theory that can be adjudicated, and c) they have no credible, admissible evidence to contradict the word of the custodian of records in the State of Hawaii.
But a certified copy from a government source does not automatically end the inquiry. If the birthers had a+b+c+, they might make progress. But they don’t and they never will.
On this document? Probably not. There has been no reason to. The pedigree on this document is also pretty solid. If there was a real question of fraud, sure. Even with a state seal, you could bring in an expert to challenge it. Fraud does happen. Documents are forged and altered, sometimes even by corrupt government officials.
Only one that wishes to be reversed by a higher court. The fact is both the COLB and the LFBC in there paper form come from the State of Hawaii, contrary to what birther say. Every court in the US is bound by the constitution to honor those documents.
There are very specific rules on admission of expert testimony. You first have to tell the opposing side rather early on who your expert is, give their CV, expert report, and everything they relied on to draft that expert report. You then get to despose that expert, and if he doesn’t rise to the level of being a real expert, you move to exclude his testimony, and bam, he’s gone. Take Irey for example. The two simple questions of, “what is your experience in document forensics?” “how many documents have you anaylized in the past?” would be enough to keep him from giving an expert opinion in court. Obviously there is a huge list of things you could keep going with just to show just how remotely unqualified he is, but those two are pretty key. The thing about giving expert testimony, is that you really have to be an expert on the subject matter you intend to testify about, and the other side gets to challenge your expert’s qualifications.
so essentially the birthers are barking at the wrong tree, there’s no cat up there (cat went downtown)
There are only two potential issues that could be raised, assuming standing and facts sufficient to put the validity of the birth certificate at issue in a court of law:
1) As to the the self-authenticating, paper LFBC — the only possible issue to raise would be a claim that the certification stamp and signature itself was fraudulent. Problems with the underlying document itself would not be considered — the issue would be, “is this in fact a certified copy of the record on file?” Given the statement posted on the Hawaii DOH web site, there is no doubt that there exists a genuine, certified copy — the only question birthers can raise as to that is whether or not the PDF posted on the internet is in fact a true copy of the LFBC. But that PDF is not what would be brought to court.
2) As to the underlying record — Raicha is right, it could be subject to challenge, but only with strong and convincing, admissible evidence. We know that the doctor whose signature appears on the document is dead, as is Obama’s mother — so it is difficult to contemplate what sort of evidence could possibly be raised to controvert the evidence on the Hawaii b.c.
We also know for certain that some sort of birth record was indeed filed for Obama listing the August 4 birth date, based on the contemporaneous newspaper listings. Raising a doubt about some part of the document is not enough — it has to be evidence sufficient to overcome a strong presumption of validity that applies to government records.
just for clarity as Irey mentions OCR a lot, the pdf image on Obama’s site was not OCR’ed, those of you with Acrobat (not the Reader) can check this easily, Ctrl F or intiate OCR (Apparently Irey doesn’t know that)
the image on Doc’s site was a jpg, again no OCR.
.
either can be run through OCR, but neither was.
I may be mistaken, but I think even without performing OCR, there are different default protocols for scanning documents that are designed to prepare a document for OCR. A scanner doesn’t do OCR in any case — the OCR is done with the software on the computer. But a scanner can be set to optimize for OCR, just as there are other settings in a scanner to adjust resolution, brightness and contrast in a document.
Here’s the problem faced with scanning Obama’s long form birth certificate: in order to show that it is printed on security paper, it needs to be a color scan; but it also has text that needs to be readable. If it were scanned at the ordinary settings for a full color photographic image, it would end up being a HUGE file. But the security paper is a repeating pattern, and everything else on the page is lines and letters in black (grayscale) text. A repeating pattern can be stored in a computer file with much less space if it is represented by a mathematical algorithm — hence in order to be able to have a high resolution image overall (suitable for viewing full size on a computer screen), it makes sense to separate out the text from the background.
Where along the process this happens is hard to say. Either there is a setting on the scanner for “documents” that will automatically do the separation needed with a full color scan — or else the document can be scanned in at high resolution (say 300 dpi) and then the PDF creation software performs the separations when the user selects the option to optimize for screen.
From the standpoint of computer software design, it makes a lot more sense to separate out the elements of an image to optimize the file for on-screen or web display, than to keep it all together and then suffer the inevitable loss of resolution when you want to reduce the size of the file.
