Tribune ad calls upon Obama to produce natural citizenship evidence

On Monday and Wednesday next week, the Chicago Tribune will feature a full page ad calling on President-Elect Barack Obama to produce evidence he is a US natural born citizen. Click HERE to view. The "We the People" Foundation released the following comments over the weekend: 

The Open Letter to Mr. Obama is a formal Petition for a Redress (Remedy) for the alleged violation of the “natural born citizen” clause of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Mr. Obama is respectfully requested to direct the Hawaiian officials to provide access to his original birth certificate on December 5-7 by our team of forensic scientists, and to provide additional documentary evidence establishing his citizenship status prior to our Washington, D.C. press conference on December 8.

A First Amendment Petition to any official of the Government for Redress of a violation of the Constitution is substantially different from the garden-variety political petitions frequently received by government officials. This Petition demands it be given the highest priority for an expedited review and official Response by Mr. Obama.

As a formal “Notice of a Constitutional Violation,” the Petition naturally includes the People’s inherent Right to an official Response. As a time-sensitive, election related Petition involving the Office of the President, failure to Respond as requested would constitute an egregious breach of the public trust and confirm the certainty of a Constitutional crisis.

For the D.C. press conference the WTP Foundation has reserved the Edward R. Murrow Room at the National Press Club from 1-4 pm on Monday, December 8, 2008. We are hopeful that C-SPAN may cover what could be a pivotal, historic event.

The Petition for Redress/Open Letter to Mr. Obama is also expected to have a significant impact on the deliberations of the Electoral College as it proceeds toward selection of the U.S. President as provided for by the Constitution.

Many, many thanks to the many individuals who donated the money needed to cover the costs of publishing the Open Letter and conducting the Washington press conference.

We are now in the process of selecting the forensic scientists who would travel to Hawaii to examine Mr. Obama’s original birth certificate (assuming he responds to the Petition for Redress by directing the Hawaiian officials to provide access to the birth certificate).  The budget for this task is currently estimated at $20,000. We need to raise the money quickly. Unfortunately, we are starting from zero and we have but one week before the scientists would need to be in Hawaii.

What are your thoughts about this effort?  Is this whole thing just a hoax or is it a credible concern? 

Comments

[Grover]

Fran: "Have you seen this development about that Trib advert challenging Obama's citizenship? Would it be completely incredulous if we entertain that thought and published it? I know it's blatantly false and all..."

Chorus of IR loons: "But we need it! We need to rally our base! Our people love these things! How are we supposed to get readers if we aren't sensationalist and pander to the extreme right of our party?"

Fran: "Well, I guess we can do that again. At least let me put a disclaimer after publishing it so we're not caught again trying to purposely spread misinformation. What should it say?"

Chorus of IR loons: "How about what we did before with the Michelle Obama black and red dress brouhaha that we created? You know, where we asked the readers if the steaming pile of falsities and sensationalism we just published was really true.

Fran: "Fantastic idea. How about 'Is this whole thing just a hoax or is it a credible concern?'"

Chorus of IR loons: Music to my ears. This baby's ready to run.

[Fran]

Grover,
Perhaps you'd better also ridicule the Tribune for accepting such a ridiculous ad that would blatantly stir such a controversy...they're the ones running the ad, not us.

[Ted]

On Dec 5 the Supreme Court will either allow or disallow the usurpation of both the Constitution and the Government of the United States — easily the most pivotal decision since our nation’s founding — and the silence of the news media is deafening (if not downright scary).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqH7rSHcvgU

[My Name Is Not Important]

Grover, I take it you a left wing nut loon...

It's the the law of the land and the Prophet O MUST produce "Competent evidence" ... Proof or he's not prez
http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/FB8DF59E-8297-4662-9AA1FDD68151F0BE/alpha/C/
see Us Constitution
it reads as follows...

"Age and Citizenship requirements - US Constitution, Article II, Section 1

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.
"(Article II., Section 1.,Clause 5.)
http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html
To the liberal elite, have no respect for the law if the law stands in the way of their socialist agenda.

[Grover]

"To the liberal elite, have no respect for the law if the law stands in the way of their socialist agenda."

Are you for real? Obama is an American citizen. He was born as an American citizen. The law doesn't stand in the way of any "socialist agenda", because (although there is no vast left-wing conspiracy or agenda) there are no problems here.

Why so serious? Why are you freaking out? I'm all for intelligent discussion -- go make some of it!

[Will from NYC]

His birth certificate has been certified many times over.... can we please just pass out the tin foil hats now. Long form / short form blah blah blah.... Hawaii is a state and the State of Hawaii has certified the birth certificate.... END OF DISCUSSION.

right wing loons... get a life.

