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: The Right Side of Life

TRSoL Exclusive: HI Elections Clerk: ?I believe Obama is eligible to hold office? (Update 3)

By Phil

As I am about to show, WorldNetDaily only got half of their story right (full disclosure: The Right Side of Life.com has been featured on WND in the past and I still “trust but verify” what they post, most of the time).

I decided to actually contact Mr. Tim Adams at the email address linked in the Western Kentucky University faculty page mentioned in the WND article to find out for myself (and for you, loyal TRSoL readers) why he chose to “come out” now regarding the alleged quotes that WND has posted.

However, before I get to the email I received back from him (and that I subsequently received explicit permission from Mr. Adams to reveal), here are key excerpts from the WND article:

“There is no birth certificate,” said Tim Adams, a graduate assistant who teaches English at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky. “It’s like an open secret. There isn’t one. Everyone in the government there knows this.”

Adams, who says he’s a Hillary Clinton supporter who ended up voting for John McCain when Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to Obama, told WND, “I managed the absentee-ballot office. It was my job to verify the voters’ identity.”

He says during the 2008 campaign when the issue of Obama’s constitutional eligibility first arose, the elections office was inundated with requests to verify the birthplace of the U.S. senator from Illinois.

“I had direct access to the Social Security database, the national crime computer, state driver’s license information, international passport information, basically just about anything you can imagine to get someone’s identity,” Adams explained. “I could look up what bank your home mortgage was in. I was informed by my boss that we did not have a birth record [for Obama].” …

“They told us, ‘We don’t have a birth certificate for him,’” he said. “They told my supervisor, either by phone or by e-mail, neither one has a document that a doctor signed off on saying they were present at this man’s birth.” …

…”They may say, ‘We don’t have access to that.’ The regular workers don’t, the ones processing ballots; but the people in administration do. I was the one overseeing the work of the people doing the balloting.”

Adams stressed, “In my professional opinion, [Obama] definitely was not born in Hawaii. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that he was not born in Hawaii because there is no legal record of him being born there. If someone called and asked about it, I could not tell them that person was born in the state.” …

“Anyone can get that [COLB],” said Adams. “They are normally given if you give birth at home or while traveling overseas. We have a lot of Asian population [in Hawaii]. It’s quite common for people to come back and get that.” …

“Why would they say they’ve seen it and not produce it? I don’t know,” he said. “If they said they’ve seen the document, then why not produce the document? There’s no need to put themselves out like that. I can’t even begin to think why they did that except for some kind of political expediency. I’m too far down the totem pole [to know].”

While Adams, who noted he spent nearly 10 years in the islands and has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Hawaii, says he’s certain Obama was not born there, he also does think the president is indeed a U.S. citizen, since his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham was an American.

He says he merely would like to see the truth come out and have the controversy over natural-born citizenship and presidential eligibility resolved once and for all.

“It’s come to the point where it’s a monster, and it’s time to kill it,” Adams said. “Solve the problem so that everyone can get back to cooperating to improve the country. People have lost sight that we’re trying to make the country a better place.” …

Adams says he’s been telling other people his information for a long time, and he’s free to talk about it publicly since he no longer has any confidentiality restrictions from his former employer, the Honolulu government. People started to pay attention this week after he was briefly interviewed by James Edwards, host of a weekly radio show on WLRM Radio in Memphis, Tenn.

The rest of the article describes how WND claims to have confirmed by local authorities that he did work for HI elections as well as additional issues pertaining to the eligibility saga.

The problem that I originally had with this story (an issue that I’ve privately discussed with close followers of this blog and am only now posting about it) is that the original email forwards I received had links to a YouTube video by James Edwards in which a Stormfront.org graphic was displayed shortly into the video for several seconds. That same Stormfront.org graphic was also blatantly included in some of the email forwards I received.

Stormfront.org is a white-supremacist group, and if there are those who believe that white people (however that’s defined) are inherently superior to any other race, they can knock themselves out. That’s not how I roll. Nor will I post the YouTube video on my site for the same reason.

Naturally, this led me to question why it is that WND went with this story. After all, they didn’t post the same video on their site (most likely for the same reasons, but I can only speculate) but they went with the overall story anyway.

Why? Because they knew they could draw lots of insinuations from their readership.

Taking the above quotes on face value would make you think this story is explosive, wouldn’t it? It turns out that Mr. Adams isn’t quite the “birther” that WND had been making him out to be. In fact, he thinks Mr. Obama is eligible for the office (it’s an interesting admission — if we’re to follow WND’s story — as someone who is supposed to have worked with elections would otherwise know better, right? They have reasonable access to evidence right there, right?).

My email to Mr. Adams:

Mr. Adams,

Good morning! My name is Phil, blogger at TheRightSideOfLife.com. I’ve been following the Obama eligibility issue since late 2008 and recently came across the following WorldNetDaily article:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=165041

While I did see your contact information on the following page:

http://www1.wku.edu/pcal/faculty

I wanted to confirm that you are the same person as mentioned in the above WND article who is making the claims outlined in that article.