If you FAIL to properly optimize the document, you end up with the problem that birther lawyer Phil Berg ran into a couple of years ago when he decided to submit a copy of a Hawaiian brochure-like publication as an exhibit to his case. He or his assistant scanned it in, but apparently chose settings appropriate for images and not documents, and the document could not be opened or read on most common PDF software (such as Adobe). Of course he got the judge royally ticked off.
There probably wasn’t a whole lot of human planning or tinkering involved. Most likely we are dealing with pre-set defaults in the scanner and the PDF software.
Here are a couple of points for your consumption. In general, I think of them more as issues a good, unbiased reporter should have investigated* rather than legal questions, but legal work has an investigative aspect.
1. “No state official, including Governor Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawaii.”
http://hawaii.gov/health/about/pr/2008/08-93.pdf
Obama Birth Certificate Moved to More Secure Location Months Ago
More than a month before Donald Trump began his media blitzkrieg over the issue of President Obama’s birth certificate, the document was quietly moved to a more secure location within a dual combination-key lock safe inside the state’s health department vault.
The certificate was moved there by Alvin Onaka, Hawaii’s State Registrar, in response to what had already become an increasing number of media requests by FoxNews.com and others, according to sources.
Fukino and others claim the additional security measure reduces the number of people with access to the much-sought-after document from a handful to just one: Onaka himself.
“It is my understanding that the book has been placed in a smaller locked container in the same secure safe,” Chiyome Fukino, who served as Hawaii’s health department director for eight years until last December, told FoxNews.com in late February. “The safe is still in the department.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/27/obama-birth-certificate-moved-secure-location-months-ago/
Fukino’s official statement in 2008 partially quoted above indicates to me that in order for a birth certificate to be moved to a more secure location (treated differently), a state official should be giving instruction, for instance, the Governor, specifically Neil Abercrombie. When Governor A was trying desperately to get to the bottom of things, I find it strange that he did not comment on the fact that the birth certificate was moved, especially when people were misconstruing his comments that he couldn’t find the certificate.
Also, why was there a sudden increase in media requests for the birth certificate? Trump had not yet made his media splash yet.
Why did Alvin Onaka get to make the decision to move the certificate when Fukino, who was in charge for the start of the controversy and most of the intensity of it (until Trump came along) did not? Who was not trustworthy causing Onaka to limit access strictly to himself? After all, why would access need to be restricted from employees who have access to the certificates of everyone else? If Trump had already made his statement about investigators, I would have thought maybe it would be to remove the temptation of a buying someone off, but it was moved before he was making headlines. (Buying someone off to find out what was released anyways.)
*****
She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42519951/ns/politics-more_politics/t/ex-hawaii-official-denounces-ludicrous-birther-claims/
I don’t know what others’ comments were on this. The birth certificate released was not half hand written. The signatures were hand-written, but the comment as stated talks about being half hand-written AND signed, seeming to imply that other parts were hand-written besides the signatures.
None of above is earth shattering. There are explanations, I’m sure. Why not discuss it on a blog dedicated to such topics?
*Maybe this CNN guy (http://www.mrctv.org/videos/cnn-finding-gov-palin-was-hard-working-governor) who reported on the Palin emails and found her to be … a governor doing her job, one who was upset that she wasn’t told about the funerals of those Alaskan soldiers killed in action, but I digress…as others here do, evidenced by Palin remarks thrown in.
“seeming to imply that other parts were hand-written”
the second half of the document is medical info and is handwritten, that you can’t see does not mean it was not hand written, this has been covered many times
Sorry, I don’t live on this blog. I couldn’t find the discussion to find out specifics.
I cannot conceive of any rational person finding this strange. The location of the storage of this record is not a matter for the governor. And it is further an out and out fabrication to say that the “couldn’t find the certificate.”
Could we please stick to the facts, and stop acting like a birther concern troll?
Doc,
I never said that he could not find the certificate! People construed it that way. I didn’t. Governor Abercrombie himself made the birth certificate his quest. How is it not a matter for the governor to talk to the people in charge of vital records then?????
Also, this has nothing to do with conspiracy theories but I thought you may find it interesting… maybe not.
http://www.my719moms.com/news/health-department-to-mother-no-birth-certificate-without-private-medical-information/
If every thing else I said above makes me a concern troll, then I am right about needing to tow the line here to comment.
People were misconstruing his comments… gee, what does misconstrue mean? I guess concern troll talk for the opposite of what it says.