[MY Name IS not IMPORTANT]

HELLO TIN HATTED LIBERAL NUT CASE AND PAID SHILLY FROM THE BIG APPLE, WIll from NYC. as well as GROVER the "LIB LOONY goony".

It should be noted for the interested that:

According to the Hawaii State Department of Health (HSDH):

1. Certified copies of birth certificates are NEVER sent electronically. Copies can be requested by qualified individuals in person, by mail, or on line; and the Vital Records (VR) office will MAIL the Certification of Live Birth within 4 to 6 weeks.

2. Certifications of Live Birth will ALWAYS include an embossed seal.

3. The Vital Records office will NEVER black out the certification number.

This copy provided by the Obama campaign is fake.
http://obama2.com/wp-content/uploads/Barack-Obama-Birth-Certificate.jpg

If there is no problems with the "Messiah's " (Brarak Obama's) "Original Birth Certificate" then why will not the State Of Hawaii release it for independent review, by those qualified to determine it's authenticity? Whats the problem? Is that document which proves that Brack "the ONE" Obama is qualified, Under Article II, Section 1 of the US constitution to hold the office of the president? Is that document authentic or is it just as phony as the man???

Whats the state secret? ANY one else has to produce the same, for a job in the United States, by law, why not Obama??? IS OBAMA ABOVE THE LAW and calling him to task on this small detail a "Loon". Typical Liberal tactic again of Ad Huminum attack on the those who dare to ask this simple questions of the "Messiah's " Qualifications to hold the office of the president, under Under Article II, Section 1 of the US constitution .

But, liberals only care of the LAW when it favors them or th e'er agenda. Hypocrite, they all are.

[caldonjah]

It is so like communist loons to subvert and belittle any and everything that is truth,it is their way,they loved the lie and hate the truth that is why they defend so profoundly against facts they just interfere with their aims,so lets not deal with the open question lets obfuscate the facts,if it were not so much a problem print the birth certificate and be done with it,disprove the nay sayers don't hate them we are entitled to the truth as it relates to our country.
We must know if this man is a citizen of our country,if he would like to lead it,rightwing or not we are entitled thankyou very much...

[caldonjah]

Oh,and where is this so called certification at that it may be reviewed,what is the hold up?

[Will from NYC]

The GOP is hopeless its filled with see above... just a bunch of angry, stupid people.

A Black man won the election... get over it.

[My Name Is Not Important]

Will, Your comment is an example of denial of truth. The truth is simple, produced a "Original Birth Certificate" for Obama so that he may comply with Article II, Section 1 of the US Constitution... It don't get no simpler then that. Anger, or stupidity have nothing to do with that immutable request.

What is Obama trying to hide??? Whats the problem with complying with the law, and release the "Original Birth Certificate" and put to rest this concern?

I have to have produce a "Original Birth Certificate" to get job, so does His Majesty, the One under the seal of the Perz elect, yes or is Obama above the law, or so high and mighty, Obama need not comply with the LAW any more???

Only a dense, brain damaged retard would not understand that simple requirement? Why change the subject, Will??? Your tactic is transparent.

BTW Will, How dare you assume and put your words in my mouth and the mouths of others here. Your just a slimy troll and have nothing to offer here.

[Fran]

Will,
Your rants are beginning to wear thin, considering your guy won. Republicans in Illinois are not concerned about race, they're concerned about where their former state senator and US Senator will take our nation. Don't forget, we knew him before you did, and have been familiar with the "Chicago way" of doing politics. The "Chicago way" is deceptive, uses intimidation and bullying tactics to get people to back off and not ask questions.

The Tribune is supposedly running this ad on Monday and Wednesday. If that happens, it is newsworthy. And there are unanswered questions that Obama would like us all to ignore.

[David P. Graf]

Fran,

I'm not sure on what grounds the Chicago Tribune could refuse to carry the ad. Besides, I can assure you that they are glad to get the money. I honestly don't see any point to continuing to rehash this issue. If there was any truth to the charge, the Clintons would have used it against Obama during the primary season. Case closed.

[zorn]

I felt like the discussion was quashed by a lot of senior people on the right. Yeah, probably Obama is a citizen, but he should just produce, and settle the darn thing.

[Fran]

I would suppose the Tribune could have rejected it based on the fact that running it in the Tribune could add credibility to the question.

Which does raise the question, if this was a frivolous, unfounded question, how did it make it through so many different appeals to the place it now is?

As 'zorn' said, Obama should answer the question, and get it over with. If the evidence is so clear, it shouldn't be a problem.

[David P. Graf]

Zorn,

Can you make it clear in your name field that you are not Eric Zorn who is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune? I know him and he never posts at IR save to assert that posts made by whoever you are are not by him.

