Barackryphal

WND's Farah Lifts From the L.A. Times and the AP?

2012-01-03T22:29:00.028-05:00

In reaction to my blog post from last week, documenting the uncredited lifting of text in a Jerome Corsi article, WND appended an 'Editor's Note' to Corsi's article, claiming that the "error" was the result of unscrupulous (and still anonymous) "Kenyan researchers". No further explanation has followed.

I then wondered if these same "Kenyan researchers" were responsible for the Aaron Klein article from two weeks earlier, where he appears to have cribbed from a CNN editorial.

Now we can further ask whether these same "Kenyan researchers" must also be to blame for Farah's own November 22 column, "Civil rights and civil wrongs", which was published less than a month before Corsi's article. Because Farah's writing bears an uncanny resemblance to articles by the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press. And Farah's column contains no links or citations whatsoever, much less to the L.A. Times or to the AP specifically.

Here are some comparisons of the text, with quotes from Farah's column italicized, and word-for-word identical text bolded:

Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2011:

Students and teachers at the trial testified that King had been dressing in women's accessories and wearing makeup, and was flirting aggressively with male students on campus who did not want the attention.

Joseph Farah, November 25, 2011:
For whatever reasons, the 14-year-old was acting up by dressing in girls' clothing, wearing makeup and flirting aggressively with other young boys in his junior high school in Oxnard.

Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2011:

The victim's mother, Dawn King, revealed for the first time Monday that she had contacted school officials four days before the shooting in an effort to solicit their cooperation in toning down her son's behavior. The boy had been taken from the Kings' home two months earlier by authorities because of domestic problems.

Joseph Farah, November 25, 2011:
Dawn King said she contacted school officials to solicit their cooperation in getting her son to tone down his behavior. Two months earlier, Larry King was taken from his parents because of domestic problems.

(Note: So far, you'll notice, there is at least the effort to rearrange the sentences, rather than simply cutting-and-pasting them. It seems that midway through "writing" this column, that proved to be too much work...)

Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2011:

She said she was told that her son had a civil right to explore his sexual identity.

"I knew, gut instinct, that something serious was going to happen," she said. "They should have contained him, contained his behavior."

Joseph Farah, November 25, 2011:
Mrs. King was told by school officials that her son had a civil right to explore his sexual identity.

"I knew, gut instinct, that something serious was going to happen," she said. "They should have contained him, contained his behavior."

Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2011:

School administrators sent a memo advising teachers to give King his space, but to report safety problems.
Teachers at the trial testified that when they tried to report growing tensions between King and several boys, school leaders shunned them.

Joseph Farah, November 25, 2011:
Prior to the shooting, school administrators sent a memo advising teachers to leave King alone, but to report safety problems.
Teachers at the trial testified that when they tried to report growing tensions between King and several boys, school leaders shunned them.

Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2011:

Assistant Principal Joy Epstein has come under criticism for allegedly being more intent on protecting King's civil rights than in acknowledging that his dress and behavior were causing problems.

"It was reported, more than once, by more than one person,'' said English teacher Dawn Boldrin. "It was documented. There is paperwork on this. She kept saying that she didn't know and she did. She knew. She did. Everybody knew."

Joseph Farah, November 25, 2011:
Assistant Principal Joy Epstein has come under criticism for allegedly being more intent on protecting King's "civil rights" than in acknowledging that his dress and behavior were causing problems.

"It was reported, more than once, by more than one person,'' said English teacher Dawn Boldrin. "It was documented. There is paperwork on this. She kept saying that she didn't know and she did. She knew. She did. Everybody knew."

Associated Press, November 22, 2011:

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said in a statement the plea agreement ends a tragic chapter.

"Ventura County along with communities and school districts everywhere must come together to promote a culture of respect and nurture the true potential found in every individual regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression," Byard said.

Joseph Farah, November 25, 2011:
In the aftermath of this wholly preventable tragedy, Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said in a statement the plea agreement ends a tragic chapter:

"Ventura County along with communities and school districts everywhere must come together to promote a culture of respect and nurture the true potential found in every individual regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression."

So once again, why exactly should anyone believe in the existence of these "Kenyan researchers"? And why are there three different articles, by three different senior WND writers, all within the span of a single month, that have committed the same journalistic offense?

WND's Aaron Klein cribs from CNN?

2011-12-31T16:46:00.000-05:00

So WND now says that the seeming plagiarism in Jerome Corsi's article was the fault of anonymous "Kenyan researchers," and that the "unattributed references" were "unknown to WND."

Whether you trust WND's explanation may come down to whether you believe WND's writers would knowingly include unattributed references in their articles. Perhaps you would consider whether they had done so recently.

Take, for instance, Aaron Klein's December 9, 2011 article, "Naturalizer Newt: Gingrich's shifting views on immigration".

Now take this November 29th CNN editorial by William J. Bennett.

Now let's compare them:

CNN, Nov. 29:

Gingrich's call for a "humane" immigration policy in last Tuesday's CNN debate sounded too much like amnesty to many conservatives.

Aaron Klein, Dec. 9:

During a CNN debate two weeks ago, Gingrich called for a "humane" immigration policy that would grant legality for an untold number of illegal immigrants, something that sounds a lot like amnesty to conservative critics.

CNN, Nov. 29:

...only grant legality, not full citizenship, to anyone who has entered the country illegally should they meet stringent requirements.

Aaron Klein, Dec. 9:

Although legality, not full citizenship, would be given to those who meet stringent requirements,

CNN, Nov. 29:

Only those who can sustain themselves without government assistance (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) and pay for their own private health insurance would be eligible to stay.

Aaron Klein, Dec. 9:

only those who can sustain themselves without government assistance and pay for their own private health insurance would be eligible to stay in the country with legal status.

CNN, Nov. 29:

An independent, local "citizen's review" board would grant legal status based on the requirements above as well as the immigrant's standing in his or her community. Should they be permitted to stay, they will still be subject to a $5,000 penalty.

Aaron Klein, Dec. 9:

...an independent, local "citizen's review" board that would grant legal status based on the financial independence requirements and the immigrant's standing in his or her community. Each individual permitted to stay would be subject to a $5,000 penalty.

And finally, the real kicker, the word-for-word swipe:

CNN, Nov. 29:

...full control of the border by January 1, 2014. All government resources necessary would be made available for this, including "round-the-clock drone flights" and "multi-layer, strategic fencing in urban areas."

Aaron Klein, Dec. 9:

...full control of the border by Jan. 1, 2014. All government resources necessary would be made available for this, including "round-the-clock drone flights" and "multi-layer, strategic fencing in urban areas," Gingrich says.

Now admittedly, this is hardly the worst case of unattributed borrowing out there. But Klein clearly cribbed from Bennett's editorial, borrowing word choices and sentence structure and even whole phrases, and there is no link or attribution to either Bennett or CNN.

More importantly, this was published on WND on December 9, just ten days before Corsi's article that similarly (but more blatantly) swiped from the London Evening Standard and the AFP. So how much benefit of the doubt do you want to give WND in believing their story about "Kenyan researchers" being to blame for Corsi's conduct? Are "Kenyan researchers" also to blame for Bennett's words showing up in Klein's article?

WND's Corsi Plagiarizes the London Evening Standard and the AFP?