Hi charo. Glad you could stop by and rehash ancient history. Who cares? See ya…
Alvin Onaka has always been in charge of these records. That is why his name is stamped on them. The decision to move an original document with historical significance to a secure location because it has garnished a lot of attention to me is both common sense and smart. And before you misconstrue this, the document is historical simply because it is the birth record of the President of the United States. Other President’s birth certificates are also of historical significance. The difference here is this one has gained a lot of attention, where the other ones have not.
As an analogy, if I was the curator of a museum and a particular original artifact in the general hall was gaining a lot of heated attention and rumours of people trying to gain access to it who weren’t entitiled to do so, I would move it from a general access area to one that was more secure, for simple basic security reasons. Originals cannot be replaced, only reproduced as copies.
Charo, I don’t why you view the world in such a sinister fashion and need to perceive common, rational actions as something creepy. You simply hope for reasons to justify your emotional biases and desire to portray the mundane in a negative light in order to have some sort of feigned outrage to lash onto.
Doc, You give Irey more credit than I would. I felt he was very evasive, repeatedly dismissive in word and tone (“Typewriters don’t do that” .. “I’ve seen distortion, sir”). He gave little or no acknowledgment of the degradation that ensues as a document is scanned/copied from one physical/digital format to another. Ultimately, I felt he was, as I am, a person with extensive experience in creating documents, but no professional experience in scientifically “reverse engineering” them. Further, he did not seem to appreciate the difference between his work, professional printing (in which accuracy and aesthetic are paramount), and the work of a bureaucrat completing paperwork repetitive paperwork (accuracy, yes, appearance not so much). Finally, he did demonstrate some applicable technical knowledge, but also that he is in some aspects of the field, behind the times.
He seemed to be saying, among other things, this document is not up to the standards I and my clients held myself to, so it is suspicious (“there are ways to mess up customer’s type, and we knew how to avoid them” – paraphrase) … but those standards have no relation to someone completing a birth certificate.
I am lucky enough to have the certified copy of my BC, from 1977. If subjected to this scrutiny, I, too, am toast. Use of correction tape, i’ that look like l’s, seal that wasn’t inked very heavily and is unrecognizable. Conspiratorial minds can’t appreciate the chaotic nature of daily life, particularly when seen in hindsight.
I just took a look at my certified CA birth certificate. It would be considered a fake by Irey’s standards. The State birth certificate number is missing. Capital “V” is dropped in one place, by elevated in another place. There are artifacts around my father’s age.
And the smoking gun is there are two capital H’s one standing on top of the other in the word Hospital.
Conclusion: I’m Kenyan
I have a new blog post on the Irey interview and I also included a debunking Doug Vogt’s claim that the “typing doesn’t follow the curve in the paper”.
http://rcradioshow.blogspot.com/2011/06/paul-ireys-biased-analysis-i-knew-it.html
One thought about Irey. He disclaimed being an expert in document analysis but he did not dispute the headline in the WND article, which labeled him as an “expert”.
Charo, since you appear to be responding to my comment about how and when the validity of an original birth certificate might be challenged in a court of law, assuming a proper case with proper standing and proper jurisdiction — none of your phony, repeatedly debunked, birther concern troll points would be admissible or relevant evidence or would in any way undermine the validity of the certificate.
As I pointed out above, the ONLY way a certificate could be challenged would be by clear, strong, convincing evidence which negates something in the certificate. We’ll assume for th moment that rather than Obama’s situation we have some situation where there are present witnesses and clear legal standing — for example, a 21st century equivalent of Wong Kim Ark produces a birth certificate to prevent deportation, and the authorities claim that the birth certificate is fraudulent and that the individual was in fact born abroad..
It does not matter where the birth certificate was stored at the department of health, or how and when it was moved about. That is totally, absolutely, irrelevant and would never be considered in any court of law.
It does not matter how some person who saw the certificate describes what she saw, months after the time she saw it. That is totally, absolutely, irrelevant and would never be considered in any court of law. It is specifically excluded from evidence by the best evidence rule. You can’t attack a original document by oral testimony of someone claiming to remember to have seen something different the last time they looked, and certainly not by hearsay reporting by a third person.
