Addicted to Obama Birth Certificate Blogging

Each day I vow to no longer write about the controversy surrounding the birth certificate of President Elect Barack Obama and each day I break that vow after digging up some juicy tidbit. No juice today but I still can't avoid the temptation because of all the inaccurate information that I see floating around the blogospere. There appear to be many misinformed people who are in turn creating even more misinformed people so I felt a need to add my two cents on what I know to be fact, know to be rumour, and know to be pure speculation.

Early this past summer, many questioned the natural born citizenship status of Barack Obama based on three main points of reasoning.

1. Rumours abounded that Mr. Obama had been born in Mombasa, Kenya rather than Honolulu, Hawaii as recorded in his book, Dreams of My Father, and as recorded by the campaign. The only proof offered this far in connection to this theory was from an interview with Obama's paternal grandmother conducted over the telephone between two missionaries acting as translators. She referred to Obama as a "son of Kenya" and then later claimed that she witnessed his birth in Mombasa. There are also rumors of a Kenyan birth certificate that has supposedly been sealed by authorities.

2. Obama moved to Jakarta, Indonesia with his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, sometime around 1967. Mr. Soetoro registered Obama in school under the name Barry Soetoro, listing him as an Indonesian citizen with his religion as Islam. Many unknowns exist here. At the time, Indonesia did not allow foreign citizens to attend public schools. Did Mr. Soetoro adopt young Obama to allow for his education or did he only lie on the paper work to complete registration? Also at the time, Indonesia did not recognize dual citizenship, although this may not have been reciprocated by the U.S. government. The question that remains is did young Obama forfeit his American citizenship to attend school in Jakarta?

3. During the campaign, when questioned about his lack of foreign policy experience, Obama replied that he had travelled to Pakistan while in college and had derived expertise from those travels. At the time, Pakistan was on the state department's do not travel list. Much speculation persists that if he travelled to Pakistan and then later India, it must have been on an Indonesian passport. This has never been confirmed.

In response to those questioning, in mid June, the Obama campaign sent a .jpg scanned Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth (COLB) to the Daily Kos. Several days later, the same image appeared on factcheck.org, politifact.com, and Obama's own site fightthesmears.com. Immediately the internet erupted with claims that the COLB was a forgery. In researching Hawaiian law, many also learned that parents who were citizens could register foreign births with the state within a year and receive the same COLB.

Many lawsuits followed insisting Obama reveal the "vault" copy or long form version of his birth certificate which shows the birth hospital, attending physician, and many other bits of information that are omitted on the COLB. Rather than submit the document, the Obama campaign repeatedly files for motions to dismiss creating another buzz of "What is he hiding?". To date, I know of at least 39 lawsuits that have been filed around the country with three currently sitting at the U.S. Supreme Court.

I'll address many of the inaccuracies I've seen floating around the internet.

1. Barack Obama is a Muslim. This is not completely accurate. Obama was born into a secular Muslim household and then later raised for several years by another secular Muslim stepfather. Apparently, very little religion was practiced at home. Obama's maternal grandparents had more influence over his life and they were atheistic. As an adult Obama attended Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ where he later married wife Michelle and where apparently he was baptized but no records have been obtained.

2. Barack Obama was born in Kenya. So far, this is only speculation. No Kenyan birth certificate or record has surfaced and no one has yet been able to obtain the travel documents of Obama's mother, Stanley Anne Dunham, from the early 60's.

3. Barack Obama is more Arab than black. I saw dozens of postings yesterday claiming that Obama's genealogy shows that he is less than 7% black and over 40% Arabic. This is nonsense. His American mother was 100% Caucasian and his father a Luo tribe member from Kenya who was a 100% black. Many of the Luo converted to Islam and adopted Arabic sounding names. That does not make them Arabic.

4. Justice Souter has ordered Obama to reply to the lawsuit filed by Phillip Berg by Dec. 1st. This again is untrue. Normal response time to any suit is 30 days. Obama may respond but he has not been ordered to respond. Additionally, Berg is only before the supreme court because lower courts ruled that he did not have legal standing. If the supreme court decided that he does have standing, then most likely the case would be referred back to the lower courts.

5. Hawaiian heath department's Dr. Fukino has verified that Obama was born in Hawaii. This is also untrue. The only thing that Dr. Fukino revealed is that she had examined the original certificate and found it authentic. She never did reveal whether the place of birth was Hawaii or Mombasa.

The real truth of the matter lies in the fact that the leader of the mightiest nation in the world should be somewhat above reproach. Many question whether Obama meets the "natural born" citizenship provision of Article II of the U.S. Constitution. The only irrefutable proof would be the review of the vault copy birth certificate by a non partisan inspector and a decision made by the U.S Supreme Court regarding the possible forfeiture of U.S. citizenship while residing in Indonesia.

This matter will never be totally settled by bloggers or defendants requesting dismissals rather than providing the proper documentation.

And I really can't help that I'm addicted to writing about this issue!