Every day I get countless e-mails from people who are just beginning to become aware of the questions surrounding Barack Obama’s eligibility for office.
Because I can’t answer thousands of individual questions, this column is designed to provide a basic backgrounder on the most frequent questions – questions that could all be answered in far greater detail if readers had the patience to wade through the voluminous collection of stories on the issue we offer the public free in our archives.
You can find the hundreds of news stories WND has written on this subject here.
You can also find a thorough exploration of this subject in publication form here.
Question: What about the claims by some other news organizations, public officials and websites to have seen and inspected the original birth certificate?
Answer: I don’t believe them. The statements they have made are ambiguous. They have offered no information to verify their claims – such as the hospital in which Obama was born. I think they have all inspected the same document we have all seen on various websites – the certification of live birth, which, as WND reported recently, is not even considered by the U.S. State Department to be a document with which you can obtain a passport, let alone establish a constitutional standard of “natural born citizenship” and qualify to serve in the White House.
Question: What about those newspaper birth announcements?
Answer: Newspaper birth announcements are generated by public health authorities when a birth certificate or certification of live birth is issued. Therefore, the birth announcements only establish what we already know – that a certification of live birth was issued by the public health authorities shortly after Aug. 4, 1961. Since that document is meaningless to establishing the constitutional standard of “natural born citizenship,” the newspaper ads are less than meaningless.
Question: Why do you focus so much attention on the birth certificate as opposed to other questions – like Obama’s foreign travels, his student records, his passports and whether he could be considered a “natural born citizen” on the basis of his father’s status as a Kenyan citizen?
Answer: It all starts with the birth certificate. As an investigative reporter, I was taught to start at the beginning of any story – to lay a foundation of truth upon which the story could tell itself. Without a legitimate, long-form birth certificate, I suggest to you we do not know with any certainty who Obama’s parents were. All we have is his story. If his story is good enough for us, then we should just accept it at face value and move on. I am as curious as anyone about the many other unanswered questions concerning Obama’s life. But, if we can’t get something as simple as his birth certificate, we’re never going to get the other answers we seek.
Question: How is it possible that no controlling legal authority ever asked Obama for his birth certificate since the Constitution requires that his eligibility be established?
Answer: It is not only possible, it is an established fact. No federal or state election authority ever asked for that proof. It’s a dirty little secret that no one in government at any level is eager for you to learn. No, those entities have a vested interest in guarding their own constitutional malfeasance. Further, it is an established fact that the Congress of the United States held hearings to establish that presidential candidate John McCain was indeed a “natural born citizen,” yet never bothered to demand the evidence from Obama.
Question: What are the most compelling facts that make you skeptical of Obama’s birth story?
Answer: The only living person who claims publicly to have been present at Obama’s birth is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, who says the birth took place in Mombasa, Kenya. Obama’s unwillingness to show the long-form birth certificate after all this time, dozens of lawsuits, a great deal of expense and a growing controversy, strongly suggests he is hiding something. The hysteria emanating from Obama’s acolytes strongly suggests this issue has hit a raw nerve. Why won’t a birth hospital in Hawaii come forward to verify the historic event – the birth of the baby who would become the first black president? Why the secrecy even after Obama wrote a public letter to the hospital claiming to have been born there?
Let me just say this in closing: The Constitution is precious. It is the basis for the rule of law in America. If we discount clear provisions like the one offered in Article 2, Section 1 on presidential eligibility, we might as well scrap the document altogether and just allow ourselves to be ruled by men, rather than law.
I am unwilling to do that. And I hope you will join me in standing up for the Constitution and the rule of law.
