Thread: Barack Obama's citizenship questioned

Challenge of Obama’s citizenship gains ground

July 14th, 2009, 4:01 pm
by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter

Conservative activist Alan Keyes‘ legal challenge of President Barack Obama’s citizenship won a small victory in Santa Ana on Monday when U.S. District Judge David Carter agreed to hear “the meritsâ€

Pictures of birth certificate at this link:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008 ... e_usa.html


Sources

United States Department of State. "Application for a U.S. Passport." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

State of Hawaii Department of Health. "Request for Certified Copy of Birth Record." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

Hollyfield, Amy. "Obama's Birth Certificate: Final Chapter." Politifact.com. 27 Jun. 2008.

The Associated Press. "State declares Obama birth certificate genuine" 31 Oct 2008.

Nakaso, Dan. "Obama's certificate of birth OK, state says; Health director issues voucher in response to 'ridiculous' barrage" Honolulu Advertiser 1 Nov 2008.
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Born in the U.S.A.

August 21, 2008
Updated: November 1, 2008

The truth about Obama's birth certificate.

Summary

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Update, Nov. 1: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu.

Analysis
Update Nov. 1: The Associated Press quoted Chiyome Fukino as saying that both she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate.

Fukino also was quoted by several other news organizations. The Honolulu Advertiser quoted Fukino as saying the agency had been bombarded by requests, and that the registrar of statistics had even been called in at home in the middle of the night.

Honolulu Advertiser, Nov. 1 2008: "This has gotten ridiculous," state health director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said yesterday. "There are plenty of other, important things to focus on, like the economy, taxes, energy." . . . Will this be enough to quiet the doubters? "I hope so," Fukino said. "We need to get some work done."

Fukino said she has “personally seen and verified that the Hawaii State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures."

Since we first wrote about Obama's birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.

Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?

Doocy: What do you mean they have a "false birth certificate" on their Web site?

Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.

Doocy: Well, couldn't it just be a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?

Corsi: No, it's a -- there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.

Corsi isn't the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:

•The birth certificate doesn't have a raised seal.
•It isn't signed.
•No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.

•In the zoomed-in view, there's a strange halo around the letters.
•The certificate number is blacked out.
•The date bleeding through from the back seems to say "2007," but the document wasn't released until 2008.
•The document is a "certification of birth," not a "certificate of birth."

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.

The Obama birth certificate, held by FactCheck writer Joe Miller

Alvin T. Onaka's signature stamp

The raised seal

Blowup of text

You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven't been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process.

We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna: "[We] couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world." The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.

Blowup of certificate number

Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama's information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn't have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible "scenario" without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.

We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn't meet the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."

We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: "It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over."

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

Obama's birth announcement

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.

Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn't tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama's father's race listed as "African"? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father's race and mother's race are supplied by the parents, and that "we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be." We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama, Sr., would have thought of and reported himself as "African." It's certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.

When we asked about the security borders, which look different from some other examples of Hawaii certifications of live birth, Kurt said "The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised." He also confirmed that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for "all reasonable purposes."

–by Jess Henig, with Joe Miller
Sources
United States Department of State. "Application for a U.S. Passport." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

State of Hawaii Department of Health. "Request for Certified Copy of Birth Record." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.

Hollyfield, Amy. "Obama's Birth Certificate: Final Chapter." Politifact.com. 27 Jun. 2008.

The Associated Press. "State declares Obama birth certificate genuine" 31 Oct 2008.

Nakaso, Dan. "Obama's certificate of birth OK, state says; Health director issues voucher in response to 'ridiculous' barrage" Honolulu Advertiser 1 Nov 2008.

Copyright © 2003 - 2009, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
FactCheck.org's staff, not the Annenberg Center, is responsible for this material.
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Pictures of birth certificate at this link:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008 ... e_usa.html

Pardon me for repeating myself for present company.

