Pamela of Atlas Shrugs is advancing the Nirther storyline by claiming that the published birth announcements of President Barack Obama are forged.
When I broke the explosive exclusive last June that Obama’s COLB (certificate of live birth) was a “horrible forgery,” it took a couple of days, but the O-bots sent around this “birth announcement”. That too apparently was a forgery.
Pamela cites extensive typesetting evidence to support the claim of forgery. One example:
This close-up of the Advertiser ad shows grossly different type font. Columns vary in width with laughable alignment
She wisely calls on the Army of Davids for analysis:
This needs peer review – let’s get some digital forensic examination analysis.
Anyone that has basic historical knowledge of the blogosphere knows that Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs is an expert in the field of typeset. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes can testify to that. So we shot him an email asking if he would take a look at the claims being asserted by Pamela.
Here is a portion of his response:
There is no visible difference at all in the typefaces. And newspapers in the 1960s often had misaligned columns. The layout was done BY HAND.
Thanks for your take on this Charles!
As we have said before, we really wish people would let this go. Let’s just say for arguments sake that it’s all true, and President Barack Obama wasn’t born in America. Removing him from office over that will make the divisions of recent decades look and feel like a petty school yard squabble. It would really be much healthier for the Republic if all of this energy could be harnessed, and organized around the central goal of voting his ass out of office, and all of his progressive buddies too.
Perhaps we are optimists, but what a wonderful world it could be if these now revealed anti-capitalists, anti-individualists, pro-socialist Democrats could be defeated by the very best mechanism of our democracy, the ballot.
“Let’s just say for arguments sake that it’s all true, and President Barack Obama wasn’t born in America. Removing him from office over that will make the divisions of recent decades look and feel like a petty school yard squabble.”
Article 2; section 1 of our Constitution: “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President…”
Look what failing to enforce the law has done to our country in terms of immigration. If we do not enforce our laws, especially those that form our founding documents, one what grounds can we defend against those who would radically re-write them?
Either our laws mean something, or they do not.
In terms of Obama’s birth certificate, I don’t know what the story is. BUT! I know this, if he is NOT a “natural born citizen” his presidency ought to be dissolved.
Would it be an incendiary issue, would it cause riots? Yep. But this is the HIGHEST seat in the land, the MOST powerful office in the world. Let the blame be directed toward those who would IGNORE, and DEFY our most fundamental laws. THEY lied to the American people. The American people have a right to law, and order.
Again, IFis NOT a “natural born citizen”, that is.
(Sorry for the typos. It’s early.)
Daddy-O,
The problem is that there is no real proof. Short of Barack going on national TV and admitting that he is not a “natural born citizen”, in an age where many black people still do not think that OJ killed his wife, and don’t care if he did, it will just be a bitterly contested issue.
You are correct about the rule of law needing to be enforced, but that doesn’t mean every law needs to be enforced right away at all times. That is why there is the concept of prosecutorial discretion.
If as many seem to believe, he is not a “natural born citizen”, then he should go to jail if it can be proven in a court of law, after he is voted out of office.
And that only holds true if there is compelling evidence. What compelling evidence has there been in the Nirther story? None. It smells about as accurate as a 9/11 truther fantasy. Maybe that’s why 9/11 truthers are pushing the Nirther story so much.
“The problem is that there is no real proof.”
As I said, I have no idea what the story is here. Maybe he is a natural born citizen, maybe not. I have no idea, and I have spent exactly zero minutes of my life thinking about it.
But! My comments are geared toward the law. My view is what is the point of having law if we can either ignore it, break it, or postpone the enforcing of it? It is a terrible day when politics trumps justice and order. But… maybe we have been there for quite some time now.
I tend to see things in the black and white. I admit it. But I know that if I break a law- whether it be speeding, or tax evasion- the chances of “prosecutorial discretion” being applied to my case is next to nil.
To loosely quote Virgil Earp from Tombstone: “A man’s gotta have law, Wyatt.”
Et tu floundering bloggers!? The evidence you seek is right in front of you presented by Kos and factcheck ect.. as you well know. Wether its a forgery or not would have to be decided by a court case with jury. However all cases are now civil. Directed against secretaries of the various states they have been tossed for good reasons– but none for merit (or lack of it ). The “colb” document is fraudulent because it does not suffice to prove natural born citizen ship and Hawaii cannot and did not issue at any time a document that did. So it bis not applicable and thus in error applied to the question. This is extrinsic to the document which has not been ruled on by any one of legal authority. Also it has had no proper chain of custody.It is an object of interest to say the least. It is also redacted and self invalidating and is not prima facie evidence of a right to run for president as such in that the colb is not proof of any citizenship even if Amerian born is 14th ammendment citizen automatically in all cases; which obviously it is not. A lawyer presenting this document is participating in a form of misprison– twice- in that he knows it is not proper ID for the purpose at hand and would admit a fraud by his action. So he does not mispractice and protects his client, as is right. If you dont stand up now this veteran gets to watch you die in the postponed violence later on as you plummet into your own quite reasonable tyranny and state terror. Obama just demanded another trillion today. Thanx!!!
“If you dont stand up now this veteran gets to watch you die in the postponed violence later on as you plummet into your own quite reasonable tyranny and state terror.”
Gosh Tom, in some circles that would be considered a threat.
If someone can point me to a definitive legal definition of “natural born” I would appreciate it.
I’ve poked around a bit and, as nearly as I can tell, the term appears in this one instance in the Constitution and is not further defined in the Constitution or elsewhere. A natural born citizen is not the same as a “naturalized” citizen. The latter IS defined as a result of 200 years of constitutional amendments and legal challenges establishing precedent.
The meaning of natural born might seem like “common sense” to you and me today, but the Founders were smart enough to realize that common sense is a fickle beast. So they gave us a constitutional process for sorting these things out.
It appears that Congress may pass a law specifying exactly what constitutes sufficient proof of citizenship to serve as President of the United States in order to avoid such controversies in the future. Even so, I believe any such law would be subject to challenge on Constitutional grounds by someone arguing that it did not meet the Constitutional test of “natural born”. And that is just what I believe should happen so the Supreme can consider the issue and render a decision providing a concise definition of what it means to be natural born.
Again, I’d be grateful if someone can provide more definitive, legally sound and verifiable information than I have been able to dig up. But please be careful to read it thoroughly with an unbiased eye first. I’ve read through reams of blog entries and comments professing to know the story and most of them, when they bother to provide any meaningful supporting information at all, zero in on the bits that support their political position (Obama is an imposter, the Nirthers are idiots, etc, etc) and ignore the “inconvenient” bits.