This is what my astute reader sent in:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me to express your concern regarding President Barack Obama's qualification to serve as president under Article Two of the Constitution. It is good to hear from you and I appreciate the opportunity to respond to your concerns.All this in response to a question as to whether Murphy thinks President Obama was born in the United States.
Article Two sets forth the principal qualifications for serving as president. A presidential candidate must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, be at least thirty-five years old, and have been a permanent resident in the United States for at least fourteen years.
Before being elected president, then Senator Barack Obama was plagued with questions about whether or not he is a "natural-born citizen" of the United States, as the Constitution requires. To refute these claims, the Obama campaign in June of 2008 released a "Certification of Live Birth" stating Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, and is therefore a native citizen of the United States and eligible to serve as President.
Since that time, numerous lawsuits have been filed challenging the president's eligibility to serve as president under the Constitution's "natural born citizen" clause. Some lawsuits maintain President Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen because he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. Before giving birth, the suits claim, President Obama's mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, and therefore gave birth to the President in Kenya. At the time of birth, the suits contend, President Obama's father was a Kenyan citizen subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, thus handing down British citizenship to the President, while his mother was a minor at the time of his birth, too young to confer American citizenship. Moreover, critics argue his grandmother claims to have been present at his birth in Kenya. Under United States naturalization laws, citizenship can be conferred when both parents were U.S. citizens at the time of the child's birth and at least one parent lived in the United States prior to the child's birth. The lawsuits contend these requirements were not met.
Other suits claim that even if the President was born in the United States, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. These suits point out the President's move to Indonesia when he was a child and his attendance at a school where only Indonesian citizens were allowed. As a historical matter, U.S. citizenship can be forfeited upon the undertaking of various acts, including naturalization in a foreign state.
Critics argue that the President can easily end the debate by simply producing his original birth certificate, rather than the Registration of Live Birth document he has provided thus far. They argue if the president is a natural born citizen, then producing this document should not be a problem.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land and I unconditionally agree that the Constitution must always be upheld to the full extent. Still, in our system of government, the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutionality. To date, many of the lawsuits have been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and standing, while others remain pending in the judicial system. The phrase "natural born citizen" is not defined anywhere in the Constitution and its interpretation has never been the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. While this issue is currently before the courts, I will keep your views in mind and continue to monitor the situation carefully.
Please do not hesitate to contact me with further questions or concerns. If you are interested in receiving my email newsletter describing important votes and key committee activity, I invite you to visit my website at http://murphy.house.gov and sign up.
Sincerely,
Tim Murphy
Member of Congress
You'll note that he doesn't actually answer the question. He could, of course, have given a one-word answer in either direction - but he didn't. Saying yes and going with the evidence (i.e. reality) risks offending a hard core segment of his party. Saying no and going with teh crazie (i.e. the birthers) and he risks getting tagged as crazie himself.
Given the overwhelming evidence to the "Yes" answer, Congressman Murphy's equivocation is confusing.
I mean he DID vote in favor of H.Res.593 a resolution that declares the President was born in Hawaii.
So why the equivocation?
10 comments:
It's interesting that Tim Murphy might be stuck unable to give a definite answer on this issue the way several of the politicians caught up in this issue. Murphy's district is majority Democrat, so he has to be more careful in his insinuations than some of his Republican comrades have been. I think Obama is sort of stuck too, in that if he asks Hawaii to make the original document available to reporters, he is giving in to the nutjobs even as he realizes they will simply deny the original is authentic.
This passage is particularly interesting: "Critics argue that the President can easily end the debate by simply producing his original birth certificate, rather than the Registration
of Live Birth document he has provided thus far. They argue if the president is a natural born citizen, then producing this document should not be a problem."
Murphy is careful not to give an opinion here and simply lays the blame on undefined “critics”. It’s not clear why we should care what these critics think, since he doesn’t say who they are, but Murphy does do these critics the unbelievable favor of putting them in a letter put out by a US Congressman.
As a letter designed to make the tinfoil hat crowd think Murphy is on their side without giving any specific slander to Democrats to take to the House Ethics committee, this is a standard good effort by Murphy’s staff. It is also another example of what appears to be an increasingly polarized American Government and a sign that Murphy is more interested in getting votes even by encouraging nutjobs than in being a decent person.
Did you see that Orly Taitz now has a Kenyan birth certificate for Obama? She won’t reveal the source, for fear that Obama will have him/her killed (!). I have a link on my blog to the WND page that has images. On Salon some one said that E.F. Lavender, the name of the registrar on the birth certificate, is the name of a popular soap in Kenya. But I’m not judging. Too bad no judge will ever let this into evidence, since that means the only investigations into its authenticity will be informal.
Isn't this just more of the Karl Rove tactic of using surrogates to make scurrilous charges about an opponent?
