Earth to Lou Dobbs: Hawaii Is A "United State"
No matter what you think, today is not a wasteland of slow news. The Government is having its most thorough health care discussion ever witnessed, the climate is doing all sorts of strange things (summer has yet to arrive here in the city of New York), and Michael Vick is once again a free man. And playing.
Still, the lazy media finds ways to report on possibly the most asinine "story" (loosely used) of this young millennium: that a small number of those who call themselves "patriots" continue to argue that President Obama is not an American citizen and therefore his presidency is unconstitutional.
I am unsure what is crazier: that people believe this tripe, or that news nets still give these birthers air time?
Fact is every person born in the United States is an American. Check the fourteenth amendment. Obama was born in Hawaii. Hawaii is a state. Therefore, Obama was born in the United States.
Yet some are continuing to argue (with a straight face while wasting our time) that the Chief was born somewhere other than State #50 despite overwhelming contrary evidence.
On his July 15 show, CNN's orange-haired guru Lewie Dobbs devoted significant time to talking about the president's birth certificate on an unedited hour-long wackjob. The State of Hawaii provided Obama's certif to the fine people at the University of Pennsylvania's political clearinghouse factcheck.org. Dobbs called that certificate "peculiar," and demanded the long-form certificate for some reason that he didn't feel necessary to explain. After spouting various looney tunes, Dobbs behaved like an irresponsible believer during an obvious ratings-chaser.
Finally, this week Jonathan Klein, CNN's US chief and a former client of mine (at TheFeedroom.com) had to email the Dobbs show's staff, telling them that they were nuts. Imagine: a network head not wanting viewers to think that his people were reporting what is essentially "fake" news. Good for you, Jon. But why did it take you two weeks when the birthers' claims were debunked well before the 08 election? Right... A combo of politics and hoping this would lift you above Fox once more.
The point is in no way trivial: So long as there are floating conspiracy theories, TV programmers expect people will want to hear about them. It's the nature of a few beasts.
Responsible news networks owe it to us not to repeat things that are obviously stupid. CNN dropped a ball by allowing Dobbs (also, not as proudly as Klein, a client when he ran Space.com 10 years ago) to become a champion of meritless theories with no basis in reality. It is baseless, it is wrong, and it's yellow.
No wonder comedian Jon Stewart is the most trusted newsman in America.
That's the way it is.
Follow Richard Laermer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/laermer
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Where do the "Birthers" go next? Hmm... maybe Hawaii isn't really a state. They should painstakingly go over the documents of Hawaii's Admission; there's got to be a typo in there somewhere that will render Hawaii's statehood null and void. That will end Obama's Presidency, once and for all.
Excellent article by Richard Laermer.
Change Lou Dobb's name and the story and the same can be said about any extreme right wing radio and TV talk show hosts. They helped create the Jon Stewarts in the business. About the only benefit they provide to our nation.
Old, old. old. This whole 'nonstory' is just that. But even more, it's indicative of the cognitive dissonance that's become so prevalent in our grossly undereducated culture. This doesn't mean that all "birthers", who seem willing to hold onto this non-issue until death-do-they-part (sorry, did that sound TOO hopeful?) are ignorant, just that they refuse to listen to themselves w/ any objectivity. notions of citizen birth blah, natural born blah blah, born of only one US citizen blah blah blah, etc., are dead ends for their position on Pres. Obama, but they won't see it. You could turn the argument on it's head and follow the lineage of millions upon millions of Americans, and claim that you find connections or "unprovable birth stories" that might raise all kinds of questions about entitlements of citizenship, etc. Big Woof! What's the point? For "birthers", the point then has to go to "electability to higher office" which in this case, although IN NO OTHER in the history of the US, must rule against him for the same inane reasons that have already been dispelled.
BIRTH ON AMERICAN SOIL TO AN AMERICAN CITIZEN MEANS AMERICAN--PLAIN AND SIMPLE
Always has and always should!
get over the fact that he's black and way more powerful than you,... or DON'T get over the fact, it doesn't matter, the only thing that matters is that you all stop making fools of yourselves. GET 'R DONE
BIRTH ON AMERICAN SOIL TO AN AMERICAN CITIZEN MEANS AMERICAN--PLAIN AND SIMPLE
You do not have been born to an American Citizen FACT is every person born in the United States is an American Citizen.
