Dr. Orly Taitz, Esquire, nationally dubbed as the “queen of the Birthers Conspiracy,” has been given a small and outwardly dubious victory in her challenge to prove that President Barack H. Obama is not rightfully the President of the United States. Judge Michael Malihi signed an order denying the Obama administration’s motion to dismiss the challenge. In the current pre-trial order, Taitz represents Islamophobic Internet blogger and birther conspiracy theorist David Farrar (circa June 2009); i.e., (Docket No. OSAH-SECSTATE-CE-1215136-60-MALIHI).
As a matter of record, “birthers” are defined as those who claim that ‘non-citizens’ do not have the right to hold office as President of the United States. Their only problem seems to be in proving that Barack Obama is not a rightful citizen of the United States, which they have yet to do.
Taking into consideration that attorney Michael Jablonski has already wiped the floor with birther brains on the matter, and considering that Taitz isn’t the first lawyer Farrar has hired in his mania-induced phobia that appears to be more about President Obama’s race than anything else, it seems that Taitz, or any decent lawyer for that matter, would not want her name associated with the case. However, her challenge website states, “Defend Our Freedoms Foundation” and “World’s Leading Obama Eligibility Challenge Website.” And “…if you love your country, please help me fight this creeping tyranny and corruption.”
Taitz, herself born to a Jewish family in Chişinău, Moldavian SSR in the Soviet Union (present day Moldova), seems to be desperate to have her “big monumental day” in court, the “dream case” that puts her in the history books; and this is her one and only shot at being something huge in the legal field that she cannot be without riding side-saddle on President Obama’s back.
However, the Office of State Administrative Hearings Docket, in short, states that Dr. Taitz, Esquire of California, will conduct a Direct Examination of President Obama based on the following questions:
- Is the candidate’s birth certificate an authentic one issued by the State of Hawaii?;
- Is the candidate an Article II natural-born citizen of the United States as established in Minor v. Happersett, 88 U. S. 162 (1874); and
- A challenge on O.C.G.A. (Official Code of Georgia) regarding the 'making of false statements generally,' i.e., is the candidate’s social security number authentic?
On question (3), it would appear that the federal and state government of Illinois would not have been taking taxes out of his pay if his social security number were not authentic. But that remains to be challenged, because there is no constitutional requirement calling for an ‘authentic’ social security number as a requirement for becoming President. It simply does not exist. And apparently, even if it were made a requirement, an Obama win this year would do nothing more than exacerbate the same issues as to what, exactly, is authentic proof of citizenship and what is not.
As to the Constitution itself, the words of the law are these: “Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, "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."
Three qualifiers: a natural born Citizen OR a citizen of the United States” and “having attained the age of 35 years” and “been fourteen years a Resident within the United States.” But let’s take a closer look at the 1874 challenge in U.S. 162, (Item b) – named “Error to the Supreme Court in Missouri.”
The 1874 example case in this Administrative Hearing docket involves a woman’s right to vote in the United States, or the State of Missouri; or what we historically refer to as “women’s suffrage.” It goes on to tell us that a woman by the name of Mrs. Virginia Minor, a citizen of the state of Missouri, may have erroneously sued in the Supreme Court for her right to vote.
In short, the Court decided to go ahead and hear the Missouri case and the Chief Justice issued an opinion on the matter that stated, in brief, “There is no doubt that women may be citizens. They are persons, and by the Fourteenth Amendment [to the Constitution], “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are expressly declared to be citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
The Justice also states: “The [14th] Amendment was not necessary to make this citizenship fact.” Even if the challenge on naturalization of citizenship itself were to go through, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services easily resolves the matter, “Naturalization is the process by which U.S. citizenship is granted to a foreign citizen or national after he or she fulfills the requirements established by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Generally, to be eligible for naturalization you must:
• Be age 18 or older;
•Be a permanent resident for a certain amount of time (usually 5 years but less for some individuals);
• Be a person of good moral character;
• Have a basic knowledge of U.S. history and government;
• Have a period of continuous residence and physical presence in the United States; and
• Be able to read, write, and speak basic English. There are exceptions to this rule…
President Obama has already met these requirements and more. It seems he would then be forced to take a written test and the courts would then be forced to make his citizenship retroactive back to the day of his birth, if Taitz and Farrar were allowed to get away with that move. That the C.I.S. can easily and forthrightly make the President a naturalized Citizen overnight is moot. It’s a matter of paperwork, and time that he should not have to spend trying to prove something to a nation that has already been proven ad nauseum.