Why the Daily Kos / FightTheSmears document is a forgery

http://images.dailykos.com/images/user/ ... ficate.jpg

What makes the Daily Kos image so important? It is the original from which FactCheck, FightTheSmears, Politfact, etc., derived the images they published later. The Daily Kos image has random dust specks at specific locations, for example, below the "E" in the "CERTIFICATION OF LIVE BIRTH" heading, at (x,y) = (893,185). Those random dust specks appear at the same locations on the other images, showing that they are copies of the first Daily Kos image.
________________________

FATHER'S RACE
AFRICAN

This is an anachronism. It is out of place on a 1961 document. The term used then was "Negro", or perhaps "Colored". "African-American" was an unknown term forty or fifty years ago.

Besides, "African" is not a race; it is a native or resident of the continent of Africa. "African" includes significant populations which are Negro or colored, Caucasian or white, Mongoloid or Mongolian, Semitic (Arab or Hebrew), Aryan or Hindu, Polynesian, Hispanic, penguins, and probably anything else except Eskimo and Native American.
________________________

DATE FILED BY REGISTRAR
AUGUST 8,1961

AUGUST 8, 1961 (note the additional space) is how this date should appear, and that is how the date does appear on other Hawaiian Certifications of Live Birth. But the forger made a mistake and left out the space between the comma and "1961".
________________________

At the upper right of the form, the Certificate No. is redacted or blacked out. The warning at the bottom reads, "ANY ALTERATIONS INVALIDATE THIS CERTIFICATE". This Certification is invalid or VOID; it cannot be used for any legal purposes. (Although it does seem to have been used for illegal purposes.)
________________________

The printed security border is not like real security borders printed between 2006 and 2008. The forged copy is not one continuous border, but a patchwork of pieces, each 240 pixels long, cut-and-pasted together to simulate an authentic 2007 security border, so as to match the "JUN 6 - 2007" date stamp.

"Dr. Ron Polarik" (a pseudonym) wrote, "However, both the embossed Seal and the State Registrar’s Signature stamp do not match the same elements found on a real 2007 COLB, but perfectly match those found on a real 2008 COLB; or, in other words, something that would never happen in real life."
________________________

Genuine Certifications are horizontally centered on the paper, within 15 pixels, plus or minus. This forgery of a Certification was "printed" 75 pixels off center toward the left, more than 5 times the usual maximum variation on the genuine article.
________________________

It is Hawaii Div. of Vital Records policy to release Certifications only as laser printer hard copy. But "printed" above is in quotes because this image did not originate as a paper copy printed on a laser printer. Rather, the forger generated it, or at least manipulated it, as an image in Photoshop. Opening the image file in a text editor reveals that the image file header has the following characters of EXIF identification data:

[Software ] = Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh

[DateTime ] = 2008: 06:12 08:42:36

In other words, the image was filed on a Macintosh computer using Adobe Photoshop CS3 software at 8:42 AM on 6/12/08, the date that Daily Kos published the computer image on their website. It is no longer the original scanner file scanned from an Hawaii Div. of Vital Records paper copy.
________________________

The Daily Kos image has dimensions, 2427 x 2369. The printed security border has dimensions, 2372 x 2312. So the image is nearly square, 97½% square, to be more exact. But the printed security border is skewed on the paper, 15 pixels higher on the right side than on the left, and 3 pixels further left at the top than at the bottom. A vertical difference of 15 pixels in the right and left sides would normally indicate a paper misfeed by the printer, normally resulting in a paper jam, or at least wrinkling of the paper.

If the border were 97½% square like the image, it would be skewed 3.077 pixels higher and 3 pixels further left, 15 pixels higher and 14 5/8 pixels further left, or anywhere between, proportionately. But it isn't. The skew is 15 and 3. This printed image does not have right angled corners, not even in the computer program that supposedly generated it for Hawaii Vital Records. In the real world, programmers do not create trapezoidal official documents. This document is not the real world, folks. It is fantasy world.
________________________

It is also Hawaii Div. of Vital Records policy to only release Certifications that are folded twice horizonally for mailing in a standard letter envelope. The Daily Kos image has a horizontal crease through the State Seal as evidence of the upper fold. There should be a horizontal crease near "MOTHER'S RACE CAUCASIAN" as evidence of a lower fold. Maybe you can find it; I couldn't. That's because it's not there, and it's not anywhere else, either. Couldn't this copy - just this one - have left Vital Records without a second fold? Not possible, says Vital Records. Every Certification is double-folded and placed in a letter envelope. Every one. Without exception.

