Political Pyro

To the best of my knowledge, no president-elect of the United States has ever had such a dense veil of secrecy surrounding his Constitutional eligibility to serve. With several cases being brought before the Supreme Court, one would think a definite Yay or Nay would exist at this point.

Ronald Kessler at Newsmax assures us:

The truth is that Obama was born in Hawaii. Hawaii, by law, does not make original birth certificates public, and this has enabled conspiracy theorists to claim that there is something nefarious about the circumstances of Obama’s birth.

As claims of a cover-up mounted on the Internet prior to the election, Obama posted a digitally scanned image of his original birth certificate. But that enabled conspiracy theorists to say the image had been created by Photoshop.

Obama then let FactCheck.org, a nonprofit project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, view, handle, and photograph the birth original certificate at Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago.

That led to claims by conspiracy theorists that the document shown to FactCheck.org was fake. However, on Oct. 31, the Hawaii Department of Health issued a press release saying that Chiyome Fukino, director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, along with Alvin Onaka, the registrar of vital statistics, had “personally seen and verified that Hawaii’s State Department of Public Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.”

(For the record, Kessler uses the term “conspiracy theorists” no less than five times in his article when referring to anyone who dares to challenge Obama’s American birth.)

Yet, there is nothing conspiratorial about tens of thousands of people wondering why Obama doesn’t simply put all of this to rest with a single press conference. It would take maybe five minutes.

Why does he let it drag on like this?

To his credit, Kessler makes some valid points by challenging the integrity of both Philip Berg and Jerome Corsi, but this still does not explain Obama’s continued silence.

Factcheck.org states:

“The Associated Press quoted Chiyome Fukino of the Hawaii State Department of Health as saying that both she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama’s original birth certificate”.

The following pictures posted at Factcheck.org (combined with the Hawaii State Health Department statements) are the most compelling evidence I have seen in Obama’s favor. But it does not address the forgery issue, which is not before the Supreme Court. That may explain their reluctance to hear the case.

On the flip side of the controversy, J.B. Williams at Canada Free Press has doubts:

Despite numerous cases filed in numerous courts across the country, some of which include sworn affidavits from Obama family members who swear he was born in Kenya, the fact that numerous well respected forgery experts have claimed that the COLB posted on Obama’s web-site is a fraud, the fact that Obama by his own accounts, was a citizen of Indonesia under the name Barry Soetoro and traveled on an Indonesian passport until the age of 21, while at Occidental College, the high court sees no reason to doubt his eligibility for the highest office in the land…

Apparently, the court read the “investigative report” issued by FactCheck.org without noting that FactCheck.org is a surrogate mouthpiece for the Obama campaign, owned by the same liberal Annenberg Foundation that groomed the young Obama through his ACORN community rabble-rousing days in Chicago, and funded his failed education venture, the Annenberg Challenge, with Obama partner William Ayers.

If FactCheck.org is good enough for the MSM and the Supreme Court, why isn’t it good enough for the average red blooded American who foolishly still thinks we are a nation of Constitutional Law?

Unfortunately, it is the timing of all this that is suspicious. Obama has been a presidential candidate since early 2007. As the system stands, any serious claims of his ineligibility should have been made nearly two years ago. At the very latest, in January, after he won Iowa.

The real problem is that a major flaw in the system of electing our president has been revealed: there is no automatic judicial or Congressional review of a candidate’s eligibility before an election. Without that, we are simply trusting a candidate’s honesty until some ambitious lawyer has the audacity to challenge it.

Individual Secretaries of States have an obligation to verify the integrity of their ballots, the electors are allowed the opportunity to vote their conscience, and finally Congress has the authority to approve or nullify the winner — but this is all local responsibility before it gets to Congress, and Congress doesn’t have a role until after the election. What State secretary would challenge the integrity of a national candidate without seeming rogue? What elector or member of Congress would challenge the integrity of a candidate after an election?

Final Analysis: We are a nation that believes one is innocent until proven guilty. When it comes to electing a president, a candidate should be unqualified until proven otherwise. If we must pass a test before we are qualified to drive a car, certainly it is not out of the question to test a presidential candidate — whether by Congress, lower courts, or the Supreme Court itself.

Something needs to be done to strengthen the eligibility issue of a presidential candidate, but it is not the Supreme Court’s duty at this time. This is something Congress needs to address for next time.