If the above is correct, then I have a question for you: Why is it that you have decided to reveal this information now?

Thanks for your time,

-Phil

Being self-critical, in hindsight, I probably could have asked a number of other questions to more fully develop the story. But, it turns out that his response did it for me:

Phil,

Thank you for the Email. Actually I believe God has a sense of humor, because I thought these notions were pretty well common and not very important. I was actually just in Nashville, observing a conservative political conference, I’m not a member of any kind of group, and too liberal for these guys, when James Edwards, the host of the Political Cesspool, heard about me from someone and asked if I would simply state what I had observed and been told while working in Hawaii. I believe Pres. Obama was born a United States citizen, and is eligible to hold office, I find the idea that because he was probably born outside of the U.S., he must be some kind of alien to be basically racist. I do think we should close this issue and pass legislation requiring office seekers to prove identity before running for elected office.

Thanks for the kind inquiry

So, there you have it, the story more developed, straight from the source. Personally, I don’t reach exactly the same conclusion as he does except for the fact that it would be wonderful to actually have legislation that required candidates to substantiate their eligibility as a part of their candidacy filings.

Once again, do I totally distrust WND in their reporting? No. But I do believe in making sure the entire truth of an issue is as fleshed out as possible in order that folks can make up their own minds.

After all, isn’t the point of debating eligibility to make sure that all the facts are known, in context?

For me, this is, has been and will always be about the Cosntitution, not the melanin.

Update 1:

Per the FReeper cross-post link, immediately below, there’s been some concern that somehow I’m doing something other than revealing WND’s obvious insinuation that, by extension, Mr. Adams was actually saying that Mr. Obama is, for a fact, ineligible for the presidency (despite the fact that there is no in-hand evidence either way — save the British citizenship angle — to know for sure).

To bolster this, when I asked Mr. Adams for his permission to publish the email, he responded thusly:

Phil,

I am not ashamed of anything I write or say, you may use my words with my blessings, just please don’t twist them the way I have found some media outlets doing, you know how they are.

Thanks again,
Tim

Aside from WND, I can only speculate who any other “media outlets” are that are “twist”ing his words.

Things that make you go, “Hmmm…”

Update 2:

Wow x 2. Of all the things I’ve ever posted on my blog, this posting has sure stirred up a hornet’s nest.

For further clarification, Mr. Adams has been quoted by other sources to specifically say that, in his view, Mr. Obama was not born in Honolulu.

OK, fine. A couple of things [that are really sure to stir the proverbial pudding]:

1. The underlying assumption is that Mr. Adams had, in fact, worked over at HI elections. I’ll take the facts of what WND posted in their article at face value on this point;
2. The lack of evidence does not mean the evidence of something; it merely means that we’re still lacking something. Some of us (that would be, yours truly) have been saying from the beginning that we have zero, zilch, nada evidence, in-hand, to confirm or deny Mr. Obama’s eligibility. We just don’t know for sure.

In my view, the insinuation that WND made must be changed.

Update 3:

And then there was this given to ObamaConspiracy.org — an eligibility “opposition” site — from the City Clerk’s office for the County of Honolulu:

Our records indicate that Mr. Adams was employed in a clerical position as an Elections Clerk. Our office does not have access to birth records. Birth records are handled by the State of Hawaii, Department of Health.

If all of the above is true, then lots of people — including WND — may be relying on bad/incorrect interpretations of the truth.

Ah, yes — insinuations.

Cross-posted at FreeRepublic

-Phil

Email: phil [at] therightsideoflife [dot] com

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See the following links regarding the eligibility saga:

• The background:
  • Obama?s Presidential Eligibility: What You Need to Know
  • The Case Against Barack Hussein Obama
  • Obama’s Sealed Background Documentation
  • Obama Citizenship Facts
  • What’s the Difference Between a Birth Certification Versus a BirthCertificate
  • Hawai’i State Department of Health – Vital Records “Obama” page
• The questions:
  • Leo Donofrio Affirms FightTheSmears.com?s Obama Citizenship Admission
  • Fallible FactCheck.org: TheBirthers, Donofrio Cause Change on Obama Citizenship
  • Newsmax.com: Obama Birth Certificate Not Released
  • Keyes v. Lingle: Forensic Examiner and IT Expert Disprove Certification of Live Birth
  • The State Department and Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Natural Born Citizen Resolution (April 10, 2008)
  • Citizen Grand Jury Updates and Eligibility Lawsuit Listing

Similar Posts:

• Sen. Shelby’s Foray Into the Eligibility Issue Helps Cause a Stir in the Press
• Newsworthies: More on Obama’s Birth, Articles on Background Checking
• Eligibility Update: Federal Officials on Citizenship; Maya Soetoro and COLB; Abolishing Citizenship Requirement?
• Eligibility Update: HI AG Response to Questions; “Birther” Infomercial Airs; Kerchner v. Obama Letter to Judge
• Certifigate: No “Long Form” for Obama; DNC Obama Eligibility Cert Only in HI

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on June 11, 2010 (boomark / email).