Unless it didn't come from Vital Records.
________________________

Another Hawaii Div. of Vital Records policy is to only release Certifications with a date stamp, the Registrar's signature stamp, and the embossed seal of the State of Hawaii Department of Health, all on the reverse side. For whatever reason, Daily Kos did not provide an image of the reverse side. I shall not presume to know why they didn't; you can draw your own conclusions.

Normally, there is bleedthrough of the date stamp; the Daily Kos image has JUN - 6 2007 from the reverse side plainly visible on the front. Sometimes, but not always, there is some slight bleedthrough of the Registrar's signature stamp; there is none on the Daily Kos image, and that is OK. Often, but not always to cursory examination, the seal embossed on the reverse side is noticable on the front; not so on the Daily Kos image.

However, under sufficient magnification and with edging enhancement to bring out the embossing, an imaging professional can show up the deformations of the anti-counterfeiting green bars in the front side background, caused by the embossing on the back. This green paper is very thin by design, and any embossing on the back inevitably causes some deformation on the front. I do not see any crimping whatsoever at 3X magnification, and that is suspicious. Even with edging enhancement, those bits of a seal that can be brought out are fuzzy and look like a blurred 3rd or 4th generation copy, not crisp like an original.

FactCheck pasted an image of an embossed seal onto their images later. Those images are the latest generation of revisions of the original Daily Kos image. Since June 10, 2009, Mr. Obama's accessories have been scrubbing all earlier versions from the internet.
________________________

The seal of the State of Hawaii at the top is not a sharp, original laser printout, either. It is a blurry, pixelated copy from another COLB.
________________________

Text is overlaid by cut-and-paste rather than printed on the anti-counterfeiting, green patterned background. The result (under magnification) is pattern mismatches, stray pixels, "haloes" of pixelization around the cut-and-pasted letters, and between letters, white space where there should be green pattern - very different from the neat printed text on genuine COLBs.
________________________

AtlasShrugs quoted TechDude saying,
"Upon very close inspection portions of the security border also repeat every 240 pixels. By mapping this repeating pattern it becomes apparent that the pattern is laid out as a 240 x 240 pixel square that can be accurately extrapolated to the next position by simply counting 240 pixels. This type of tiling effect is commonly seen when an image has been modified by filling an area using an image editing application’s tile or pattern fill function.
. . .
"The (Daily) KOS image security border pattern does not match any known specimen from any known year. [Given the impossibility of proving non-existence, there may be border pattern specimens which TechDude has not seen.] It does not match the pre-2006 nor does it match the post-2006 certificate patterns. The placement of the text in all of the pre-2006 and post-2006 certificates are almost identical pixel location matches while the image's text placement does not match any known specimen from any known year. The shape and kerning of the fonts used in the 2006 through 2008 certificates are identical while the shape and kerning of the fonts used in the image does not match any known specimen. The KOS image shows clear signs of tampering such as the mismatch in RGB and error levels, visible indications of the previous location of the erased security border, easily detectable patterns of repeating flaws around the new security border, EXIF data that says the image was last saved with Photoshop CS3 for Macintosh, and finally a technician from Hawaii who confirms it just looks wrong." http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atla ... usive.html

Thanks for taking that one on minuteman. I am beginning to feel like a broken record.

Originally Posted by cayla99

Thanks for taking that one on minuteman. I am beginning to feel like a broken record.

That's why we have canned text, Cayla99.

Originally Posted by HighlanderJuan

1. Orange County is a conservative county in an otherwise really liberal state. So, if you're going to have a constitutional case heard, this might be a good place for the good guys to do it. Bad for Obama, good for us.

That explains why I've found so many good posts on this subject in the LA Times, of all places, in the belly of the beast.