2011-12-22T08:14:00.041-05:00

Several months back I illustrated how Brad O'Leary, in his WND-published book The Audacity of Deceit, heavily copied an article by another WorldNetDaily writer. Another blog noted last month where a column by WND head Joseph Farah bore a suspicious resemblance to a Wikipedia article.

But neither of those hold a candle to a December 19 WND article by Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation and Where's the Birth Certificate? The article is "Obama's legacy of broken promises – in Kenya". Not only is roughly half of Corsi's article lifted from a 2008 British news story, but Corsi goes further, and repeatedly claims that the copied information and quotations were instead obtained by unnamed "WND researchers" in Kenya.

The British article in question is "Barack Obama's broken promise to African village", written by David Cohen and published in the London Evening Standard on July 25, 2008. Corsi even links to Cohen's story in his article (proving that he personally read the article he copied, and the content was not just provided to him by an unscrupulous "source"), but credits it as the source of only three sentences of information.

Meanwhile, he claims the rest of the article is the result of "a report in Kenya commissioned by WND." Corsi writes:

"A former Kenyan Parliament member with whom WND has worked confidentially since 2008 compiled the report. The research was assigned to trusted Kenyan professionals who conducted the field work and reported their findings in writing."

This is not the only specific reference in Corsi's article to WND researchers. On several occasions, he provides quotes and statements that he claims were provided to WND researchers. But a review of the Evening Standard shows that Corsi simply lifted them, verbatim, from the 2008 story:

Evening Standard, 2008:

However, the school's senior teacher Dalmas Raloo, 41, who is often used as a translator for Obama's grandmother who only speaks Luo, and is a friend of the family, says the family are mystified by what they are calling "Obama's lapse". "If you ask whether Obama's family think he should give something to the village and to the school, the answer is 'yes, definitely'. But they feel it should come from him spontaneously. They don't want to ask him for it."

Jerome Corsi, 2011:

Raloo said Obama's family in Kenya is mystified by what they are calling "Obama's lapse."

"If you ask whether the family think Obama should give something to the village and to the school, the answer is 'Yes, definitely,'" Raloo told WND researchers in Kenya. "But support should come from Obama spontaneously. We shouldn't have to ask him to keep his promises."

Evening Standard, 2008:

Villagers say that despite her age, Sarah Obama still comes to market where she sells her homegrown fruit and vegetables.

Jerome Corsi, 2011:

Villagers told WND researchers that Sarah, 88 years old, still goes to market where she sells her homegrown fruit and vegetables.

Evening Standard, 2008:

The market is where we head next to speak to villagers about their hopes for an Obama victory in November and what it might do for their village. Mary Manasse, 40, who runs the Mama Siste Mini Shop selling staples such as bread and cow's milk (packaged in old Coke bottles) says she has a photograph of Obama shaking hands with her on his 2006 visit.
"Back then I was looking after 40 orphans at the orphan centre," she recalls. "We faced a desperate shortage of money and Obama told us that he especially liked special, dedicated projects like ours and wanted to help. We thought he would give funds to help our project but we got nothing. A few months later we were forced to shut down the orphan centre because of lack of funds. Just a million Kenyan shillings [£6,000] would have kept us going another year. I feel disappointed that he did not come through."

Jerome Corsi, 2011:

The market is where WND researchers heard villagers express disappointment over hopes they once held that Obama would transform their lives in Kogelo.
Mary Manasse, who runs the Mama Siste Mini Shop selling staples such as bread and cow's milk packaged in old soda bottles, told researchers she has a photograph of Obama shaking hands with her on his 2006 visit.

"Back then I was looking after 40 orphans at the orphan center," she recalled. "We faced a desperate shortage of money, and Obama told us that he especially liked special, dedicated projects like ours and wanted to help.

"A few months later we were forced to shut down the orphan center because of lack of funds. Just a million Kenyan shillings (about $12,000) would have kept us going another year. I feel disappointed that he did not come through."

Those are just the instances of Corsi attributing the work and research of the London Evening Standard to his anonymous "WND researchers."

The singular other specific reference to the work of his "researchers" is also nothing more than a paraphrase of a May 2011 AFP article. While not copied word-for-word like much of the content from the Evening Standard, the information and 'quotes' provided to "WND researchers" by "Francis Muti" appear suspiciously similar to quotes appearing in the AFP article. (I'd also note that discovering the true source of this particular material was considerably more difficult than the content copied from the Evening Standard, given Corsi's paraphrasing and misspelling of Muti's last name.) To wit:

AFP, May 2011:

“In the wake of security challenges including terror threats, I can confirm that we decided to enhance security at the home of Mama Sarah … ,” said regional administrator Francis Mutie"

There have been no direct threats against the family but Kenya is on alert following warnings from Al-Qaeda followers after bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan on May 2.

Jerome Corsi, December 2011

"'As a result of the security challenges, including the threat of terror, I can confirm that we decided to improve security at home,' she told WND researchers in Kenya."

Francis Muti, the regional administrator said there was no immediate threat to the family, but Kenya was on high alert after a warning from adherents of al-Qaida after U.S. Special Forces in Pakistan killed bin Laden.

In short, every single quote or finding specifically attributed to Corsi's unnamed "researchers" was lifted from an earlier publication by another news agency.

While these falsifications may be the worst journalistic offenses in the article, they're still not the only ones. Several pictures accompany the article. It's not explicitly stated where these photographs originated from, but it's implied that they also came from "WND researchers." Corsi captions one picture of Sarah Obama by writing "As seen in Exhibit 5, Sarah continues to have roving chickens around her home, as well as goats and cows not seen in this photograph."

But this picture is, in fact, a copyrighted photo belonging to Evelyn Hockstein. No attribution to Ms. Hockstein is provided, and WND does not even indicate that the image is copyrighted. Even the 'roving chickens, goats, and cows' language is borrowed from the Evening Standard.

So much of Corsi's article is paraphrased or copied, word-for-word, that it can only be illustrated visually. Below is that illustration, with the yellow portions of Corsi's column representing the content that was lifted from other sources.

Color-Coded Legend:
Yellow = word-for-word copying from the Evening Standard;
Orange = content taken from the AFP;
Pink = specific references to the work of 'WND researchers';
Blue = credited citations to the Evening Standard

Obama's legacy of broken promises – in Kenya

I emailed Corsi for comment, including to ask for the names of his 'researchers' or a copy of their 'report.' I received no response. (Update: I received a reply from Corsi claiming that the report is "proprietary," but he'd be willing to give comments. However, he did not respond to follow-up emails with specific questions, including when the supposed investigation was conducted, and what other stories the 'source' has supposedly contributed to since 2008).

In the event that the online version of Corsi's article should disappear or be altered, I have preserved a PDF printout of the article at Scribd.

Finally, while the straight lifting of text from the Evening Standard is egregious, and the rewording of quotations from the AFP is suspicious, Corsi's attribution of all this material to his unnamed 'WND researchers in Kenya' is most troublesome. Corsi regularly relies on unnamed phantom "sources" from Kenya and Hawaii. Corsi's actions here, claiming that copied material was actually spoken directly to his anonymous "sources," should not just call into question the credibility of his "sources"; it should seriously call into doubt whether they even EXIST.