I’m taking a family cruise soon so I dug out my passport, right next to it was my Illinois BC, so as a test I scanned the BC into Acrobat using the “create PDF from scanner” option (probably what was used for Obama), Oh my gosh, according to Irey, I have a forged document. This is serious, 90% of Americans have a forged BC, it’s a big WOW isn’t it. What am I gonna do? My back is not even wet!
This may be a misunderstanding about what a birth certificate contains. The one given to the parents does not contain all of the information collected at the time of birth and reported on a BC.
If you read this 1955 article on Hawaiian Vital Records, you see that the nurse in the hospital filled (typed up?) out the BC, took it to the mother to sign, then gave it to the doctor, who would add certain medical information and then sign it. If the doctor wrote the medical section in pen than almost half of the BC would be handwritten and half typed.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2011/05/vital-records-in-hawaii/
I though that meant you were from Burkina Faso.
Thank you for your response. You seem to be the only one to get that I was inviting explanations. I had not seen the thread on the topic of the half-written, half typed issue, and your response on this point makes sense.
I said at the onset that in general, I wasn’t making legal points. Tangentially related to legality is that C. Fukino’s official statement was she had not received any instruction from a state official to treat the birth certificate any differently than she would other certificates. Maybe I am wrong on this, but I believed her position to be above A. Onaka. I don’t know if it was policy or a legal concern for her to act only according to the direction of a state official. If she was not able to treat the birth certificate any differently than the average person’s certificate, than how could Onaka? That is the underlying basis for a much more detailed discussion that you don’t want to have. Fine with me.
Would you care to explain the relevance of any of that? What possible difference would it make? Why should anyone care?
You got the holy grail that you wished for. Like most people who get something they wished for you are unhappy with it.
I don’t know know how my comment quoted above garnered your response.
Fukino would have had the concern of preserving the record long before 2008. Let’s say as scientist often does, the certificate were destroyed in a fire. That would not be the same as say the Portrait of Lisa Gherardini being destroyed. The certificate has to be secured from the sudden interest of the media (and others) because why? The employees are suddenly not trustworthy enough to do their jobs with due diligence?
I believe that I have shown by my comments of the past year that I do question what appears minutia. So what? Am I really hurting the most powerful man in the world?
That should read long before 2011 (when it was moved)
I said a tsunami, not a fire. Hawaii is at serious risk of tsunami and we have all seen how destructive they can be.
Well, if you remove the word “appears”. then we agree.
This guy? Probably not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDydr%C5%ABnas_Savickas
However, you might be hurting your brain by getting it into the habit of focussing on trivialities. Once the triviality synapses get over-stimulated and the important synapses atrophy, the condition may be irreparable.
Well, the governor was a Republican. ‘Nuff said?
I’m sorry, it’s the brain atrophy.
And she supported John McCain who chose Palin as his running mate?
Because your minutiae is logically (as well as legally) irrelevant. It is meaningless — the kind of stuff that is tossed around to create the appearance of doubt in situations where none exists.
The Hawaii Dept. of Health can keep their records wherever they want.. It’s pretty obvious in this case that as of 2008, there was enough interest in the certificate that any responsible manager would want to take measures to make sure it was secure. It made sense to put it in a place where it was not likely to be mishandled and that low-level or temporary employees would not have direct access to it.
But whether or not there was good reason to put it in a vault for safekeeping — the fact that step was taken is totally, wholly, completely irrelevant and not in any way logically related to its validity. You cannot invalidate a birth certificate by raising questions about its storage — its not like DNA evidence that could be contaminated; chain of custody is irrelevant for documents that are public record.
So why ask these questions? It’s pretty clear from your post in general that you aren’t stupid or crazy like some birthers. So when a smart person has a longstanding habit of showing up from time to time asking really stupid questions… it suggests that you are not truly interested in the answer.
Or perhaps you can enlighten me as to what your thought process is. What difference would it make whether or not the birth certificate was place in a vault for safekeeping, and whether or not the person placing it there had gone through proper channels to get authority to move it around? If a volunteer working at a public library notices that there is a first edition of Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” sitting on the shelf and decides on her own that it must be valuable, and so moves it out of the public area to the library’s rare book section … does that mean Hemingway didn’t write the book, or that it is no longer a first edition? You could argue day and night about how the hypothetical book — or Obama’s birth certificate – ended up stored wherever it was, but that doesn’t change the nature of the book or the certificate.
