Obama Citizenship

Eligibility Update: Billboard Company Loses Business, Jeff Schreiber Disses Eligibility, HI COLB Inconsistencies

By Phil

Soon after Lamar Outdoor rejected WorldNetDaily’s campaign monies for billboard space to display “Where’s The Birth Certificate?,” WND reports that a Florida real estate company owner has decided to cancel his contracts with the advertising company:

Florida real estate company owner Fabian Calvo has told WND that he’s cancelling his contracts for two major billboards owned by Lamar that he had been using to advertising his apartments.

Calvo, who also is a talk radio host in the Tampa Bay area, said, “I am cancelling my billboards with Lamar.”

He said, “It’s just unbelievably wrong that not only would they deny WND the freedom of speech they should have, but at the same time be fearful of this administration.”

He said he is terminating use of the Lamar billboards immediately.

“We have other ways to advertise,” he said.

His real estate company owns 500 apartments in central Florida and other areas, and the billboards had promoted the locations to passers-by.

“People need to wake up and see what is happening in their country,” he said.

The Lamar decision had been delivered to WND by spokesman Hal Kirshaw, who said, “We think it’s a settled matter. We think it’s misleading to indicate there’s any question about the president’s birth certificate. We looked at it and we made the call.”

Kirshaw said he read “independent media reports” and unnamed “newspaper articles” to make his decision.

Jeff Schreiber, blogger at AmericasRight.com, recently wrote about why he’s no longer following the eligibility issue (as a part of his posting regarding his thoughts on the recent DC Holocaust Memorial shooting)…

The lesson here should be that characterizing people doesn’t work. This past fall, I spent a great deal of time analyzing one of the citizenship-related lawsuits in particular. While I said many times that I could by no means whatsoever attest to the veracity of the claims, I followed the suit nonetheless because I found the constitutional aspects interesting. I followed the suit because I work in the court in which everything was filed and therefore enjoyed better access than anyone else (it was because of that access that I was able to break the story on the suit in the first place). But as the process went along, what I thought was an interesting constitutional question and a justifiable desire to see public officials vetted became a virtual lynching, became for many less driven by the law and more driven by identity politics. Many e-mails I received had nothing to do with the Constitution or the presidency. Many of the comments I rejected from this site had nothing to do with any of the legal questions, regardless of how outlandish or lacking in anything but circumstantial evidence. At one point, it became too much and I tried my best to warn everyone of the dangers of Obama Derangement Syndrome. Soon thereafter, I abandoned the citizenship controversy for good. I don’t think I even mentioned it again until yesterday.

But that’s also where the dangers of characterizing people comes into play. Throughout the e-mails, throughout the comments, never once did I feel as though any of the people sending them were on the verge of snapping or acting out violently. Yes, they were frustrated. Yes, they were at times obscene. Yes, the language they used offended me, someone who doesn’t easily become offended. But at no point whatsoever was there any worry on my part that violence would come from it. I was worried about political difficulties, that the people who had become consumed with perceived unanswered questions would become the right-leaning equivalent of the Code Pink crowd, that chants of “HE’S A USURPER” would replace “BUSH LIED AND PEOPLE DIED,” and that people like myself who spends so much time trying to point out specific policy-based problems with the Obama administration would be met with the same rolled eyes that conservatives displayed toward the Bush-hating left.

In case you weren’t aware, Mr. Schreiber had been the inspiration for my starting The Right Side of Life back in late October, 2008, and while he is certainly entitled to his own opinion, I really have to question the basis for his current stance.

He claims that his interest in the eligibility issue began as an “interesting constitutional question.” Yet, after receiving numerous emails and comments on his site that he now characterizes as a “virtual lynching” and “identity politics,” he “abandoned the citizenship controversy for good.” Does this mean that any other issue that otherwise piques his interest will slowly but surely wane thin by mere virtue of individuals venting in his specific direction?

With all due respect, I think his getting away from the eligibility issue has more to do with his need to be seen as less “fringe,” “conspiratorial,” or a “birther” — the various pejoratives that the opposition will often use to label those who question the President’s eligibility — than to actually pursue something noble, like standing up for the Constitution, regardless of what anyone says about the issue. I bet to this day Mr. Schreiber would not be able to make an honest, categorical admission that Mr. Obama is absolutely eligible for the office — even Rush Limbaugh realizes there’s a question here. His posting makes a point concerning rushing to characterize people when dealing with political issues, yet he appears to be among those who proverbially abandon ship when the heat turns up.

While I make it a personal policy to not directly comment on how other people run their site, I couldn’t let this slip by, especially as I continue to run one of the only so-called “birther” sites that actually allows dissention on the topic. And with that I have received much criticism from both “sides,” but you know what? That doesn’t diminish the importance of the question. It is unfortunate that Mr. Schreiber appears to disagree with this sentiment.

A concerned citizen passed along an email in which they aggregated a number of statements and claims made by the Hawaiian Department of Health and certain third-party web sites regarding the certification of live birth:

On June 13, 2008, Obama’s campaign finally released a copy, while launching a fact-check Web site of its own, Fightthesmears.com. The site is a direct response to allegations about Obama that won’t go away: He’s Muslim. He took the oath of office on a Koran. He refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance. PolitiFact has researched all of these accusations and none of them are true.

When the birth certificate arrived from the Obama campaign it confirmed his name as the other documents already showed it. Still, we took an extra step: We e-mailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real.

“It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,” spokesman Janice Okubo told us.

============

The Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen e-mail inquiries a day about Obama’s birth certificate, spokesman Okubo said.

“I guess the big issue that’s being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature,” Okubo said, pointing out that in Hawaii, both those things are on the back of the document. “Because they scanned the front ? you wouldn’t see those things.”

Okubo says she got a copy of her own birth certificate last year and it is identical to the Obama one we received.

And about the copy we e-mailed her for verification? “When we looked at that image you guys sent us, our registrar, he thought he could see pieces of the embossed image through it.”

Still, she acknowledges: “I don’t know that it’s possible for us to even say beyond a doubt what the image on the site represents.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/

==========================

[interesting stuff and Janice Okubo communications]
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12939.htm
Janice Okubo, Director of Communications of the State of Hawaii Department of Health, told Israel Insider: “At this time there are no circumstances in which the State of Hawaii Department of Health would issue a birth certification or certification of live birth only electronically.” And, she added, “In the State of Hawaii all certified copies of certificates of live birth have the embossed seal and registrar signature on the back of the document.”

===========================

Chicago Tribune, October 30, 2008
“The Swamp” November 3, 2008 [the Washington DC bureau of the Chicago Tribune]

http://www.newswithviews.com/Stuter/stuter154.htm
http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/oct/30/nation/chi-birth-certificate-30-oct30
Contacted Wednesday, Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo cited Hawaii state privacy laws and guidance from the state attorney general in saying she was not permitted to confirm the authenticity of the certificate released by the Obama campaign.
But she said it appeared similar to other Hawaii birth certificates.
?It looks exactly the same as my own birth certificate,? Okubo said.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Stuter/stuter155.htm

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/11/obama_hawaaianborn_citizen_for.html
Does this mean Obama was born in Hawaii?

“Yes,” said Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo, in both email and telephone interviews with the Tribune. “That’s what Dr. Fukino is saying.”

See the following links regarding the eligibility saga:

• Obama?s Presidential Eligibility: What You Need to Know
• Obama’s Sealed Background Documentation
• Citizen Grand Jury Updates and Eligibility Lawsuit Listing

-Phil

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).