Presidential Succession and Designated Survivors

2011-10-18T18:07:00.001-04:00

The Presidential line of succession tells us who ascends to the Presidency in the event of a vacancy in the Oval Office. And in this, we once again find Birther claims refuted.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was the daughter of an Italian immigrant mother. Current Senate President Pro Tempore Daniel Inouye is the son of a Japanese immigrant father. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is the son of Italian immigrants. Attorney General Eric Holder's father is from Barbados. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack was abandoned at birth in Pennsylvania; his biological parents' identities are unknown. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is the daughter of Nicaraguan and Mexican immigrants. And Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki was born in the Territory of Hawaii in 1942.

That's just Obama's Cabinet. All of them appear as legitimate successors under the law, unlike the Taiwan-born Elaine Chao or the Czech-born Madeline Albright. Their parents' citizenship is irrelevant, and indeed is often not publicly stated, because it is irrelevant.

There is also the tradition of the Designated Survivor, a Cabinet member who remains at a distance during public meetings of the nation's top leaders, such as at the State of the Union address. Only Cabinet members who are eligible for the Presidency can be named as designated survivors.

And yet, Eric Holder was the designated survivor in 2009. More significantly, in 1996, the designated survivor was HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants.

But most significantly, the person selected in 2000 to sit out the State of the Union address, the person who the White House specifically selected to take over the Presidency if Congress was nuked, was Energy Secretary and future Presidential contender Bill Richardson. Bill Richardson, whose mother María Luisa López-Collada Márquez was a Mexican citizen when he was born in 1947 and remains a Mexican citizen today. But Richardson was born in California, and that makes him a natural born citizen, like it or not.

And that's not all. In 2003, President Bush had two designated survivors. One of those two was Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, the son of Japenese immigrants. Not only were Mineta's parents not U.S. citizens when he was born in 1931, but under the Asian Exclusion Act, they were not even allowed to become U.S. citizens. But Mineta, like Richardson, was himself born in California. And that was sufficient for the Bush Administration to choose him as a Constitutionally eligible designated survivor.

Yes, even the custom and practice of the Executive Branch itself, in the specific context of preserving and protecting the Office of the Presidency, contradicts the Birthers' claims.

Where are the Herman Cain Birthers?

2011-10-07T18:47:00.000-04:00

Since November 2008, Joseph Farah has wanted Barack Obama to quell Farah's doubts about Obama's eligibility. Among his reasons for being skeptical from the very beginning: the lack of a produced long-form birth certificate, the identity of the birth hospital, and conflicting reports on the specific location of his birth.

Now in 2011, a new election is around the corner, and Farah has a new "favorite" candidate: Herman Cain.

Curiously, however, Mr. Farah is failing to exact the same level of scrutiny upon Cain as he did upon Obama. We have no proof of where Cain was born at all. We haven't seen Cain's long form birth certificate, or even his short form. We don't know what hospital he was born in. We have no proof of who his parents were. We haven't seen any birth announcements, hospital records, school records, college records, passport records, medical records, or baptism records.

"But," as the objection is liable to be, "there is no doubt or question as to where Herman Cain was born." Really? There isn't?

According to various news stories, Herman Cain was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Similarly, according to Wikipedia, Herman Cain was born in Memphis, although no authority is provided for this assertion. Indeed, for years, Wikipedia flatly stated that Mr. Cain was born in Georgia.

And it was not just Wikipedia that claimed Herman Cain's birthplace was in Georgia, rather than its neighbor to the north. To wit:

Nation's Restaurant News - 1988

But the unfamiliar has seldom proved to be a hurdle for the Atlanta-born 42-year-old, who broke into food service only six years ago as a "Whopper flopper," manning the grill at a Burger King unit.

Yahoo News

But the crowd was waiting for the official announcement from Atlanta-born Cain himself.

BET

Born in Atlanta, Cain cooked up a career that landed him in the position of CEO of the National Restaurant Association.

The Fiscal Times

The Georgia-born Cain, the only African-American GOP candidate, has had broad experience as a businessman, media celebrity and fiscal expert.

Cartersville Patch

Is Georgia-born Herman Cain ready for the grueling spotlight of a presidential campaign?

Los Angeles Times

Not to be outdone in the canine arena, Georgia-born businessman Cain criticized...

New York Sun

Mr. Cain is a Southern man, born in Georgia, who probably has a better understanding of the Bull Connors of the world than the Harlem native Mr. Rangel.

Conservapedia

Cain was born in Georgia and grew up there.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Back in May, when Georgia native Herman Cain announced his campaign for the presidency...

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia native and tea party favorite Herman Cain

WSB Radio

While Herman Cain's popularity is increasing outside Georgia, the Atlanta native is the runaway leader in his home state.

Peach Pundit

The other Georgian in the race claims to have been born in Georgia, though birthers haven’t yet started asking for his birth certificate. Herman Cain most recently has been a talk show host for WSB radio in Atlanta, but also has served as the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and executive positions with Pillsbury and Coca Cola.

Indeed, this alone represents far more American news sources that disagree about Cain's birthplace than have ever disagreed about Obama's. WorldNetDaily regularly argues that there were inconsistent reports as to what hospital Obama was born in; but news sources, major news sources, cannot even agree on what state Mr. Cain was born in.

When, then, can we expect Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily, and the rest of the Birther community to hold Herman Cain to the same standard they have applied to President Obama for the last three years? When are they going to demand that Herman Cain prove his eligibility for the Presidency? When are they going to start asking "Where's Herman Cain's Birth Certificate?"

Polarik's "Breaking" News is Broken

2011-08-12T19:28:00.000-04:00

Well, Polarik's back. And rather than just claiming that Obama is the love child of Malcolm X and a Lebanese woman, or pretending that every childhood photo of Obama was faked in Photoshop, now he's spinning a tale that puts himself directly in the story.

The last time I posted about Polarik here (outside of a passing mention in a footnote in "Secret Origin, Part 2") was over a year ago, when he claimed PolitiFact invented a rumor about Obama's middle name. Now he's again trying to shift responsibility for something Birther-related, with a YouTube video and a WorldNetDaily article that claim the White House website linked to a fake Certification of Live Birth that Polarik created on his computer.

This is his claim, as expressed at YouTube:

On April 27, 2011. Obama and his White House held a press conference in which they gave reporters a copy of his "long-form" birth certificate and a copy of his "short-form" birth certificate." That copy, now posted on WHITEHOUSE.GOV, came from the image I created and stored in my Photobucket account - they did not make a copy of his short-form because there is no short-form (the COLB).

Ron's 'evidence' for this is essentially two-fold:

1) The White House blog linked to a black-and-white PDF scan of Obama's COLB that indicates that it was printed off the Snopes website, as it has a Snopes URL at the bottom.

2) An article on the Snopes website used to link to a COLB image in Polarik's Photobucket account.

He goes on at length (as he is wont to do), but that's the core of his claim. The only problem is that even given that both of the above are true, that still doesn't support his conclusion that the White House published and/or circulated an imitation document he'd created.

The White House printed off an image that was ON the Snopes server. The Snopes article linked to a Polarik image that was NOT on the Snopes server, but was rather on Photobucket's. The only way the White House published Polarik's image was if Snopes uploaded Polarik's image to its own server and published it at this address.

And Polarik provides absolutely zero evidence to support that conclusion. Rather, much of his argument contradicts it. He shares some charts showing pageviews of his Photobucket account that came from Snopes. But if web surfers are arriving at his account, then they're not looking at an image uploaded to Snopes' server.