No, you are not hurting anyone, but your concerns on the minutia didn’t make sense to me either in the sense that I have no idea what your point is or what you are getting at. It just comes across like casting cranky aspersions at the mundane, if you ask me. Frankly, your posts come across as if it is fairly clear that you know that his BC is legit, but at some level you wish it wasn’t.
Expelliarmus expressed my thoughts best, so I’ll restate his question:
I think I’ve finally figured out what you’re getting at (I have to admit I was pretty confused.) You’ll have to tell me if I’m on the right track. You seem to be taking this statement:
to mean that if, at some point, they decided that they did need to treat Obama’s records differently from everybody else’s–like, to keep them in a different location–that they’d have to get an order from the governor to do it. If that’s right (about what you’re saying), then my problem is that I just don’t read the statement that way at all. I don’t see anything in it that implies that Mr. Onaka, or Dr. Fukino either, couldn’t make the decision later to put them in that more secure location, without bringing the governor into it. They were just saying that the way they were treating Obama’s records was using the same rules as applied to everyone. So, for example, not because he’d had them “sealed” or something like that.
While I’m at it, there’s this:
I read your Fox News link, and it didn’t actually say there’d been a recent, sudden increase. It said they were moved “in response to what had already become an increasing number of media requests”. Also that they started getting the requests “after the 2008 election.” So that had been happening for a while.
So why did they move them just then? Three possibilities, as I see it. One, because of the interest caused by Governor Abercrombie’s involvement. Two, the new director (since that was a new political appointee) thought t was a good idea. And three, that they’d talked it over in meetings for the last year or so before they finally got around to doing it. (If I know bureaucracy–and unfortunately for me, I kinda do–that last one is pretty likely.)
So in other words, I just don’t see anything too unusual here.
When I read the article that the book with Obama’s birth record had been moved to a more secure location my fisrt thought was that Hawaii had some concern of a Birther Watergate style break in to steal the records. I think these concerns were justified. Birthers are so obsessed with finding something on Obama they will do about anything including forming vigilante grand juries, trying to make citizens arrests at real grand juries, pestering a women whose newborn infant died 50 years ago, accusing multiple Hawaiian officials of lying and conspiracy, and committing identity theft on line to obtain Obama’s draft records illegally, just to name a few. I believe the move was justified when the idiot Donald Trump ramped up the nonsense.
And the murder of security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, husband and father.
And more despicable acts that have been listed here before.
the security violations and convictions regarding hillary clinton’s, mccain’s and obama’s passport records as well as obama’s student loan records were most likely the tipping point. hawaii’s concerns were already well justified.
Often the victim(s) in these despicable acts are lost in the discussion about their murderers. Thanks for reminding us.
Don’t forget you had Tim Adams, a temp employee, making himself a minor celebrity talking about Obama’s BC. Maybe they wanted to make sure it was safe from other temp workers like Adams.
It isn’t the Secret Service’s job to vet the President. Their job is to protect the President. It’s the FBI’s job to conduct background checks for security clearances, such as what Senator Obama would have had when he was elected as a Senator.
This is another case of jumping to the wrong conclusion on Irey’s part. He may have met a present or past Secret Service employee – and the service has more responsibilities than just protecting the President – and been told that the service doesn’t “vet” the President. Which would be factually correct. It’s not what they do. If you’re already of the belief that the President is not a natural born citizen, and that there are shenanigans relating to his birth certificate, you’ll jump to Irey’s conclusion.
What Fukino was saying is that she was never directed to give Obama’s birth certificate any more confidentiality than anyone else’s. She was making the point that Obama’s birth record is confidential, just like everyone else who was born in Hawaii. It is clear from the context that she was not referring to the way the birth certificate is stored.
We do not know how many people in Hawaii DOH have access to the books of long-form birth certificates. There may have been concerns that someone with access could be tempted by bribery or some other inducement to copy, steal or mutilate the original. Or it may simply have dawned upon the people at DOH that they are sitting on a document which has immense historical value and that it should be protected from the possibility of any damage, whether intentional or accidental.
This appears to be a trollish attempt to create controversy where none exists.
The question was whether Obama’s birth certificate had been sealed, and the answer is that his certificate was treated like anyone else’s and that no one told her to treat it special. It is absurd to overlay something related to the storage of the certificate, or the internal relationships in the health department staff onto her statement to try and find an anomaly.
