I once handled a liability claim where the plaintiff refused to identify himself. This involved an automobile accident and our driver was clearly at fault. Our driver recognized the plaintiff as the person in the other automobile. But, the plaintiff absolute refused to provide any documentation verifying his identity. I advised his attorney that I could not pay him, because I didn’t have anyone to pay. At some point, all of us are required to prove our existence. For most of us, that starts with a birth certificate.
The recent case of the woman who was kidnapped shortly after birth tracking down her birth parents was an example of this problem. She only learned there was an issue when she could not get a drivers license because her “parents” could not produce a birth certificate. Ultimately she was able to prove that she had been kidnapped as a baby. A birth certificate is not a minor detail, it is a bare necessity.
The Obama “birther” movement has gone main stream. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the main stream media to casually dismiss this as a non-issue. Prior to this time birthers were routinely discounted in the main stream media, including Fox News, as Don Quixote characters chasing rainbows. There was wide spread acknowledgement that this was settled. Obama had produced his birth certificate and that was that.
They ALMOST got away with it. Perhaps they would have got away with it if the citizens of Hawaii had not elected Neil Abercrombe as their new Governor. The old Governor, a Republican, was willing to just let well enough alone. But the new Governor is a full-fledged KoolAid drinking Obama supporter so he huffed and puffed his way into office promising to stop the birther movement once and for all.
Here is what we know. In spite of all the promises the Governor hasn’t been able to produce squat. The best he has is some “vague” indication that there is a record of Obama’s birth certificate in the archives, but no actual copy of the birth certificate. That creates some serious problems.
In June of 2008, the Obama campaign released the following “copy” of Obama’s birth certificate:
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
This “certificate” was intended to end the controversy once and for all, but some people were not impressed. It was, after all, a digital copy. To the best of my knowledge no one outside of the Obama administration has ever laid hands on the real document. So Dr. Chiyome Fukino from the Department of Health released the following statement on October 31, 2008.
“There have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate. State law (Hawai’i Revised Statutes §338-18) prohibits the release of a certified birth certificate to persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record.
“Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai’i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai’i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.
“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 Hawai’i.”
Then, in July of 2009, she issued another statement:
“I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawai’i State Department of Health verifying Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago.”
It is important to note that Dr. Fukino refused numerous requests for clarification of her original statement between October of 2008 and 2009. There are reports, probably accurate, that Dr. Fukino’s responses were carefully crafted by legal counsel.
Under these circumstances it is important to realize what these statements do not say. The first statement does not say that Dr. Fukino personally saw Obama’s birth certificate, instead it says that she verified that: “the Hawai’i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record.” This, in retrospect, is interesting wording. It does not say they have the document, but rather than they have a record of the document.
The second statement also fails to say that the original birth certificate is on file. Instead it says that she has seen the original vital records verifying that Barrack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and he is a natural –born American citizen.” Again, she did not say that she saw the actual birth certificate, but that she saw the “record.” This is totally consistent with the recent report from Governor Abercrombe that there is a “record” of Obama’s birth, but no copy of the certificate itself. In addition, he was forced to admit that he couldn’t locate a record of live birth from any medical provider or hospital.
The Obama campaign produced a “copy” of his birth certificate. Where, exactly, did that come from? It now seems clear that it didn’t come from the Hawaii Department of Health since they don’t appear to have one. It seems possible that someone in the Obama campaign manufactured this document. In other words, it may have been a forgery. It is quite possible that even Obama thought this certificate presented accurate information. He may actually believe that he was born in Hawaii and that his father was Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. because that is what he was told. The only thing certain is that there is no currently available documentation verifying this.
When Obama was born a birth certificate could be filed even for someone born outside of the state of Hawaii, perhaps even outside of the country.
State of Hawaii Statute §338-17.8 Certificates for children born out of State. [[or out of country]]
(a) Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.
(b) Proof of legal residency shall be submitted to the director of health in any manner that the director shall deem appropriate. The director of health may also adopt any rules pursuant to chapter 91 that he or she may deem necessary or proper to prevent fraudulent applications for birth certificates and to require any further information or proof of events necessary for completion of a birth certificate.
(c) The fee for each application for registration shall be established by rule adopted pursuant to chapter 91. [L 1982, c 182, §1]”
This reminds me of Rahm Emanuel trying to establish his Chicago residency. He inconveniently moved to Washington D.C., apparently failing to anticipate the opportunity to run for Mayor of Chicago. Now he is having difficult convincing the courts that he really lived in Chicago all along. In the case of Obama it appears that his parents didn’t need to actually live in Hawaii, they just needed to state that Hawaii was their legal residence. In addition, apparently Obama did not need to actually be born in Hawaii, or even the United States, in order to qualify for a Hawaiian birth certificate in accordance with these regulations.
The problems for Obama are more significant than I realized. This starts to fill in a lot of blanks. It helps explain why Obama has refused to release any records from Occidental, Columbia, Harvard or even high school. Since there is no evidence that he ever had a certified Hawaii birth certificate to present, it begs the question of what documentation Obama did use. It would be hard to explain the use of Indonesian identity records. It would be even harder to explain the use of Hawaii identity records that cannot be verified. They certainly can’t be verified now.
So far everyone has been focused on whether or not Obama was born in the U.S. and whether or not he is a natural born U.S. citizen. But perhaps the more important question not where Obama was born, but rather what documentation did Obama use to enroll in school, to register to vote, to get a drivers’ license, to apply to the Illinois bar and to file for public office? If Hawaii can’t find his birth certificate, where did Obama get his copy? Ultimately, who is Barack Hussein Obama? So far, the only thing certain is that he has never presented even the bare necessities to verify his own identity.
TDM