President Obama has already adopted or expanded many of the most controversial Bush policies on executive privilege, detainee treatment, termination of privacy lawsuit, and other matters. Now, he has adopted the identical position of Vice President Dick Cheney in seeking to withhold visitor logs to the White House.
While the Bush/Cheney fight to withhold the logs was denounced by liberals, there is relative quiet again over Obama’s position on the very same issue.
The Secret Service has denied msnbc.com’s request for the names of all White House visitors from Jan. 20 to the present as well as a request by the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
There is again a sharp difference between President Obama’s rhetoric of transparency and civil liberties in government and his actual policies, here and here and here and here and here .
For the full story, click here.
SMRSTRAUSS is an O-Bot whose mission is to undermine blogs questioning Obama’s eligibility. One blogger had this to say about SMRSTRAUSS:
“With a little bit of work, I was able to find out this O-bot was likely Obama Superdelegate from DC, Shadow Senator Paul Strauss.”
http://www.reboottherepublic.com/blog/currentevents/i-just-kod-an-obot-o-bot-on-the-birth-certificate-issue/
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Anyone concerned about the eligibility issue should see these graphics at http://jeffersonsrebels.blogspot.com
Graphic Defining “Citizen” vs “Natural Born Citizen”
Graphic Defining “Natural Born Citizen”
Obama The Unconstitutional Usurper
3 Graphics: Quo Warranto Process to Remove Obama
White House Weighs Order on Detention
Officials: Move Would Reassert Power To Hold Terror Suspects Indefinitely
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062603361.html?hpid=topnews
Re: “An honorable man does not back down from providing evidence when there is a claim or allegation against him.”
This implies that the lawsuits against Obama were for the records. This is not true. All the lawsuits against him were to stop the election or stop the certification of the election. ALL of them. None even said that the case would be dropped if he provided the original birth certificate (which he may not be able to do if he lost it since Hawaii sends out only the certification).
However, there is a way to see the original birth certificate, which is much easier than suing Obama to get it (and as I say, he may not have it). Simply ask the governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, to change the laws or the regulations to make the birth records of a president public documents.
Why do I mention this? Because I am certain that the original birth certificate in the files is an ordinary Hawaiian birth certificate.
Can’t Obama authorize the release of the original? No. Apparently Hawaiian regulations are now to send out ONLY the certification of live birth to everyone and in every situation.
http://www.starbulletin.com/features/20090606_kokua_line.html
There are two Donofrio threads on this site. One was started Dec. 4, 2008:
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/12/04/eligibility-questions-can-clinton-serve-obama-and-can-obama-serve-the-country/
The other began on December 9th, and was updated to include Leo’s farewell to the controversy:
http://jonathanturley.org/2008/12/09/supreme-court-turns-down-donofrio-appeal/
Leo’s position — that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii but still not a natural born citizen — was clearly stated and addressed in all the arguments, and his site was linked.
Olbermann gave a Bronze Worst Person in the World award to Rep Neugebauer (R-Texas) for signing onto the Poosey bill: “When asked if he thought Obama was a U.S. citizen, Neugebauer relied on the tried and true birther excuse, ‘I don’t know I have never seen him produce documents that would say one way or another.’” http://www.politicususa.com/en/Obama-GOP-birther Apparently unaware of the fact that Obama may well run in 2012, he thinks it does not apply to Obama. He is unaware that Obama’s birth certificate has been produced.
Here is the Olbermann video. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#31533909
It is interesting that World Net Daily, which is leading the birther charge, has actually confirmed that the certification is authentic: “A separate WND investigation into Obama’s birth certificate utilizing forgery experts also found the document to be authentic. The investigation also revealed methods used by some of the bloggers to determine the document was fake involved forgeries, in that a few bloggers added text and images to the certificate scan that weren’t originally there.” http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=73214 JimBoyle please take note.
I posted far, far above on this thread that Obama is already in compliance with the bill. He has fully complied with the proposed law by ordering his birth certificate from Hawaii, and then releasing it to the press and public. Pulitzer Prize winning reporters at St. Petersburg Times Politifact.org have had a Hawaiian official verify that it is authentic. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/
FFLEO,
“[S]everal issues of his character remain for me personally and those questions are not now—nor will they ever be—derived from religion, race, or political affiliation.”
Hear, hear.
FFLEO, I share your disappointments, and have others as well. If Pres. Obama continues to water down or abandon what he said he would do, he will be a one-term president. It’s a shame because he is certainly capable of mobilizing enough public support to effectively ignore Republican opposition. I wish for less fruitless bipartisanship and more shoving it down throats. I am perfectly content to have the Democratic Party held responsible for public policy decisions over the next four years if legislation coming out of Congress reflects Democratic policies rather than wishy-washy, non-assertive, lukewarm compromises that accomplish nothing.
IS,
I didn’t vote for Obama. I didn’t vote for McCain either. My reasoning: The Democrats and Republicans are too well established. Only those with close ties to one of those two parties have a chance of getting elected.
Did I waste my vote? I hope not. The more people we have voting for a third-party candidate, the better chance we have for real CHANGE in the future.