I have, not for the first time, misunderstood what is an allowable topic for discussion and what is not. I felt you deserved an answer so here it is, although I am not going to continue the discussion beyond responding to your comment. I wasn’t trying to be secretive or use innuendo. Your above comment is mostly accurate, although C. Fukino’s statement said that she did not receive any instruction from the Governor OR any state official, the statement being in reference to questioning whether the document was sealed. For me, it raised the the issue of the Governor’s authority to be involved with birth certificates at all. Her statement implied there was some kind of authority. After the fact, assuming that I would find something concrete, I looked at the Hawaii Revised Statutes (forgive my lack of proper citation):
§338-2 Authority and duties of the department of health. The department of health, herein referred to as the department, shall:
(1) Establish a central bureau of public health statistics with suitable offices properly equipped for the safety and preservation of all its official records;
(2) Install a statewide system of public health statistics;
(3) Make and amend, after notice and hearing, necessary regulations, give instructions and prescribe forms for collecting, transcribing, compiling, and preserving public health statistics
There probably is some kind of form for the preserving of records to allow for the movement of certificates, although I can’t imagine scenarios where that would regularly occur. Every person’s certificate is important and should be protected. Governor Abercrombie made it his mission to put to rest the whole birth certificate issue. He made public statements. He said some kind of notation was found (I don’t recall the details of exactly what he said). That is why I brought him into it. Governor Lingle was also involved in the birth certificate issue, not regarding where it should be placed, but she clearly ordered it to be examined. In conclusion, a Governor being involved in the birth certificate issue was not completely out in left field, but of course that is my opinion.
I don’t recall ever reading that the media showed an interest in the birth certificate after the COLB was released (and then again after Trump). As for others’ requesting it, I remember reading that after the vexatious requester law was passed, there was a significant drop in those kinds of requests.
Fair enough. The article did not mention Acting Director Fuddy (until March 3) as the person behind the decision, but Alvin Onaka. It could be that he was at odds with Fukino over the issue. A year to move a certificate seems extremely prolonged, even for beaurocrats. Also, the players in the “birther” arena are not form Hawaii. The only such person connected with the “birther” movement (and he claims not to be a “birther”) is Tim Adams, who hasn’t lived there for some time. When I made my comment, I wondered why the concern for the certificate after so much time? It seems to me an issue of trust, but you feel differently.
Charo, I know you didn’t want to restart the discussion, but, here is something to consider. The LFBC that was released has a curved edge, like the Nordyke’s, because it is in a bound volumn of BCs. So when it was copied to be submitted to the President, the entire volumn was placed on the copier or scanner.
So doesn’t that suggest the entire volumn is in the locked cabinet, not just the President’s BC.
Charo, please answer my question — what possible difference do you think it makes?
You raised this point in response to my post about what could actually be considered in a court of law — so let’s supposed that there is standing and you are in court to to litigate the issue of Obama’s birth place. Obama’s lawyer has come in and introduced a certified copy of his COLB, pursuant to FRE 902 and 1005. Judge rules that a prima facie case has been made out that Obama was born in Hawaii in August 1961. It’s your turn — and the judge asks you for an offer of proof before calling any witnesses. Who are you planning to call? What will they testify to? What is the legal relevance of that testimony?
Because 9/11 was a set-up. Because there was a travel ban to Pakistan in 1981. Because Obama is a CIA operative. Because a judge in a birther case met someone for coffee… or something. Because Madelyn Dunham knew that her grandson would run for President someday. I’m sure there’s a lot I’m missing but it’s the brain atrophy, just can’t lemme be.
I don’t know why the whole volume would be locked up and not just his. I have no idea.
If the President’s BC was removed from the volume, then when they made the copy of it in April, it would had been flat on the copier or scanner. Clearly, it was still in the bound volume. Either that or they rebound it before coping it. Which doesn’t make sense.
Since Hawaii no longer issues photocopies of the old certificates (except in special circumstances) there’s no particular value in keeping the 1961 volume on the regular shelves.
If I recall, someone offered $10,000 for a copy of that certificate, and it would have been a major black eye to the department of health if the document leaked. No wonder they locked the book up.
And I don’t know why you can’t figure it out.
Maybe whenever Charo finds something in a book she likes she just tears out the page and throw away the rest of the book. That way she doesn’t have to run the risk of finding anything else in the book that doesn’t support her pre-existing notions.