[David P. Graf]

Fran,

Considering that he's won the election, why is Obama under any pressure at all to respond to issues like this? This isn't exactly a burning issue with the public. And since IR has carried more than a few columns about about the misuse of the court system, I'm surprised that you would necessarily give any credence to the charge just on the basis of a lawsuit. These kinds of controversies make us look silly to the people we'd like to have voting conservative in the next election. Plus, I can assure you from the decades that I regularly read the Chicago Tribune that you can find ads paid for by groups with all sorts of "interesting" ideas. Given that the paper runs ads for sexual enhancement, I don't think they're going to turn down the kind of money that a full page ad brings in unless they could get sued over it.

[David P. Graf]

One other thing - I'm not trying to squelch any comments by whoever the poster is who signs his/her name as "Zorn". I just think it would be easier for everyone if there was no possibility of confusing this Zorn with the Zorn at the Chicago Tribune.

[BERGCRIMES]

The Truth about Mr Berg

If you believe Philip Berg, Barack Obama is unfit to be President of the United States; his candidacy is nothing more than a dangerously specious house of cards that will almost surely collapse if allowed to continue.

According to Berg, Barack Obama harbors a secret which disqualifies him outright from running for the office of president -- and it's only a matter of time before the truth comes to light and the resulting embarrassing debacle leaves the entire Democratic Party in chaos.

See, If you believe Philip Berg, Barack Obama isn't a U.S. citizen.

Last Thursday, Berg -- a Philadelphia attorney who's something of a notorious presence within that city's legal community -- filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania demanding that an injunction be issued against the official nomination of Obama. The suit charges that the Illinois senator is constitutionally ineligible to become president on the grounds that he has yet to produce a valid U.S. birth certificate -- Berg claiming that the current one on file from Hawaii is a forgery, proven so by "three forensic experts" -- and that he maintains an unresolved dual-citizenship and owes allegiances to both Kenya and Indonesia, where his father was born and where he lived as a child, respectively. Berg says that he has access to copies of Obama's Jakartan school records which show the candidate registered under the surname of his mother's 2nd husband, Lolo Soetoro, and listed as an Indonesian citizen; as if to hedge his bet, he insists that even if Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is indeed shown to be authentic, the school registry should be enough to keep the candidate out of the White House.

If these allegations sound familiar, they should; in one form or another, each of them has been bandied about the internet or bullhorned across conservative radio for months now in an ongoing effort to paint Barack Obama as "different."

Oh yeah, and they're all basically bullshit.

A couple of weeks back, the Annenberg Political Fact Check -- an organization whose credentials are pretty much bulletproof -- set out to settle once and for all the debate over Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate. The word "debate" deserves no small amount of qualification because, in reality, there never was a legitimate claim to be made that the document was phony -- simply a lot of fantastical conspiracy theorist innuendo, perpetuated and amplified at lightning speed by a million far-right dolts with computers and delusions of Sherlock Holmesian cleverness. Annenberg dispatched staffers to examine the birth certificate and ruled, to the surprise of no one with a modicum of common sense and two brain cells to rub together, that it's 100% legit: Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. As for the claim that Obama holds a dual citizenship or is in any other way beholden to a foreign country -- that was exposed as nonsense months ago.
Story continues below

And yet Philip Berg filed his lawsuit anyway. He filed it knowing full-well, one would have to imagine, that most of its claims are bogus -- that they already had been or easily could be debunked.

So why? What the hell would possess someone to willfully propagate claims that are tenuous at best and outright false at worst -- even going so far as to do it in court?

Because these days, when it comes to politics particularly, the truth is negotiable -- and there's value in the lie.

Whereas once there were a select few sources of information, and those sources were generally deemed credible by all but those on the furthest fringes of the public, now anyone can be his or her own news source. And while -- as sites like this one, ironically, have advanced -- the rise of citizen journalism and hyper-connectivity has been good for the ethics of media as a whole, it's also created a treacherous wasteland of journalistic mini-fiefdoms, each spouting its own version of reality and together making it impossible, at times, to tell honest, well-researched fact from made-up crap conjured out of thin air to further an agenda. Whether the message comes in the form of an e-mail forwarded to your inbox by that paranoid uncle with the survival bunker in his basement who you're always hoping skips Thanksgiving, or as a bitter flamewar on every news aggregation outlet across the blogosphere, the internet has replaced television as the most effective and least regulated tool for political propaganda in America.

Which is why, ironically, it's now become the partial responsibility of television to help keep the corruption in check. It's too bad the good folks in the TV news media are usually unwilling to do it.

