Setting Media Matters straightPosted: April 18, 2011
1:00 am Eastern
By Joseph Farah© 2011
Generally speaking, I tend to ignore what the George Soros "Media Matters" smear machine publishes.
Refuting their lies about me and my company would be a full-time job.
But, knowing the news media's propensity for shallow research into the eligibility issue, I thought it was important for someone to challenge Media Matters' recent "Myths and Falsehoods: Birther Edition."
* Barack Obama has released his birth certificate: An easy way to prove that would be to simply show it. Instead, what Media Matters does is to hype the digital short-form document we've all seen – the "Certification of Live Birth," which would likely not have been sufficient proof to get the young Obama signed up in Little League, if he had been living in Hawaii rather than Indonesia at the time of his eligibility for competitive sports. This is a document that Hawaii has routinely handed out to register births occurring elsewhere, even out of the country, on the basis of an affidavit filed by a parent or grandparent. If this is "the original birth certificate," as claimed by FactCheck.org, Obama has more eligibility problems than most people realize. It is hardly the contemporaneous eyewitness document one would expect to prove constitutional eligibility for the highest office in America. Media Matters then quotes former Hawaii health department Director Chiyome Fukino as asserting she has seen the original "vital records" and proclaiming Obama to be a "natural-born American citizen," despite her lack of bona fides as a constitutional authority.
* Obama's grandmother never said Obama was born in Kenya: In a recorded interview Oct. 16, 2008, Sarah Hussein Obama does indeed seem to suggest he was. While it is true her translators insist repeatedly that she was mistaken, insisting he was born in Hawaii, the grandmother herself is clearly heard to say "Mombasa." It's hardly conclusive evidence of anything, but it is of some interest given the highly unlikely scenario that the grandmother traveled to Hawaii to witness the birth of a grandson to an American woman, when her financially struggling son, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., had already produced offspring with a Kenyan wife.
* Newspaper birth announcements prove Obama was born in Hawaii: Actually they suggest only that indeed Obama's birth was "registered" in Hawaii, probably producing the "vital records" Fukino referenced. Hawaii made it very easy for parents or grandparents to register births that took place out of state or out of the country by simply filling out an affidavit.
* Kenyan birth certificates are fraudulent: Media Matters insists WND proclaimed an apparently fraudulent Kenyan birth certificate was real. To the contrary, WND was the first news agency to proclaim the alleged Kenyan birth certificate produced by Orly Taitz as "probably not authentic." Media Matters, interestingly, mentions but does not refute a WND report that Kenyan officials on the floor of the National Assembly made statements proclaiming Obama as a Kenyan the day after he was elected.
* Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was able to find Obama's birth certificate: Immediately following his election, Abercrombie pledged to several major news agencies in the U.S. that one of his highest priorities was producing the birth certificate. However, he conceded weeks later he was unable to find it – and, if he could, helpless under the law to produce it. Instead, he assured the press that there is a "recording of the birth": "It was actually written I am told, this is what our investigation is showing. It actually exists in the archives, written down …" Again, this claim by the governor still does not deal with the particulars of what that document or registration might say – or, if it is any different than the certification of live birth we've all seen.
* If Obama was born in Hawaii, he is constitutionally eligible to serve as president: Media Matters cites one constitutional authority to make this case. But if his father was a Kenyan visiting student, as Obama claims, and his mother was Stanley Ann Dunham, it's doubtful either of his parents were in a position to confer even run-of-the-mill U.S. citizenship on their son – he because of foreign citizenship and she because of her age.
In other words, isn't it about time Obama produce the one essential document necessary to evaluate whether he is, indeed, constitutionally eligible to serve?
Is this the best you can do, Media Matters?
Read more: Setting Media Matters straight http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=288301#ixzz1JvDUtOt9
Labels: World Net Daily
