WEBCommentary(tm) - President Obama's Hiding His Birth Certificate from the American People for Some Reason

When asked whether she is qualified to be President of the United States, former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin should explain that the qualifications are set forth in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as follows--"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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States"--and then take out her birth certificate and show and explain that she is constitutionally qualified.

It's a fact: President Obama is hiding his birth certificate from the American people.

An emailer who enthusiastically approved of my February 14, 20101 article titled "Erick Erickson Joins Would-Be Buriers of the Obama Birth Certificate Issue" (www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=100214) wrote to me: "In Oregon, we now must present our original birth certificate just to renew our drivers license."

When a person, especially a presidential candidate, refuses to produce his or her original birth certificate and instead provides a redacted version, alarm bells should sound and the whole truth should be run to ground.

The People should not be afraid to get to the bottom of Birth Certificate-gate, especially conservatives.

In "Stop Obama and Sotomayor From Rewriting Instead of Respecting Law" (May 3, 2009) (www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=090503), I explained that "(1) President Obama is NOT the moderate that he appeared to many to be as the Democrat nominee, (2) he cunningly concealed the extent of his relationship with ACORN and (3) he flatly lied about it during the last presidential debate," and "it is essential that the American people learn that then candidate Obama fooled them (with the help of the liberal media establishment)." I wrote:

"Senator McCain said that candidate Obama was a fine young man with many admirable qualities, but asked the voters to pick him as the candidate 'older than dirt' 'with more scars than Frankenstein.'

"The winning strategy is making the truth about Obama, ACORN and The New York Times generally known."

Holding Obama accountable for concealing his birth certificate can be a winning strategy too. Conservatives only help Obama by joining Team Obama in ridiculing "the birthers" as "birfers" and "nuts." Conservatives looking for the best way to resist Obama's radical agenda should insist as a general matter that ALL presidential candidates should produce their birth certificates, not redacted versions, and not be drawn into opining where they think that Obama was born. The burden of proof is on the person claiming to be qualified, and presidential possibilities should not be shy about showing their birth certificates. When asked whether she is qualified to be President of the United States, former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin should explain that the qualifications are set forth in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution as follows--"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; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States"--and then take out her birth certificate and show and explain that she is constitutionally qualified.

Red State's Erick Erickson's "final thought on the birther issue" (February 14, 2010) (www.redstate.com/erick/2010/02/14/my-final-thought-on-the-birther-issue/) misses what should be the point.

"Based on the facts, it is very clear that President Obama is our lawfully elected President and the Office of President of the United States of America requires that though we may disagree with him and oppose him, we recognize and respect his position as President — a position entrusted to him by 69,456,897 voting Americans, or 52.9% of the popular vote.

"As early at 1350, the British Parliament approved statutes recognizing the rule of jus sanguinis, under which citizens may pass their citizenship by descent to their children at birth, regardless of place. Similarly, in the its first naturalization statute, Congress declared that ‘the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.’ 1 Stat. 104 (1790) . . . . Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s discussion in Wong Kim Ark (1898), a majority of commentators today argue that the Presidential Eligibility Clause incorporates both the common-law and English statutory principles, and that therefore, Michigan Governor George Romney, who was born to American parents outside of the United States, was eligible to seek the Presidency in 1968.

"Even were the American public to fall under the belief that Barack Obama was born in a foreign country and 49 years ago his associates fabricated a narrative, a birth record, and placed birth announcements in both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star Bulletin on August 4, 1961, to ensure that 49 years later he could become President of the United States, it is undisputed that Barack Obama’s mother is and has always been an American citizen. Therefore Barack Obama is and has always been an American citizen.

"The leaps of logic and reason to arrive at such a conspiracy are unbefitting the credibility of anyone and not worthy of further discussion. Notwithstanding the same, no American should ever sanction what would amount to a judicial coup — the removal of the President of the United States after 52.9% of the American public instructed their Electoral College representatives to place their votes for him. The time to even be willing to entertain these issues from those who claim a conspiracy has long past.

"A conservative movement worthy of leading this nation must be willing to cast aside those who, for whatever reason, cannot and will not be persuaded that the President is our legitimately, constitutionally elected President."

In his zeal to support "[a] conservative movement worthy of leading this nation," Erickson simply assumed that there had to be a plot extant when Obama was born to eventually make him President of the United States for the so-called "certificate of live birth" produced as proof of Obama's presidential eligibility to be questioned. That's no so. A desire to obtain the usual benefits of natural-born United States citizenship would have been sufficient reason to obtain a false birth certificate. More importantly, refusal to produce the actual birth certificate is a legitimately suspicious circumstances (regardless of who does the refusing).

Erickson did not discuss President Obama's parents, much less note that Obama's father was not big on "legal niceties." Reportedly, he never divorced his first wife, so his "marriage" to Obama's mother was bigamous under United States law regardless of whether it complied with Islamic law.