I mean, look at what Murphy, et al, do: They didn't say that they agree that Obama isn't a citizen. But, they argue that the accusers make an interesting point. (Which he lays out in great detail) And, then, he hands off to the Supreme Court. He can't say for sure, until they rule.
Gutless weasel.
RE: Kenyan "birth certificate"
First, the hospital is Coast Provincial General Hospital (sometimes said to be Coast Province General Hospital), not Coast General Hospital.
Second, Kenya was a Dominion the date this certificate was allegedly issued and would not become a republic for 8 months.
Third, Mombasa belonged to Zanzibar when Obama was born, not Kenya.
Fourth, Obama's father's village would be nearer to Nairobi, not Mombasa.
Fifth, the number 47O44-- 47 is Obama's age when he became president, followed by the letter O (not a zero) followed by 44--he is the 44th president.
Sixth, EF Lavender is a laundry detergent.
Seventh, would a nation with a large number of Muslims actually say "Christian name" (as opposed to name) on the birth certificate?
Eigth, his father (born in 1961) would have been 24 or 25 when he was born and not 26.
Ninth, it was called the "Central Nyanza District," not Nyanza Province. The regions were changed to provinces in 1970.
and
2.The document is dated 5 August 1964 -- a Saturday. From what I can find, Kenyan guvmint offices close early on Friday and are closed on Saturdays. Oooops [...]
5.This piece of paper certainly looks nice and new to be 45 years old -- unless the Kenyans were using acid-free paper back in 1964. Heh, heh.
6.Finally, Officials of Coast Province General Hospital reported: “We do not have computerized records going back to the 1960’s and can only sort through our archives by hand,” Dr. Christopher Mwanga, an administrator at the Mombasa hospital tells GLOBE. “We have searched for all the names of babies born on Aug. 4, 1961, and have not found the name of Barack Hussein Obama. That is all I can tell you.”
Kimber, a few Congressmen have gone further than Murphy in that letter and said they think Obama should direct the State of Hawaii to release the long form Certification of Live Birth.
Maria, some people will have trouble accepting anything Daily Kos says. Never the less I am pleased to see Obama's "real/fake" Kenyan Birth Certificate receiving the same level of scrutiny as Obama's "real/fake" Hawaiian (short form) COLB. There is a record book mentioned on the Kenyan Birth Certificate, a page and volume number. That, to me, is a place to start.
While eating lunch and looking at Salon.com, I see that they claim to have found the source for the forgery of the supposed Obama Kenyan Birth Certificate (http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/08/04/australia_certificate/)
I have to say ... maybe this is a definitive refutation. Since Salon is saying the supposed Kenyan Birth Certificate of Obama is a forgery from a South African birth certificate, I wonder if anyone could produce a Kenyan birth certificate of the early sixties to compare. Also I still want to know whether anyone knows if there is a "Birth Register of this Province" for that Kenyan Province, and whether Barack Obama's name appears on the page and Book listed.
Ed,
The forged birth certificate is full of historical inaccuracies that anyone with access to google or wikipedia can see. You don't need to believe a Daily Kos diarist for example to see that "Mombasa was part of the state of Zanzibar until 12 December 1963 when it was ceded to be incorporated into the newly independent state of Kenya." You just need a history book or wikipedia.
Same goes for the rest of the debunking.
I presented what I did because DK had it all in one place.
Why is no one questioning John McCain's Birth Certificate?
Tim Murphy is a venal weanie (I want credit for that, if you use it elsewhere :-) and exhibits the very attributes which have pushed the GOP to near obscurity.
I can't even express my contempt for this spiteful, do-nothing haircut of a legislator.
Blech! (as they used to say in "Mad")
Maria, I am hoping for that nail in the coffin debunking, where someone says that they have a birth certificate from that hospital and it looks nothing like the supposed Obama BC, or that the name of the deputy registrar for records or whatever was totally different at that time. I am fairly confident that something like that will come up (has anyone checked the passport records at the State Department to see when Obama's mom applied for a passport?), and also confident that the birther crowd will not believe the evidence staring them in the face. So I am fine with what you posted but I am still waiting for the big debunking I believe is yet to come.
@Ed-
I think the fact that the faked bc has the stamp of the "Republic of Kenya," which wouldn't exist for another 10 months after the Feb. 1964 date of the certificate's signing, is all the debunking needed.
Kenya gained it's independence from Great Britain on Dec. 12, 1963, but they still operated as a commonwealth of the crown until Dec. 12, 1964 when they became a republic.
It is simply impossible for a so-called Kenyan document dated Feb. 1964 to be marked with the seal for a government that didn't even exist at the time.
My guess is that they used the Australian template due to the relationship that both Australia and Kenya shared with the UK at the time, likely thinking the forms would be similar.
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