After Polarik went public with this claim, several holes were pointed out in his story. The Snopes image has file info that says it was last modified "Saturday, November 15, 2008 3:19:50 PM." Polarik's fake COLB has file info that says it was last modified "Saturday, March 12, 2011 7:48:46 AM." Furthermore, the White House's image is clearly not Polarik's fake; there's a telltale uneven line of text at the bottom that clearly distinguishes the two. All too quickly, Ron's story was falling apart.

Now if I may interrupt my own narrative for a moment, let's go back a year, to June 2010. Polarik posts his own thread at FreeRepublic entitled "**Obama Bombshell** Blue Hawaii: Health Department falsified Obama's birth records!" In it, he wrote:

Sometime between October 31, 2008, and July 27, 2009, the dates of Health Director Chiyome Fukino's two press releases, Hawaii amended Obama's birth record. A brand-new Certificate of Live Birth (not Certification of Live Birth) was issued to him...

Not only did Obama get a new birth certificate, the certificate itself was designed with him in mind as Rev. 10/08 - coincidentally, the date of Fukino's first press release (10/31/08). Hawaii ditched the old Certification of Live Birth and switched to a hybrid form called a “Certificate of Live Birth” - formerly the name of the long-form birth certificate.

Say, "Aloha" to Obama's new COLB (Certificate of Live Birth):

[here Polarik put a Photobucket-hosted image of "Obama's new COLB"]

Click on the thumbnail for a full-size copy

When Freepers realized that Polarik wasn't being quite honest with them, he did an about-turn and posted a disclaimer, where he said that he'd posted his fake image to test people to see if they could spot it.

Okay, that aside was to provide some context for how Polarik answered his current detractors. He updated his YouTube description so that it now says:

[ **UPDATE** Last year, I made a 2nd forgery with an obvious flaw in it (a tilted line) to see if people would notice it. They didn't. People are only seeing it now because the White House posted a black & white outline of my prior image (which does not have the flaw).

That outline was made from my image shown in the video, but I left the link alone so that viewers can see the flawed forgery that so many have called a genuine copy of Obama's birth certificate.

You see? Sure, it looks like he was lying, but really he was just using a fake image to test people. Again.

He also added a single word to his original video description, to suit his new and improved story (addition emphasized):

That copy, now posted on WHITEHOUSE.GOV, came from the prior image I created and stored in my Photobucket account

New story, new details.

Not that the new narrative makes a lick of sense. In attempting to incorporate various inconvenient facts, Polarik has ended up making the following claim:

That Polarik created a fake COLB and posted it to his Photobucket account. That Snopes downloaded it and uploaded it to their server. That as a 'test', Polarik replaced his original fake with a crappier fake that had a tilted line. And that the White House printed out the original fake from Snopes and gave it to the press.

So now we have TWO Polarik-created fakes, one which has a tilted line and one which he says exists but hasn't shown. Plus an inexplicable scheme to switch out a really good fake for a not-so-good fake to see if people noticed. And a claim that the White House published a fake he created, but not the same fake he originally claimed they published a few days ago.

Still, even as silly as that sounds, is it believable? No. In trying to salvage his story, he simply made it worse.

For starters, one can view Polarik's Photobucket RSS feed to see when images were uploaded. "BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg" was indeed uploaded on March 12, 2011. Rather curiously, images called "Barack Obama's birth certificate (Factcheck copy)" and "Barack Obama's birth certificate (Fight The Smears copy)" were also uploaded the day before on March 11...and they're the same fakes with the tilted line. 'Test' or not, he was certainly out to lie to people about what his uploads represented.

This upload date demonstrates one of the problems with Polarik's new timeline. He uploaded the tilted line fake on March 12, but the White House printout was made on April 25, 2011. Yet the White House image is clearly not the March 12 fake. In fact, Polarik's version 2.0 story is maddeningly irrational; if Snopes had already linked to a fake he created, then why replace it with a more obvious fake? And why, when you go public, do you only brag about Snopes linking to the obvious fake, and not mention the 'prior image' at all until you revise your story?

The feed doesn't show when the original "BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg" was uploaded to Polarik's Photobucket account, but there was indeed a prior image at that URL. However, it wasn't a fake; it was the real thing. Israel Insider linked to it way back on June 24, 2008. Polarik certainly hadn't created a polished fake within two weeks of the original release of the COLB. He simply uploaded the real image, using the same filename that the DailyKos had used. Then in March 2011, for some reason, he replaced it with an imitation.

In browsing my computer files, I found something of note:

See there? "BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg," which I saved July 20, 2009. Followed by several other Polarik-created COLB files which I saved contemporaneously while I was writing about Polarik. And what does BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg look like?

Yep. It's just the plain ol' real COLB. If you open it in a separate window from the tilted line fake, you can see the differences for yourself. This isn't merely a shifting of a line; the entire rattan background changes, as does the border.

So, long story short, what do we have here? Snopes may have linked to a once-legitimate image URL on Polarik's Photobucket account, which Polarik originally uploaded in June 2008 but surreptitiously swapped out for an imitation image in March 2011. (This is a reminder of the risks of hotlinking to outside sites.) The White House printed out a legitimate image that was saved to the Snopes server, said image having nothing at all to do with Polarik's March 2011 fake. There's no evidence whatsoever of Polarik's 'prior' fake that was first mentioned in his revised story. Polarik's first attempt at his story may have gotten published at WND, but its faults caused him to revise it, but the narrative still crumbles under basic scrutiny.

Jim "RaceBannon" Bancroft: Birtherism's Forrest Gump

2011-08-03T18:29:00.001-04:00

One of the great legends of Birtherdom, particularly over at FreeRepublic, is a story spun by Jim "RaceBannon" Bancroft. Bancroft was calling Obama's birth certificate a forgery within ten minutes after it went online, so it's no surprise that he went on to be a vocal Birther. What sets him apart is that he's a Birther with a tall tale.

Although he was preaching the 'Born in Kenya' gospel in the summer of 2008, it wasn't until November 2009, over a year after the Presidential election, that Bancroft made a stunning announcement: he had met teenage Obama in a Hawaii shop in 1980, and teenage Obama had personally told him that he was born in Kenya.

Indeed, according to Bancroft, teenage Obama told him that he was born specifically in Mombasa. And that he was from mixed-race parentage. And that he grew up in Indonesia. And that he wanted to be President when he grew up.

In subsequent tellings, teenage Obama's confessional to Bancroft grew even more thorough, with the young man also saying that he was living in Hawaii with people who weren't his parents and stating that the old black cook in the shop was his father.

Oh, and when he finally decided to share his story with the world, where did Bancroft first publish it? At Alan Peters' Anti-Mullah. Yes, at the blog of the same man who began the 'Born in Kenya' rumor the year before. Indeed, Bancroft and Peters have been affiliated with each other since at least 2005. They've even appeared on the radio together.

Still, it wasn't the details of Bancroft's Obama story that impelled this post. Nor was it his friendship with Alan Peters. Nor was it his fanciful claim of having named the Tamil Tigers.

No, what drove this post was Bancroft's story of meeting another politically-connected person in 1980. In the same story that appeared on Anti-Mullah, Bancroft wrote:

I met the son of G. Gordon Liddy on board the USS Okinawa in 1980 when we were heading to Iran.

My ship was part of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit, deployed in January 1980 from Pearl Harbor as normal, and once in Subic Bay , Philippines , President Jimmy Carter announced what is now called, “The Carter Doctrine”. As I remember it, some group of men were standing near the port side of the hanger deck, just milling around near some open hatchway, and I noticed they were inspecting some military equipment, don’t remember what, but I saw this person’s name written on his trousers, “LIDDY”...