The Doc may be able to clarify, but I would imagine that all of the old certificates are locked in some sort of fire-proof/resistant cabinet or safe. It would be illogical to keep them sitting around on any old shelf as they are a historical document.
All is not lost. The synapses that handle important things can regenerate. It’s a matter of beginning to use them again. Here’s a handy checklist to help distinguish between important stuff and trivialities:
Important;
Family
The state of the global environment
Soverign debt defaults
War and peace
When will Derek Jeter get #3,000
Trivial:
How Hawaii DOH handles volumes of birth certificates
Anything said by radio shlock jocks
Anything published in or by WND
Having actually seen such things, I know that the volume of such records is huge, and would not be accommodated by a conventional safe. What one has is a large secure room.
However, I did see once (as best I recall from a very long time ago) that some very old records were on a shelf in a conference room in the City of Richmond, VA. No doubt the records had been microfilmed, and those copies were kept securely.
Charo — I made a point in this thread about LEGAL RELEVANCE. You made a point about garbage. I asked you to explain the RELEVANCE of your so-called “concern”… and rather than articulate some sort of logical connection of your “concern” you respond with more GARBAGE.
Don’t you understand that courts of law have rules of evidence? That the only thing that a court will consider in making a factual determination is *evidence* – and not fantasy, not allegation. And that before a court will even allow evidence to be introduced, the party offering it must be able to show that it is “relevant” — that is, that the *evidence* offered has some tendency in reason to prove or disprove a material fact?
In a hypothetical case with standing, where the issue at hand is where was Obama born, the obvious method of proof is his birth certificate, and the rules of evidence make it clear that a certified copy of the COLB (short form) will suffice. There is nothing in law that requires that a live witness be brought to court – just a certified document — and there is nothing that requires the certifier attest to how the underlying document has been handled or stored, only that the certified document is a true and correct copy or abstract of whatever the government office has on hand.
I don’t know if stupid is catching, but if you are worried about brain atrophy (your words), perhaps you should stop hanging around with birthers, and stop relying on World Nut Daily and Fox News as your primary sources of information. Try the Wall Street Journal or the Washingon Times if you lean so conservative that you can’t cope with NPR and the New York Times. Perhaps if the matter you read has been written and edited by someone with a capacity for thinking rationally, your own sense of logic and reason can recover.
Unfortunately, we are not in a court of law, but the Court of Public Opinion. In that court rules of evidence don’t apply, logic does not apply and you are guilty until proven innocent by 100% of the populace. That’s where all these birthers are trying to prevail. I expect that most (with the possible exception of Orly) understand that they have no chance of prevailing in a real court, so they continue to spout their nonsense here. You will not get anywhere with the likes of charo or KBOA, but it is important to continue to attempt to correct these people so that their message gets blunted.
Do you think anyone in the public cares how Hawaii DOH handles their records? I don’t think you could find 1 person in 1,000 in Hawaii that does. Birtherism is dead in the law courts and in the court of public opinion. It’s an ex-topic. It’s deceased, it’s pushing up the daisies. It’s shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the majority. WND can nail it to its perch, but everyone knows it’s dead.
Do you think CNN or MSNBC or even Fox will ever do another piece on it? No. It’s dead.
It’s not dead. It’s pinning for the fjords.
I expect a birther would follow this with the Mark Twain quote: “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”.
And we could reply:
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. ” — MT
Or:
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. ” — MT
My favorite Mark Twain quote: If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the difference between a dog and a man.
Ditto!
But I posted HERE on the subject of LAW: “There are only two potential issues that could be raised, assuming standing and facts sufficient to put the validity of the birth certificate at issue in a court of law:”
And it was in response to my 2nd point (“it is difficult to contemplate what sort of evidence could possibly be raised to controvert the evidence on the Hawaii b.c.”) that Charo decided to start blathering about who said what about what particular space the birth certificate occupied within the health department offices and what someone who interviewed someone who saw it once thought that someone said.
So the issue at hand, that Charo chose to respond to, is what sort of legal evidence there might be to challenge the COLB in a court of law. Legal evidence must be in the form of a witness who can testify to facts from personal knowledge, or a document that is made admissible by specific provisions of law. The issue isn’t where the paper is stored, the issue is whether it is in fact the record that the health department currently maintains.
I realize that Charo was more willing to claim that she suffers from brain atrophy than to actually admit that she is mistaken and doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but if people choose to engage me directly on this forum, I’m not going to let them get away with b.s. If Charo wants to discuss law with me, then she had better be able to tell me what witnesses and documents she thinks she would expect to be able to produce in court to support her assertion.