I also limited my vote to those that are not lawyers. While I have many close friends in the legal profession, I don’t believe the Founder’s intended one profession to control all three branches of our government.
Madison’s declaration in Federalist 47 makes sense to me.
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
My thoughts on Obama: He’s done some things I agree with, and some things that I do not. He’s kept some promises, and he’s broken some promises. Only time will tell if the voters made a good choice.
“His mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth so doesn’t that end the debate?”
I wish it was that simple.
Mike Appleton,
Thank you for your detailed reply. All of my relatives are Christian conservative Republicans from the Bible Belt of Texas and I can tell you that these issues will linger. Mr. Obama only encourages those problems with his secrecy and stunts, including the White House log refusal and FOIA pledge reversals. President Obama specifically pledged that the White House would be the ‘people’s house’ and open to them.
This thread has helped dispel some of the most absurd claims against Mr. Obama, however, several issues of his character remain for me personally and those questions are not now—nor will they ever be—derived from religion, race, or political affiliation.
FFLEO, you asked a question earlier regarding disclosures you believe to be relevant for a presidential candidate. I do not profess to know what is required to secure a top secret clearance, or to apply for a civil service position. I only know that I have voted in every presidential election since 1968 and the candidacy and subsequent election of Pres. Obama has generated more intense interest in the minutiae of his life than I can recall with respect to any other candidate for any office. I have no idea what grade he received in freshman comp at Columbia or in contracts at Harvard. But I was a law review editor in law school myself and know what it requires to receive that invitation, so I am sure his grades were pretty good. However, I also believe that the interest in his school transcripts and other information is primarily a smokescreen for birthers, whose real obsession is over the birth certificate. That is a made-up issue, largely reflecting racism in my view. Unfortunately, it has so fired up conspiracy theorists that people of good will and proper motives such as yourself have found themselves questioning the president’s compliance with the legal qualifications for the job. There is even a Republican representative from Florida who has so little to do that he has introduced legislation which would require presidential candidates to submit certified birth records as a condition to running for office. Given the degree to which modern journalists are able to track down virtually every significant historical event in the life of a candidate, I have no doubt that were the president not a native born U.S. citizen, uncontrovertible evidence of that fact would have been published by now and someone would be polishing a Pulitzer.
The citizenship arguments have been rehashed a thousand times and its proponents have completely lost any credibility by this point. Orly Taitz is a flake. Her writing is juvenile and only marginally professional. She has become a shrew pretending to be an advocate, but her pleadings and legal arguments lack any substance. If there were anything to her claims, many lawyers would have joined her effort by now.
Troll:
I don’t care for Obama’s policies at all and would love to see a real democratic scandal of the magnitude it would end up being if Pres. Obama were indeed a foreign national. I would be laughing for a month. But isn’t all of this speculation, just that? His mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth so doesn’t that end the debate?
Mr. Treacy,
Disregard.
“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.”
A recent response to a question from Leo Donofrio.
Mr. Turley has been more than fair on this issue as to my litigation. When I pointed out to him at his blog that my case was not about the BC issue, he quickly corrected his original posting on the evening he was to go on Oblerman’s Countdown show. Later that night he also corrected Oblerman and let him know my case was not about the BC but was based on a genuine legal question. Furthermore, Turley said at his blog that the Supreme Court should make a decision on the merits so as to erase the hint of ineligibility and he mentioned Chester Arthur in this regard. The man has said more truth about this issue than almost anyone else in the mainstream media.]
“Troll, Obama is eligible because he is a natural born citizen of the United States who is over the age of 35 and who resided within the United States for more than 14 years.”
Mr. Treacy,
Isn’t that natural born status the subject of the current debate?
While much of your commentary can be acknowledged as based on reliable information, some parts are just an opinion.
Can a judge order the State of Hawaii to release the long-form version of Obama’s birth certificate? Would it not be deemed discoverable?
One thing I did happen to notice, that has not been adequately explained: Supposedly, in 2008 a request for Obama’s birth record was submitted. Subsequent to that request, Obama’s “Certification of Live Birth” was made available on a number of websites. Is that “Certification” the result of that request?
BIL:
I knew it, so there really is a liberal mind control ray. I should have figured.
Mespo72,
Thanks for your reply, and I agree. Mr. Obama seemed to me that he would be completely open and transparent once in office and I was looking forward to as honest a president as humanly possible, because of the FOIA Misery I have gone through for almost 3 years.
However, Mr. Obama is infinitely better than Mr. McCain, Ms. Clinton, or any Republican at this stage. He is a thinker and perhaps he will reconsider some of his decisions regarding open, transparent government and some other issues. I clearly would vote for him again if he corrected some actions, because I think that redemption is important if people are sincere about admitting and correcting their mistakes.
BVM,
If you’re running Internet Explorer:
If you can read this. Print it, and close all instances of Internet Explorer.
Open Internet Explorer to your home page.
Look up and to the right. Click on “Tools”; then Internet Options. The middle section of the “General Settings” tab is labeled “Browsing History”. Select “delete”.
You want to delete your Temporary Internet Files.
When they are all deleted, (this may take a little while, depending on the size of your cache) you may resume surfing.
If your running Safari; I can’t help you.
Good luck.