Originally Posted by in the LA Times, dj

[Mike B., you] sound like a reasonable individual. Please read Article II and then come back and tell us how one US parent equals "natural born citizen". It does not. It takes two, 2, US citizens.

Secondly, this crisis began last summer. Many of us Dems were pleading with friends and family telling them that Obama was ineligible and to please get informed. Nearly 40+ lawsuits have been filed and dismissed on standing. Phil Berg filed a suit in the summer of last year to stop this trainwreck and Judge Surrick dismissed the suit on "standing". He and other attorney's and plaintiffs tried to get the issue before the SCOTUS before the inauguration and they were dismissed or never seen by SCOTUS.

You may believe "we" are doing something to "you" but you are dead wrong. The only guilty parties in all of this mess are the leaders of the DNC. They are the ones ultimately responsible for vetting the eligibility of a Presidential candidate. The second opportunity is with the Board of Elections in each respective state. Barack signed an affadavit in Arizona testifying to his "natural born citizen" status and then posted on his Fight the Smears website that he was a "native born citizen". Two very different and distinct citizenship classes. How do you square that? And the Secretary's of the State Board of Elections rely on the truthfulness of the respective Party's leadership regarding eligibility status. The third opportunity was the electoral college and they too let us down.

Please, take your self righteous anger and frustration and gear it towards those who created this Constitutional crisis. Don't blame it on those of us who bothered to learn all of the ends and outs of this lie or hoax, who tried to warn anybody and everybody who would dare listen and just report the facts or those of us who happen to believe that the US Constitution stands for something.

Geez luiz, besides ignoring all of the chatter during the primary and the general you actually may have wanted to pay attention, learn the facts and to decide for yourself your own truth.

The only ones to blame for this brewing crisis are the DNC and Barack himself. Dems are pushing just as hard for the truth if not harder than the Reps. Don't be fooled into believing this is a partisan issue. It's not. It's an American issue; one in which every American should be concerned about.

Posted by: d2i | July 14, 2009 at 02:22 PM

Thanks John Doe 2 - The Orange County Register report on Alan Keyes is a bit disappointing to me. There seems to be nothing else after this article.

Orange County Register
Challenge of Obama’s citizenship gains ground
July 14th, 2009, 4:01 pm · 122 Comments · posted by Martin Wisckol, Politics reporter

http://totalbuzz.freedomblogging.com/20 ... und/18827/

Conservative activist Alan Keyes‘ legal challenge of President Barack Obama’s citizenship won a small victory in Santa Ana on Monday when U.S. District Judge David Carter agreed to hear “the meritsâ€

So, according to Annenberg, a Certification of Live Birth is acceptable? How can that be if others on this board have thoroughly researched this and said that 1) It is unacceptable as a document for means of acquiring a job, drivers license, etc. 2) Anyone can request a COLB from Hawaii, even if they were not born there.

...The Annenberg Public Policy Institute examined Obama’s birth certificate firsthand and authenticated it in this report. The rundown includes photographs of the certificate as well as an investigation into evidence presented by those skeptical of the president’s nationality.[/img]

Originally Posted by TexasBorn

So, according to Annenberg, a Certification of Live Birth is acceptable? How can that be if others on this board have thoroughly researched this and said that 1) It is unacceptable as a document for means of acquiring a job, drivers license, etc. 2) Anyone can request a COLB from Hawaii, even if they were not born there.

...The Annenberg Public Policy Institute examined Obama’s birth certificate firsthand and authenticated it in this report. The rundown includes photographs of the certificate as well as an investigation into evidence presented by those skeptical of the president’s nationality.[/img]

Also, we need to remember the connections here. Obama was the founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and headed that group from 1995-1999. The Parent company was the Annenberg Foundation. The Annenberg Foundation has another child called Factcheck.org. Not exactly an independent, unbiased source if you ask me.

Just to caution everybody concerning any pending court action: this might be the equivalent of a real estate "quiet title" action. In other words, the court may accept the action, then rule against the plaintiffs just to settle matters.