My point is that the birthers don’t really care about any of the legal facts. They talk about legal issues, but that is not their main focus. They only want to convince “those of little knowledge” that their point is valid. They spout the stuff that their minions want to hear; their readers think that they are speaking with authority and agree with them. I doubt that the majority of birthers who might read this blog even bother to read the things that are posted here by “Obots”, but come here to see what their favorite “patriot” has posted. So, I continue to think that this is the Court of Public Opinion.
There are many issues that the mainstream media will not touch, but that does not mean they are not in peoples’ minds when they make a choice on their ballot. This is really a fight for the soul of America. Let’s not lose it. Or grab defeat from the jaws of victory as Dems are often wont to do.
I didn’t want to continue the discussion after the first posted comment I made because Doc called me a troll. One person probably feels as you do but asked questions in a civil manner. I answered the person and tried to end it there because Doc called this troll territory. In response to your uncalled for abusive approach , I answered with the garbage that is attributed to “birthers” such as Orly claiming that a judge met with an attorney for coffee, clearly indicating that I didn’t want to continue. Rebutting evidence sometimes requires unpleasant actions like calling into question the motive of key people. I decided not to continue with the theoretical discussion. I don’t care about the issue any more and haven’t for awhile. I like to take the most difficult side of an issue and see if I can make a case. In law school, I was asked to defend family members who were depleting the trust fund of a brain dead girl via a spendthrift clause. I won the argument. This issue of the birth certificate is dead. This blog in that regard is just talk because nothing is going to change.
I try my darndest to be as civil as possible although I am guilty of sarcasm. My initial comment to you was not accusatory or insulting; I think I said food for thought or something, Never did I expect such a reaction. I have to admit, I was thinking you were slarti (don’t have the spelling down) because I have engaged in such arguments in the past without too much animosity. I don’t know why I mixed you two up. To compare me with the commenter who has acorn in the name, someone who has actually made offensive videos shows how far off the rails you are concerning me.
Mea culpa for initiating the comment. I hope that satisfies you.
Actually, asking questions to see if there is any reason to question the motive, questions like is it normal procedure to move birth certificates when every person deserves the same protection equally? Do governors normally get involved and do they have the authority to? It is not worth asking those kinds of questions.
Finally, I never said anything about evidence actually being admitted but focused more on investigating the matter. But that was a mistake, as I said (see mea culpa above).
That’s a bit of hyperbole. I will quote charo on one thing I agree wiith her on, “This issue of the birth certificate is dead”. Look at it this way-do you think there is anyone out there who wasn’t a birthher 3 months ago, but is today? In the absence of definitive evidence that such a creature exists, I have to say “No”. Sure, there is a hard-core remnant, but so what? The epidemic is over. It will be a complete non-factor in the election (if it ever was a factor to begin with, which is doubtful).
I never made any such comparison. I don’t even read the other commenter’s posts, much less respond to them or reference them in any way. You responded to my comment about the law with non sequitur and responded to that. I did refer to your assertion as being “phony, repeatedly debunked, birther concern troll points” because you do indeed repeatedly play the role of a concern troll and you did raise points that have been debunked over and over again.
Now you are just playing another gambit — the “I’m so offended I won’t answer” game. That’s BS. The reason you won’t answer is that you can’t. You know that your so called “point” was off topic, irrelevant, and has no bearing whatsoever to the issue that you chose to respond to.
And as I said, if you choose to fling bs at me, I’m going to call you on it.
The “motive” of public officials is not relevant to the validity of public documents. You don’t get to decide that you don’t like the Governor of Hawaii, therefore all Hawaii birth records are disregarded.
Are you arguing that the entire department has prepared and disseminated false certified documents concerning Obama on 2 separate occasions? If so you have to prove the document is false. “Motive” would only become relevant after you had proved the document to be false, IF you were trying to identify the person involved in the falsification.
I think it is appalling when someone impugns the reputation of a public official in order to ascribe to them a “motive” to commit a crime when in fact no such crime took place. I don’t care whether it is the current governor of Hawaii, the past governor, the current head of the health department, the past head of the department, or Alvin Onaka who is nationally respected in his field and has had a career spanning more than 40 years. And it’s cowardly to make such an accusation without coming right out and saying it.