Check the fourteenth amendment.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
NOTE: EXAMPLE WOULD BE ILLEGAL MEXICAN IMMIGRANTS WHOSE KIDS ARE AMERICAN CITIZEN BECAUSE THEY WERE BORN HERE, BEING ONE OF THE ISSUES IN IMMIGRATION REFORM.
What's strangest to me is that nobody seems to feel it's crossing the line to say that Lou Dobbs is racist these days. When he was every day about illegal immigration, I seemed to be the only one. He would say "well, I just want the law enforced. It's the law, that's all", but when border agents got arrested for breaking the law, he was outraged and demanded they be pardoned to try to undo some but not all of the damage their heinous arrest in the first place was. Both border agents were hispanic, to boot. So it isn't that hispanics breaking the law are bad, it's that foreign ones are. Xenophobia would be one thing, but that implies an inherent fear. Dobbs is a xenophobe who has replaced that fear with anger and hate: a racist. In making Obama a potential foreigner, Dobbs gets to bring his hate to the masses once more since we stopped caring about illegal immigration.
Lou Dobbs is just really old. He doesn't know how to do Google searches.
He really shouldn't have a show.
Folks like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs spread this stuff it's no wonder that the less then informed buy into it. It's a shame but there are folks out there that don't bother to stay informed, but choose instead to get their so called news from un-reliable sources.
Since you are so well informed - please state exactly what a Natural Born Citizen of the United States is. If you have proof of your statement, a link would be appreciated! I would hate to be so uninformed on these issues. We need people to enlighten us that seem to know the facts behind this status. Thank you for your help!
Gawd u r n eff .ing d(!!. w@d
As I understood it, there is no definition of a "Natural Born" American as it stands today or at any time. Being born to a citizen parent (singular will do) gets you the American part, though. Natural Born seems to be something that was so massively important to the founding fathers that they didn't care to define it. Almost as if it was like saying something was honest-to-goodness _________. Do we have a legally binding definition of whether or not _______ was, in fact, honest-to-goodness? That being said, when nobody raises a finger to even think about whether the Panama Canal Zone was a legitimate place to be naturally born (McCain), but this vitriol still festers against Obama, information enlightenment and facts really don't seem welcome to someone like a birther.
all you need to read to be informed is the 14th Amendment. What "facts" do you know, by the way. Oh, and please provide a legitimate link.
The 14th amendment states that All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.
Jurisdiction means US TERRITORIES example, Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands and Canal Zone,Panama are US Territories when McCain was born in the Canal Zone it was US Territory.
the birther movement is just the embodiment of certain people's outrage that a black man with a foreign-sounding name was elected president of the USA. period.
There was a caller on Thom Hartmann (or maybe it was Ed) the other day who had a pretty funny take. Essentially, Obama's family must be the smartest people alive to orchestrate such a perfect conspiracy as the one the birther's allege. They must also be the dumbest. You can find a white muslim from the middle east named John Smith. Heck, Ralph Nader is Lebanese in descent. So why pick the most difficult to elect race, give him the most foreign sounding name you could, and then make his middle name cry out "muslim!" if you are trying to get this guy to be President one day?
I always assumed his parents were showing off. Something like "Look, seeing into the future and manipulating state and news records for over forty years, is just a little too easy; let's give him an African/Muslim name (they can't choose his race, because I'm assuming that both parents were psychic), with the middle one being the same as the last name of a guy who will become America's enemy a few decades from now. Just for giggles."
Some people just don't know how to share. "Certain people" have been claiming the US for theirs alone for over 200 years. Ask any Native American. This land is my land, but it's not your land....Th
Obama: Yes, I'm an Alien.
In a shocking statement to the press, Barack Obama finally admitted that he was not born in Hawaii. He is, he said, "A brother from another planet." Obama confessed that he used his alien time machine to go back to 1961 and fake his own birth certificate.
More at http://sha
http://twi
lol....it feels like that is all you can do
Just as War is a very profitable business, so yellow journalism is also very profitcable.
Republicans are either Birthers or Deathers (scaring old people that Obama;s health care is designed to end their lives). Why are there no Lifers among Republicans? Why can't they get a life?
I've got a better idea:
The Democrats should offer an amendment to the "Birther Bill" requiring ALL candidates for ANY elected Federal Office to provide their birth certificates.