"In 1954, after attending the Maseno National School, Obama Sr. was married for the first time. At the age of eighteen, he and Kezia Aoko were married in a tribal ceremony. They had Malik and Auma during their marriage and while Obama Sr. was married to his third wife, he and Kezia allegedly had Abo and Bernard.

"Obama Sr. received a scholarship in economics through a program organized by nationalist leader Tom Mboya. The program offered Western educational opportunities to outstanding Kenyan students. President Obama said of his father's scholarship, 'The Kennedys decided: "We're going to do an airlift. We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama [Sr.] got one of those tickets and came over to this country."' An article by Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post, however, states that the Kennedy family did not become associated with the educational airlift until 1960, a year after Obama Sr. was studying in the United States. Initial financial supporters of the program included Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Jackie Robinson, and Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, a literacy advocate who provided most of the financial support for Obama Sr.'s early years in the United States, according to the Tom Mboya archives at Stanford University.

"At the age of 23, Obama Sr. enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, leaving behind a pregnant Kezia and their infant son. He had abandoned Islam and become an atheist by the time he moved to the United States. On 2 February 1961, Obama Sr. married fellow student Ann Dunham in Maui, Hawaii, though she would not find out that her new husband was already married until much later. Obama Sr.'s and Dunham's son, Barack Obama II, was born on August 4, 1961. Dunham quit her studies to care for the baby, while Obama Sr. completed his degree. He graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962 (and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa), leaving shortly thereafter to travel to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard University in the fall. Later that summer, Dunham and year-old baby Barack stopped to visit her friends in Mercer Island, Washington, the Seattle suburb where she had grown up, before joining Obama Sr. in Cambridge. However, mother and son soon returned to Seattle, where she enrolled at the University of Washington. Dunham, missing her family, then moved back to Hawaii and filed for divorce in Honolulu in January 1964. Obama Sr. did not contest, and the divorce was granted on March 20, 1964. He visited his son only once, in 1971, when Barack was 10 years old."

Erickson may be right that Obama is "our legitimately, constitutionally elected President," but that does not mean that Obama did not misrepresent himself and hide truth that the voters should have known in order to be elected.

In "Is the President-Elect Blackmail-able Over His Birth Certificate?" (November 25, 2008) (http://www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=081125), I explained why obtaining Obama's birth certificate was important, even though he appeared to be a "natural-born" United States citizen regardless of where he was born, writing:

"Professor Matthew J. Franck feels oppressed over the interest in President-Elect Obama’s birth certificate.

"Professor Franck, in a National Review Online Bench memo titled 'Dear Lord, Make It Stop':

'It's a week after the election, and I'm still getting e-mails that holler about how Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he's not a "natural born citizen" under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution. Enough already!

'Last winter, even the New York Times was suckered into taking seriously the loopy theory that John McCain is not a natural born citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. As I explained then, his parentage sufficed no matter where he was born, since his parents were U.S. citizens.

'So too with Obama. All indications are that he was born in Hawaii in 1961. The state authorities say they have his birth certificate (though the fact that a modern printout of an electronic record has been made available rather than a photocopy of the 1961 original has sent some people round the bend).

'And what if Obama was not born in the U.S. but instead, as some claim, in Kenya? Well, his mother was an American citizen, and as UCLA law prof and blogger Eugene Volokh explained to the Chicago Tribune, the applicable statutes about foreign birth with one U.S. citizen parent are on Obama's side here.'

"With all due respect to Professor Franck (and that is plenty), there is more to this than perhaps a legal issue as to whether a child of one United States citizen born abroad is eligible to serve a President of the United States (which should be determined based on principle, not personality). The President-Elect chose to hide his birth certificate instead of to produce it for public inspection. THAT is strange.

"Would a smart politician hide his or her birth certificate if there was nothing problematic about it?

"Such hiding instills or increases doubt about the candidate in some voters and it is in a candidate’s best interests to eliminate such doubt if the truth is good.

"So, it seems that the President-Elect elected to hide his birth certificate because there is something troublesome about it becoming generally known, and more important than allaying suspicion.

"Professor Franck concluded his Bench Memo: 'Give it up and get on with life. Barack Obama is going to become president on January 20, 2009. He won, fair and square, an office he is eligible to occupy. So stop with the fetid, fervid, fevered e-mails, okay?'

"It may well be that the President-Elect is eligible to occupy the Oval Office, but without examining that birth certificate, how can Professor Franck assure us that the President-Elect 'won, fair and square'?"

The truth is that Obama lied about his relationship with ACORN and hid his birth certificate to win.

As I concluded "Why Obama and ACORN Fear Anita MonCrief" (October 29, 2008) (www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=081029): "Bottom line: ACORN has been improperly coordinating with and operating as an arm of the Obama campaign, and 'the Senator from ACORN''s involvement with ACORN has been much more than his lawful representation of ACORN in the motor voter case years ago."

It is not known what in his birth records Obama hid, but if there was nothing in his birth certificate the disclosure of which concerned him, why didn't he reveal all the information on it?

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.