So, I find myself standing next to a 6’2” man about 28 or so with the name LIDDY on his trousers, and I asked him, “Hey, are you related to Gordon Liddy?” His answer surprised me totally, “Yes, that's my father”. The likeness was now apparent and unmistakable and since then, I have read how one of his sons was a Navy SEAL at that time, so, that is who I met. What was embarrassing for me, was I was struck, he was among the famous persons I met while in the Corps, I commented how his dad never ratted anyone out, and he said, “No, He didn’t”. I was filled with wonder at meeting him and I told him that it felt like I was talking to a celebrity. That didn’t go over too well, his face changed it’s stoic expression to one of , “You’re annoying me” and a blonde man next to me spoke up, “Uh, You’re talking to my Lieutenant here…”

Sounds plausible enough, right? Certainly more plausible than a random encounter with a teenage Obama who spilled his entire life story and personal secrets to a random stranger. I'd always written the Liddy story off as a perfunctory detail in the story, an attempt to disguise the piece's Birther motivations.

Except the Liddy story is undeniably false, it is provably so. James G. Liddy is a former Navy SEAL and the son of G. Gordon Liddy. How do we know that James Bancroft absolutely did not meet him in the summer of 1980?

1) Jim Liddy was 20 in 1980, not 28.
2) Jim Liddy was not on the USS Okinawa in 1980.
3) Jim Liddy was not a Lieutenant in 1980.
4) Jim Liddy was not a Navy SEAL in 1980.
5) In fact, Jim Liddy did not even join the U.S. Navy until 1985.

Yet Bancroft quotes the young man as confirming a familial relationship and says that "the likeness was now apparent and unmistakable." Basically, the entire story is utter crap from top to bottom.

The first of these discrepancies was brought to Bancroft's attention within a matter of days. His reaction was to stand by his supposed memories, but claim the officer lied to him about being the son of a convicted felon.

And so when Bancroft published a "revised" version of his story a few days later, he made some changes to the Liddy part of his tale:

While on ship, I met the son of a famous political figure connected to the Watergate scandal on board the USS Okinawa in 1980 when we were heading to Iran....I saw this person’s name written on his trousers, the same name as that political figure.

This political figure was the chief of certain operations in the Nixon White House....So, I find myself standing next to a 6’2″ man about 28 or so with the name on his trousers, and I asked him, “Hey, are you related to that man” His answer surprised me totally, “Uh, Yes, he’s my father”. The likeness was now apparent and unmistakable and since then, I have read how one of his sons was in the military at that time, so, that is who I met.

He simply removed all the references to the name "Liddy." The entire description of the event remains the same. His claim that he met the son of a convicted Nixon conspirator remains the same. Even the "apparent and unmistakable" family resemblance is still there.

Bancroft had already learned that his story of meeting Liddy's son could not possibly be true, but his response wasn't to cut the anecdote or even to rewrite it to propose he had been the target of a joke. No, he left the anecdote in, continued to treat it as factual, and simply scrubbed it of all the specific references that could be used to show it was an impossible event. He continued to tell the story, even as he knew it was completely false.

In short, Bancroft's story spotlighted two supposed celebrity encounters in 1980. One (Obama) with absolutely zero confirmable details, and another (Liddy) that was capable of independent confirmation. And the one that was capable of independent confirmation was independently, and conclusively, debunked. Moreover, Bancroft's response to the debunking was not to drop the anecdote; it was to scrub the anecdote of the specific details that made such a debunking possible.

And amazingly, other FreeRepublic Birthers continue to promote Bancroft's personal myth on the grounds that he is a "credible" source.

Secret Origin, Part 2

2011-06-23T18:10:00.003-04:00

Cross-posted at Birth of a Notion

The Secret Origin of the Birthers explained how the 'Obama was born in Kenya' rumor began. But how did it get from a passing comment on FreeRepublic to a widespread rumor that drove the release of Obama's Certification of Live Birth? How do we know that it was those March 2008 posts that drove the later rumors?

Although he took a decisive lead in the delegate count in late February, Barack Obama did not clinch the Democratic nomination until June 3. He then became the first African American to be nominated for the Presidency by a major American party. It took less than a week for his detractors, both extremist right-wingers and disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, to latch onto a theory that attempted to delegitimize that nomination. Within a matter of days, hundreds of bloggers and commenters were newly promoting or repeating the previously nonexistent debate over Obama’s birth and Presidential eligibility.

The source of this sudden shift in interest was the single post of a political blogger at the National Review Online. And the tipping was not only unintentional, it was precisely the opposite effect of the writer had hoped for. Jim Geraghty is a conservative activist who blogs at NRO. Starting in May 2008, he began blogging about his skepticism over rumors of a supposed tape of Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, where she was “railing against whitey,” said rumors being spread by avid Hillary Clinton-supporter Larry Johnson. It was a nasty rumor that was among the very first items on the Obama campaign’s FightTheSmears.com website (the birth certificate being another).

Still, while all the Obama camp could do was deny the rumor, it was Geraghty who truly killed it. On June 6, Geraghty observed that the story “sounds like something out of a clichéd political thriller novel. Actually, it sounds exactly like something out of a clichéd political thriller novel.” And Geraghty then pointed readers to a 2006 novel, The Power Broker, about a Democratic Senator on his way to becoming the first African-American President, whose opponents locate a tape of him ‘railing against whitey,’ and choose to hold onto it as an October Surprise.

Geraghty also observed that story-propounder Larry Johnson had been wildly inconsistent in his details of the alleged tape, and that Johnson had been vulgar in response to inquiries from Reason Magazine regarding those inconsistencies, and he declared the rumor dead. And so, one early ugly rumor about the Democratic Presidential candidate was quelled by a Republican.

Three days later, on June 9, 2008 Geraghty tried taking on another round of unfounded rumors. But these were rumors that he, on his own, couldn’t defeat, and so he called on the Obama campaign to release the one document that could do the job.

Geraghty noted three specific rumors, all of which he deemed “unlikely.” First, that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. Such a cover-up, Geraghty noted, would require Obama and every family member to have lied consistently for decades. Second, that Obama’s middle name was “Muhammed,” and not “Hussein," a rumor that had continued to circulate even after PolitiFact collected and published Obama’s various public records. Third, that Obama’s legal first name at birth was “Barry,” not Barack.

So Geraghty asked the Obama campaign to debunk all this nonsense in one fell swoop, by releasing his birth certificate. Some people have accused Geraghty of merely stoking rumors, but the “whitey” incident suggests otherwise. As he stated, he didn’t want conservatives clinging to unfounded stories as their last-ditch hope for the election, and so cutting down those rumors early served his interests as much as Obama’s. And in a very significant sense, it worked; the Obama campaign published Barack’s birth certificate on the web on June 12, and Obama’s birth certificate and related rumors failed to become issues in the campaign, for either the parties or the candidates or the overwhelming majority of the electorate.

But despite Geraghty’s explicit skepticism about the rumors, and about the Kenyan birth one in particular, they still managed to find an audience with whom they resonated. Moreover, by appearing on the website of National Review Online (along with an able assist by Michelle Malkin, who reposted the rumor on her popular site), the Kenyan birth rumor managed to reach a much wider audience it they had before. A rumor that had been repeated fewer than twenty times in its three months of existence, with most of the repeating coming from an even smaller handful of individuals, suddenly was published on dozens and even hundreds of different websites within a matter of days. Malkin’s post alone drew 168 comments in under two days, and received 46 trackbacks from other websites.