In the Missouri suffrage case used as a basis to formulate this hearing, the Justice’s opinion further states “…by Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, in which they took the name of ‘the United States of America,’ entered into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attack made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these states when the Constitution of the United States was adopted became 'ipso facto' a citizen -- a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the persons associating together to form the nation, and was consequently one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship if they were. Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United States in two ways: first, by birth, and second, by naturalization. The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens.”
And the Opinion goes on further to state:
“Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization, Congress, as early as 1790, provided "that any alien, being a free white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized, dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be considered citizens of the United States, and that the children of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be considered as natural-born citizens. These provisions thus enacted have in substance been retained in all the naturalization laws adopted since.”
From this Opinion, it does not appear that Farrar’s and Taitz’s challenge is about whether or not the President is a “natural-born” citizen; the Opinion itself states that there can be no doubt that he is; the Constitution states that he is. The real problem for Taitz and Farrar appear to be focused on the words of the 1874 opinion “any alien being a free white person,” which Obama is only half-of, which makes him black in America. By the old Confederate racist “one drop” rule, he’s black, and he also declares himself an African-American on his census statistics report. The United States would have to roll back their definition of citizenship to mean “free white persons” to support this frame of reference.
Bottom Line: There is no constitutional direct and express meaning for “natural-born” citizen and the Supreme Court is not about to make one up just to suit Orly Taitz or any other birther. And for the United States Supreme Court or any other to take this position is to break the laws that are in place which do not allow this kind of racial discrimination in America, period. It opens up a can of worms that ties Taitz and the other birthers to nothing more than outright racism, and the United States does not need to fight that battle again. Not ever. Taitz wastes the taxpayers dime every minute that she spends on this rant, and her conservative faction should be angered that she continues to waste the taxpayers money in this manner.
In the Administrative Hearing docket, the statement is made that “birth certificates alone do not provide conclusive or reliable proof of identity,” which opens another constitutional Pandora’s box that may serve no other purpose than to disenfranchise millions of Americans who were born, and raised, here.
Birth certificates are used for just about everything in this country, from getting a driver’s license to being allowed to vote or obtain a passport to leave the country. It means, in essence, that none of our birth certificates prove conclusively that we are United States citizens even if they are authenticated legal duplications. The Hearing order appears to be set up so that if they win, President Obama loses regardless of the fact that he has produced an authentic “long form” birth certificate with a seal that was published in the news and on the White House website. Even that, though not required of any other presidential candidate, was not good enough for the birthers.
They also challenge the birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, dated August 13, 1961. Farrar and Taitz say that the birth announcement came from the Health Department, not the “General Public,” and that the Health Department gets its information directly from hospitals, which typically includes the newborn’s weight and time of birth, which, they say, did not print with the ad in the Advertiser. Not necessarily always true: Click Here. And Click Here.
Taitz’s (and the birther’s) attempt at using a challenge and opinion of the Missouri Supreme Court based on an 1800s lawsuit involving women’s suffrage, is, at best, extremely weak. The challenge appears, on the surface, not be on the question of President Obama’s true citizenship, but directly aimed at making certain that another citizen who is not a “free white person” can ever be elected President again. Their premise, by their own words in this document, is not based on President Obama’s white American mother, Ann Dunham, whose name is never once mentioned in this document, but on his Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr., and now comes the highly racist and antagonistic viewpoint from which Taitz and her conspiracy theorists truly rest their case.
Simply put, the birthers will neither rest nor be satisfied until President Obama stops being at least partially black. And the more unfortunate part of this theory is that the initial challenge itself came from a black American Republican by the name of Alan Keyes back in Chicago when President Obama was running for the Illinois U.S. Senate.
The best thing Judge Malihi can do, under the circumstances, is make an example out of Taitz and Farrar and close the books on this one for good. And even that is not likely to make them go away.
Other references: SNOPES
Berg v. Obama, 574 F. Supp. 2d 509 (E.D. Pa. 2008);
Hollander v. McCain, 566 F. Supp. 2d 63 (D.N.H. 2008);
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