Mainstream media managers, as a whole, subscribe fully to the notion that bloggers and their internet realm are of an inferior journalistic stock; they see them as pests constantly circling the carrion of stories already broken by TV, radio and print; they condescend to them, dismissively painting their ilk as pasty, overweight losers, futilely raging against the machine from the comfort of a Middle-American basement, hopped up on Red Bull and basking in the post-orgasmic bliss of an afternoon spent masturbating to Asian porn. Those who adhere to the Mega-Media ethos believe that when a blogger does break a story, the quality of that piece of information can be judged by whether or not it rises to the level of inclusion in a mainstream broadcast, newspaper or magazine. In other words, only those above the radar can make the decision as to what's worth pulling up from under the radar. The problem is, the good stuff -- the powerful investigation, the sometimes penetrating insight -- gets passed over by the larger media outlets because it's, well, boring. It doesn't make for good TV or a quick, sharp read. Meanwhile, unfortunately, the garbage -- the rumor, conjecture, and misdirection -- is often picked up and elevated to the level of "real news" simply because it's so damn juicy and such a sure-fire ratings or circulation enhancer. A crap story thrown out by a few official-sounding blogs -- like the story of Obama's "phony" birth certificate -- can suddenly be granted validation simply by virtue of the fact that the "controversy" surrounding it is being discussed on national television. The lie is amplified inside the 24/7 cable news echo-chamber and, presto, it's suddenly palatable and worthy of serious consideration by 90% of the population.

It would be one thing if mainstream media outlets faced this kind of bullshit head-on and said, "No, this story isn't true, and if you believe it you're a lunatic." But it's better for ratings and revenue to instead ask, "A lot of folks are saying (insert spurious assertion here), but is it true?" (For the record, nobody does this vaguely referenced end-run on responsibility better than Fox News; see "Terrorist Fist Jab.") It goes without saying that this is how political propaganda is perpetuated; by reporting the rumor as its own story -- without sharply and decisively denouncing it -- you're validating it, giving new life to it, and ensuring that enough people will believe it that the very future of the country could wind up eventually hinging on it.

Ask yourself this: How many people still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim?

Or this: How many people still believe that Iraq was connected to 9/11?

Very few within the mainstream media came right out and unequivocally shot down these ludicrous rumors before they could take root within the consciousness of the masses -- or at the very least, the minds of those who wanted nothing more than to have their preconceived biases confirmed.

There are thousands of Americans who will still claim that they "don't trust" Obama -- and yet they'll base this lack of trust on their willingness to trust an e-mail that got forwarded to them by a friend of a friend of a friend of some guy somewhere.

It's the responsibility of respectable news media everywhere to bring truth to propaganda and refute the fiction proffered for the sole purpose of sowing discord and confusing the electorate. It's incumbent upon the mainstream media, particularly if they value their stature as strongly as they claim, to shine a bright light on the lies, rather than fueling the fire by debating the merits of a story that they know perfectly well has no merits.

Should you believe Philip Berg?

It's a question that doesn't need to be asked, because it's already been answered.

[USATodayAdForObamaRecords]

Thanks for the coverage!

Why are you guys so afraid of the truth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL08s5uH8as

http://usatodayadforobamarecords.blogspot.com/2008/11/citizenship-issue-on-msnbc.html

[USATodayAdForObamaRecords]

If you have time, take off your tinfoil hats and read through this thread:

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/joemygod/1060182211318343106/?src=hsn

[Pete]

Who really enforces the Constitution of the United States when it comes to reviewing the legitimacy of a candidate for the POTUS? If we are to believe that the President Elect went by the name of Barry Soetoro as was reported in a school record first reported by the Associated Press, then why shouldn’t we know if he was adopted? If we are to believe the President elect that he did travel to Pakistan in the 1980’s when it is a well known fact that Americans with American passports could not travel there, how did he get there?

Is Factcheck.org the final arbiter to the citizens of the United States in disclosing the facts pertaining to the birth place of Mr Obama? Hawaii Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence. The only way to know where Obama was actually born in Hawaii is to view the original birth certificate “vault copy” from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signatures of the doctors.

Americans have the right to know the answers to these questions and I hope that the Supreme Court recognizes that this is a valid issue and must be answered before inauguration day.

[tfb]

Obama should be compelled to prove he is indeed qualified to hold the office he was elected to.

There is no argument for no producing it that has merit, and as a matter of law there is every reason to do so.

Every single United States citizen should demand this matter be clarified.

One of the things that shows the great divide in this society is this issue. Some people do not understand the importance which is incomprehensible to me. It seems like a chasm that cannot be breached.

[spintreebob]

re: "ANY one else has to produce the same, for a job in the United States, by law,"

It is this type of off-topic falsity that destroys the credibility of one side in the debate and makes others on that same side appear to be looney.

The constitutional qualifification for president is unique, precisely because it is THE PRESIDENT. That constitutional requirement cannot be compared to unconstitutional off-topic comments.

[Anonymous]

See latest You Tube Videos on Obama, Natural Born Citizen; Should the Election be Overturned; http://thenaturalborncitizen.blogspot.com;http://usatodayadforobamarecords.blogspot.com;www.thebulletin.us