FreeRepublic started its first thread devoted to the rumor on June 10. WorldNetDaily published its first article about Obama’s eligibility on the same day. Websites like Atlas Shrugs, TexasDarlin, and Larry Johnson’s NoQuarter, which all served as leaders of the early Birther movement (long before they were even dubbed “Birthers”), all ran their first Birther-related stories after June 9. Literally overnight, rumors about Obama’s birth and eligibility went from being impossibly obscure to practically commonplace, and a document that only a handful of people had ever suggested be released was suddenly the subject of urgent demands of transparency all over the web.

In fact, one thing that stands out in retrospect is how insignificant the issue of Obama’s birth certificate had been before June 9, 2008. Those with selective memories (and possessing a selective memory is among the chief qualifications for being a Birther) claim that there were months of demands to see Obama’s birth certificate before he finally ceded and posted an image online. Oftentimes, these are the same people whose memories tell them that the rumors about Obama’s birth began back in 2007 or earlier.

To the contrary, demands for Obama’s birth certificate were few and far between before Jim Geraghty suggested that one be produced. The post at NRO not only served to tip the Kenyan birth rumor, it also tipped the demand for Barack’s birth certificate.

There was only one formal, publicly announced request for the President’s birth certificate prior to Geraghty’s, and it is the same one Geraghty himself notes. PolitiFact.com, the online fact-checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times, stated on May 2, 2008 that they had requested a copy of Obama’s birth certificate in the course of their debunking of the rumors about Obama’s middle name. But PolitiFact said that the campaign would not release that particular document, and that Hawaii did not make such records public.

The reaction to PolitiFact’s statement was thundering silence. The blogosphere did not explode with demands for a birth certificate, and message boards were not filled with threads calling for disclosure. In the weeks between PolitiFact stating “We tried to obtain a copy of Obama's birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it,” and Geraghty’s post suggesting the birth certificate be released, only a handful of individuals so much as noted Obama’s absentee birth certificate, much less demanded it. None came from a journalist or even a prominent pundit or blogger.

Instead, the only requests for Barack’s birth certificate prior to June 2008 came from unremarkable bloggers and message board posters. The earliest such requests were in February 2008,* as the question of McCain’s eligibility got its initial press. And it was not allegations of a foreign birth that drove those earliest requests; it was unfounded speculation over Obama’s first name and middle name.

On March 5, 2008, conservative blogger “velvethammer,” posting on his site Ironic Surrealism, made a post entitled “Wanted: Barack Hussein Obama’s Birth Certificate.” The author claims the post was made “(mostly) tongue in cheek,” and he didn’t raise any particular conspiracy theories about what allegedly harmful information the document might contain. Instead, he glossed over the question rather quickly and moved onto other Obama questions, such as the spectre of dual citizenship and split loyalties.

The value in velvethammer’s post is in the post’s comments, as they offer some insight into what the national conversation over Obama’s birth certificate actually looked like in the first half of 2008. A handful of commenters in March admitted they would be interested in seeing a birth certificate, a handful more accuse him of not being a true Christian, and one person demanded to see his baptism records.

A couple of people raise the legal name accusation, suggesting that the birth certificate might list his first name as “Barry” or his last name as “Dunham.” A few throw around some gossip about his parents, particularly the allegation that they weren’t married when he was born.

But one thing is noticeably absent from the early comments at this site: none of them accuse Barack of having been born in Kenya. Not a single one. The first comment to make such an allegation came on June 9, the same day as Jim Geraghty’s post at NROnline.

The comments section also supports viewing Geraghty’s June 9 post as the tipping point of Birtherism. Velvethammer’s post attracted 21 posts during the three months between March 5 and June 8, with a third of those coming from the author himself. Then, suddenly, there were 19 comments on June 10 ALONE. By the end of June 12 there were another 36 comments. And whereas only a single blog had linked back to the post in the ten weeks after it was made, June 10 saw seven trackbacks in a single day.

Still, if there was any talk at all about Obama’s birth or eligibility or his birth certificate that had mustered any attention prior to June 2008, there’s one place it would be absolutely guaranteed to appear: Jerome Corsi’s “The Obama Nation.”

“The Obama Nation,” published in mid-2008, is practically a reference book for anti-Obama rumors, smears and accusations. Corsi spends two pages ruminating on which part of Jakarta young Obama might have grown up in, under the premise that it would say something negative about his step-father’s financial status. A whole chapter is devoted to wild speculation about Obama’s ties to Kenyan politicians, which is full of enough half-truths and unsupported allegations that it sets the high-water mark of wrong for the entire book. And the entire middle third of the book is about the misdeeds and misbehavior of people Obama knew in Chicago. It would seem reasonable to assume, then, that if questions about Obama’s birth and his Constitutional eligibility had been circulating before and during the primaries, they would be front and center in “The Obama Nation.” Corsi claims in the Preface that he “finalized the decision to write this book in March 2008,” and the book mentions dozens of specific events that took place up through May 2008, so a controversy raging since the year before shouldn’t have escaped his not-so-discriminating eye.

And in fact, Corsi does talk about Obama’s birth. On page 17, he writes:

“Obama Junior was born on August 4, 1961.”

But that’s pretty much it. Every time Corsi references Obama's birth in "The Obama Nation," he treats it as straight, uncontroverted fact. In over 300 pages, Corsi never questions when, where, or to whom Barack Hussein Obama II was born. He never so much as hints at a dispute over Obama’s eligibility or status as a natural-born citizen.** Corsi devoted an entire sub-chapter to accusing Obama of using movie quotes in his speeches, but Obama’s birth and citizenship was a complete non-issue even to him. That’s because he finished putting his book together at the very beginning of June 2008, missing the tipping of Birtherism by only a matter of days.

This universal non-interest in Obama’s birth prior to June 9 presents its own question: how did a completely unfounded rumor make its way from a random comment on FreeRepublic to a blog post at the National Review? If Jim Geraghty wasn’t introduced to rumors about Obama’s Kenyan birth through a noteworthy rumormonger or rampant demands for a birth certificate, where did he hear it, and how did it appear worth refuting? Thankfully, he provided a source for the rumor in his June 9 post.

That source was a thread on the message boards of Snopes.com. As web-savvy readers know, Snopes is one of the internet’s premier resources on urban legends and internet myths. Popular rumors are verified or debunked in full articles with details and citations to sources; less serious submissions that don’t merit a full debunking often receive just a reposting of the submission onto the Snopes message board, for reader amusement. One such rumor posted on April 21, 2008 read as follows:

Today, we have a new matter before us. There is an article out today on the internet that says that Barack Obama's mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy.

She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so she Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth.

Obama is not eligible to be the President of the United States of America. This may not be proven in the next few days, but I am sure it will be proven before the General Election.

The DNC and the elite of the Democratic party should respect Hillary and not force her off the ballot. If they do, we may not even have a viable candidate.

I'm sure all this can be proven, by hospital documents and witnesses. It will take time, but Obama is not a legitimate U. S. citizen. He has citizenship established in Kenya, where he is recorded as Arab-African.