Provide a little Sauce for the Republican Geese ...
Do you know the nationality of the sperm donars? They could be Aliens.
so Americans are not really Americans. May be as one historian points out that they are African Americans.
End of story.
fight for the middle class .lol you sold us out to.
There's a branch of the birthers that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. These are the people who make the legal argument that the framers' intent was that a "natural born citizen" would have no other claims on the citizen's national loyalties.
Obama was a dual citizen at birth, owing to his father's nationality; therefore -- according to the argument -- he can't be a natural born citizen, regardless of his birthplace.
While this general issue has popped up in the Supreme Court case law discussion on the subject, there's never been a ruling to clearly define a "natural born citizen."
You are just making stuff up! Do facts not matter?
Obama is NOT a dual citizen. He is a natural born citizen of the United States of America.
Kenya does not even allow its citizens to have dual citizenship.
Chapter Two of the Kenyan Constitution:
A person who, upon the attainment of the age of twenty-one years, is a citizen of Kenya and also a citizen of some country other than Kenya shall, subject to subsection (7), cease to be a citizen of Kenya upon the specified date unless he has renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and, in the case of a person who was born outside Kenya. made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament.
Kenyan law is actually irrelevant. The only law that matters in this question is what citizenship Obama holds under US law. And US law says that he is a natural born citizen by birth.
Kenya could pass a law tomorrow granting Obama citizenship. It wouldn't matter. He's a US citizen under US law and can only renounce it himself by making a conscious declaration. He can't have foreign citizenship forced upon him. Not even from his own parents.
When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom's dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.'s children:
British Nationality Act of 1948 (Part II, Section 5): Subject to the provisions of this section, a person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by descent if his father is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at the time of the birth.
At the time of his birth, Barack Obama Jr. was both a U.S. citizen (by virtue of being born in Hawaii) and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (or the UKC) by virtue of being born to a father who was a citizen of the UKC.
As a citizen of the UKC who was born in Kenya, Obama's father automatically received Kenyan citizenship via subsection (1). So given that Obama qualified for citizen of the UKC status at birth and given that Obama's father became a Kenyan citizen via subsection (1), it follows that Obama did in fact have Kenyan citizenship after 1963. So The Rocky Mountain News was at least partially correct.
The 14th amendment states that anyone born inside the US is a citizen. While it does not specifically say that makes them a "natural born citizen", there are only two categories of citizen under US law: natural born and naturalized. The Supreme Court has always operated in their case law that birth within the United States means the latter. Aso, since Obama was never naturalized, he must therefore be a natural born citizen.
A subset of the birther school of thought claims that Obama forfeited his US citizenship when his stepfather enrolled him in school in Indonesia. That theory is complete bunk. The Supreme Court ruled in Perkins v. Elg that parents cannot renounce the citizenship of their minor children. Citizenship can only be renounced by an adult making a conscious action to do so.
Correction, the Supreme Court has always operated with the assumption that birth within the US means the FORMER (ie, natural born citizen).
Prove it! I say it means that they are considered native born, not natural born which is reserved for those children that are born of 2 US citizens not holding allegiance to any other country. Even naturalized parents US citizens can produce natural born citizens. But, 1 born of a US citizen and a Foreign citizen can only be considered US Citizens at best. They all are treated the same except when it comes to the Presidency and Vice Presidency. Only natural born may apply!
Neither the citizenship status nor the immigration status of a person's parents is relevant to that person's own citizenship status. The US Supreme Court said that (in essence) way back in 1898 in it's decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.
There are clippings from two different local newspapers from 1961 announcing the date and place of the birth. When such irrefutable evidence is ignored, you know what this is about: desperate Obama haters trying to create a sideshow diversion in order to derail the president's agenda. Weak. Very weak.
Hi parents were so brilliant that they knew they had to place those ads 47 years in advance or their son couldn't be president. Terribly clever of them, wasn't it? A bit of trickly logistics, that, having the notices in Hawaii when they were in Kenya. I just haven't figured out how they managed to have hospital records for the mother's admission in Hawaii for a natural childbirth at the right time.
No, what it's about is a bunch of people trying (and failing) to mask their racism.
3fingerbrown and Jessica, I think you're BOTH right.
http://sit
Try calling this person racist!
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