Most of the early conspiracy allegations are present in this post. Obama’s mother was specifically in Kenya late in her pregnancy. Her flight home was prohibited. She gave birth in Kenya, but then took her son home to Hawaii and registered his birth there. And it specifically asserts that he is not eligible to be President.

Curiously, the comment appears to have been written from a Democrat’s perspective, expressing concern over the viability of the likely Democratic Presidential candidate, and advocating for Hillary’s candidacy. So it was likely not a right-winger who forwarded this rumor to Snopes, but a proto-PUMA.

So what was this “article out today on the internet” that the reader saw and believed? There was no news article that presented this allegation, nor did any high-profile blog or website report it. In April 2008, speculation that Obama was born anywhere but Hawaii was still spectacularly rare, so a likely candidate readily presents itself.

The article itself was most probably a piece entitled “Obama Laundry List of Lies.” Originating at the blog "The Audacity of Hypocrisy", the list was an assemblage of poorly-sourced “lies” that Mr. Obama had allegedly made during the campaign. Audacity of Hypocrisy regularly updated its list with new items, and these different lists circulated the web, eventually attracting the interest of Snopes.

One variation of the Laundry List that was reposted around the internet was notably different than the others. This variation of the list proper ended with #68, and then continued with a seemingly unrelated two-item list:

“Obama claims special birth”

Much more so than we might believe.

1. Reports emanating from Africa allege his mother was in Kenya with his ARAB Kenyan (NOT Black Kenyan) father - this is clearly shown in Kenyan Govt. Registry documents which list the father as an Arab Kenyan - at a very late term of her pregnancy and was not allowed on a flight to return to HAWAII.

She gave birth to him in Kenya, immediately got on a plane and then registered him as being born in Hawaii.

2. He is NOT an African American at all but an Arab American and cannot claim African minority status, which by US Federal regulations require a person to have 1/8 (one eighth) of the minority blood (12%).

From his mother he has 50% white blood, from his father he has 43.25% Arab BLOOD and from his MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER he manages to hold onto 6.75% African or Black heritage blood.

He has had to duck and weave all his life and use whatever lies he could use to even “pass for Black” and the benefits that this minority status provided. So even this, while understandable - IS A documented LIE.

Here we see all of the elements present in the rumor as presented on the Snopes message board on April 21. Obama’s mother in Kenya with his father. Her pregnancy preventing her from flying. A Kenyan birth, followed by a prompt trip back to Hawaii to register the birth. The Snopes account also provides no new notable details that the Laundry List lacks; even something as basic as Ann Dunham’s name is missing from both accounts.

If there can be any doubt that this is the article the Snopes submitter saw, that is settled by the “Laundry List”s claim that Obama and his father are both “Arab,” rather than black. This singularly unusual claim is reflected in the Snopes post, where both Obama and his father are described as being “Arab-African.” Both even make reference to supposed Kenyan government records regarding this ethnic classification. This is the same rumor Alan Peters referenced in his March 5, 2008 "Ruthless Roundup" post that helped kick off the 'Born in Kenya' rumor.

Given this close symmetry of information, the Snopes submitter was almost certainly referring to a posting of this version of the “Obama Laundry List of Lies.” And indeed, the Laundry List was responsible for the biggest spread of the Kenyan Birth rumor prior to its appearance at National Review Online.

The author of this formulation of the Laundry List, with its appended birthplace and genealogical rumors, was none other than Alan Peters. He posted it on his blog “News Views” on April 3, 2008, and the same day linked to the article from another of his blogs, Anti-Mullah.

Peters obviously cribbed the core of the Laundry List from “The Audacity of Hypocrisy,” but starting with “Obama claims special birth,” everything that followed, including the Kenyan birth rumor, is Peters’ addition. So was it original to Peters, or did he cut and paste it as well?

As the seemingly irrelevant comment “Obama claims special birth” might suggest, it was in fact a cut-and-paste job. Peters copied it directly from an April 4, 2008 post by FARS at the conservative forum FreeRepublic, where it was posted in a thread that began with the 68-item version of Audacity of Hypocrisy’s Laundry List. The non-sequitur introductory comment is a remnant of the post that FARS was responding to, a satirical anecdote about Obama’s father being shot at in the Honolulu airport.

Aside from a couple of short comments, Peters’ list attracted no recorded attention at first. Then, a little over a week after it was posted online, it started to spread.

“No2liberals,” a regular poster at the site NukeGingrich.com, is an Alan Peters commenter and fan. On April 11, 2008, No2liberals posted a link to Peters’ Laundry List post in the comments section of a NukeGingrich post. Included alongside it was a link to someone claiming that Obama was “only 1/16 black.” He would link to it again the next day in a comments thread at the blog "A Future In Freedom", and a third time in a comment left at the blog "Gates of Vienna" on April 16.

Another commenter in the Gates of Vienna thread was VinceP1974, a then 33-year-old Chicagoan who maintains a website entitled the “Islamo-American War Site.”*** The Laundry List must have appealed to Vince, because he promptly turned around and posted it in the comments of other blogs in the wee hours of April 17, including “neo-neocon” and “The Strata-Sphere.” But not before he left some charming comments like “B Hussein Obama is not black. He's Arab and white.”

Meanwhile, Peters’ work had taken other routes of republication. It was posted to the Facebook group “Stop Barack Obama (One Million Strong & Growing)” on the evening of April 16. Then on April 17, Peters’ piece appeared simultaneously on the blogs “Not Under the Bus” and “Just a Typical White Person”, which shared a common author.

On April 20, 2008, Alan Peters’ “Obama Laundry List of Lies” was republished at “Miss Beth’s Victory Dance” and “Wake Up America”, as well as several other blogs maintained by “Miss Beth,” a/k/a Kateri Jordan of Tucson, Arizona. In all, Jordan posted the Laundry List to at least a half dozen websites, as well as posting it at Digg. The posts began by stating “This came to me in my email and I was given permission to post and spread this anywhere and everywhere I can.” This is followed with an enjoinder to “Read, memorize, swipe and publish!”

Two particular details set these versions of the List apart from earlier versions. One is the addition of a wholly unrelated item at the bottom of the List, entitled “BREAKING NEWS - ISLAMIC SUPPORT FOR Obama HUSSEIN COMING INTO THE OPEN IN CA,” and spotlighting a photograph of a Muslim woman holding a pro-Obama sign outside an Anaheim mosque. The source of this non-sequitur item? Alan Peters. From a April 2, 2008 post that Peters made to his blog “Anti-Mullah.” The other added detail was an acknowledgment, specifically crediting Alan Peters as the author of the piece.

Most of these posts were met with little response. None drew particular attention to the rumor that he was born in Kenya. But one, at the blog “Wake Up America”, received several dozen comments, including substantial discussion of the alleged Kenyan birth and the consequential eligibility matters. Most of this discussion was between Jordan and Katie Norcross of Palatine, Illinois.

Norcross quickly became perhaps the first proactive Birther, fiercely stressing Obama’s ineligibility, claiming that she had already “searched birth records and no hospital or county office has any records” (how she was doing this in Illinois is unclear ), announcing that she was starting to check Kenyan records (again, how she was doing this in Illinois is unclear), and declaring that she was running a Freedom of Information Act search for a State Department birth certificate from Kenya, all within a day or so of first hearing the rumor. She exhibits not only the Birther tendency to immediately accept a rumor as fact, but also the pseudo-intellectual bombast that allowed her to reach seemingly impossible conclusions without any cognitive dissonance. When
she stated that she had searched Hawaiian hospital records and come up empty, was she simply lying, or did she honestly believe she could peruse 1960s-era Hawaiian hospital records from her
home computer?

Given Norcross’s enthusiastic conspiracism, the active comment thread, the April 20th posting date, and the fact that a handful of other websites linked back to the “Wake Up America” post, it seems probable that the “article out today on the internet” referenced in the April 21 Snopes message board post was the April 20 post Kateri Jordan made to “Wake Up America.” Although the same rumor was repeated on other sites, including other ones that Jordan posted it to, it was just item #69 in a list; what sets the post at “Wake Up America” apart is the spotlighting and discussion of the ‘Born in Kenya’ rumor in the comments. I have been unable to locate any other sites that featured such extensive discussion or debate about that singular rumor.

Regardless of the specific URL that the Snopes emailer had visited and which inspired his query, the probability is still overwhelming that the submitter was referencing someone’s republication of Alan Peters’ Laundry List post. Thus not only can it be established that Alan Peters and FARS were responsible for creating the original Kenyan birth rumor, but Peters was also responsible for spreading it across the web, where it eventually caught the attention of Jim Geraghty. And as noted previously, Peters was also responsible for first telling the lie that Obama's half-siblings had vouched for a Kenyan birth.

This was just the starting point for Birtherism, however. Other rumors developed to validate this initial rumor, or to flesh it out with additional details. Efforts were made to cast doubt on accepted facts. Opportunists hitched their wagons to the rumors, and the misinformation continued to spread.

- Copyright Loren Collins
June 23, 2011
_______________________________

* Interestingly one person posting alongside these early birth certificate demands is “DrRJP,” who later adopted the pseudonym “Dr. Ron Polarik.”

** Corsi specifically notes on p. 103 that Obama was born to an American mother and that "his father, who was born in Kenya and was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born." Corsi makes no insinuations whatsoever that this genealogical fact disqualifies Obama from the Presidency. Three years later, however, Corsi has now written a book which claims that this exact same fact disqualifies Obama from the Presidency.

*** Vince also appeared in the comments of Kenneth Lamb’s February blog post debuting the 'Obama is an Arab' lie, where Vince immediately accepted that Obama is Arab and blamed the media for the cover-up.

The Secret Origin of the Birthers

2011-06-22T11:17:00.005-04:00

Cross-posted at Birth of a Notion

Birthers like to claim that the public was questioning Obama's birth and eligibility long before such claims ever actually arose. By backdating their theories to 2007 or 2004 or even earlier, they mentally lend their beliefs greater credibility. Even some skeptics have proposed that proto-Birther rumors began prior to the 2008 primaries. A 2007 posting at Yahoo Answers asked “If Obama bin HUSSEIN al Barack was born in Kenya, how can he run for president in the US?” In a July 2009 editorial, the National Review said that the allegations of a Kenyan birth for Obama began with a commenter at a Democratic blog, The Blue State, who wrote on July 23, 2007, “Obama isn't technically a northerner either since he was born in Kenya... I like a more international view of the world so I like the fact he was born somewhere else.” There was even a Kenyan newspaper from 2004 that casually referenced “Kenyan-born Obama.”*

I believe that it is a mistake to peg comments like these as starting rumors about Obama’s birth. Apart from the lack of any evidence that others repeated their errors, they all are lacking essential elements of the popularized rumor: the acknowledgment that Obama’s public biography places his birth in Hawaii, and the allegation of a cover-up to hide his true birth in Kenya. The earlier comments don’t allege that the Hawaiian birth story is false; rather, they seem blissfully ignorant of Obama’s biography, and appear honestly mistaken in their assumptions. They give no indication that they’re questioning or disputing the official story, and their casual statements that Obama was born in Kenya appear to be nothing more than simple mistakes of fact, like someone who erroneously believes that George W. Bush was born in Texas, or Sarah Palin in Alaska, or Al Gore in Tennessee. Would you have guessed that of the two 2004 Presidential candidates, former Texas Governor George W. Bush was born in east-coast Connecticut, while Massachusetts Senator John Kerry was born in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado?

Extensive searching for the first online appearance of challenges to Obama’s birthplace, or challenges to his Constitutional eligibility, or demands for his birth certificate turn up nothing prior to the start of the 2008 primary elections. Rather, all three made their initial appearances in March 2008, right around the time that Obama took a decisive lead in the delegate count for the Democratic nomination. Most websites that one would expect to be early adopters of Obama birth and eligibility rumors (e.g., conservative sites like FreeRepublic, conspiracy sites like Prison Planet, white supremacist sites like Stormfront) didn’t engage the rumor until June 2008.

Virtually all of Birtherism owes its existence to the rumor that Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, did not give birth to him in Hawaii. As the rumor goes, she instead had traveled to Kenya for unspecified reasons, and had given birth to her son there, before returning to Honolulu and falsely claiming that she gave birth in Hawaii. This is the rumor that eventually caused the Birther conspiracy theory to tip as an epidemic, that drove the resultant demands for the release of Obama’s birth certificate, that inspired the immediate skepticism of the birth certificate following its release, and ultimately led to the neverending supply of alternative legal theories as to why Obama ought to be deemed Constitutionally ineligible for the Presidency. Perhaps one or more of these events would have transpired anyway in the absence of the Kenyan birth rumor, but as it happened, the rumor was the root cause of them all.

And that rumor first appeared in the early hours of Saturday, March 1, 2008, on the conservative web forum, FreeRepublic.com. In a thread entitled “FR CONTEST: Pin the Middle Name on the Obama,” where posters were offering various 'funny' middle names for Barack Obama in lieu of “Hussein,” a poster named “FARS” posted this non-sequitur:

I was told today that Obama swore in on a Koran for his Senate seat. I do not believe he did. Can someone clarify this for me? I am under the impression only a Congressman has so far sworn in on a Koran.

Also that Obama’s mother gave birth to him overseas and then immediately flew into Hawaii and registered his birth as having taken place in Hawaii.

Again, any clarifications on this? Defintely disqualifies him for Prez. There must be some trace of an airticket. While small babies are not charged air fare they do have a ticket issued for them.

Long time ago but there may be some residual information somewhere. Good ammo (if available and true) BEST USED AFTER he becomes PREZ (if that occurs) and it’s too late for Dems - except accept the VP.

Most of the essential elements of the rumor are here, from the immediate flight to Hawaii for registration to the eligibility concerns. All that is lacking is a specific reference to Kenya, which we’ll see was remedied shortly thereafter. He acknowledges that Obama’s public biography states that he was born in Honolulu, and he alleges that the public biography is false. He actively endorses the idea of Obama’s family covering up a birth in Kenya, and as such, is proposing a conspiracy theory.

Importantly, despite being the first person, anywhere, to report this rumor, he cites no source for it. No news report, or broadcast program, or website. Only “I was told today.” The fact that it appears alongside the oft-repeated and equally oft-debunked false rumor that Obama took his oath of office on a Koran illustrates the level of FARS’ willingness to factcheck rumors before repeating them.

FARS’ rumor drew as much negative response as it did support; the very next poster wrote in reaction “Has the Conservative Philosophy and Message become so diluted and fuzzy that we must resort to trash like this[?]” No one appeared to pick up the rumor and spread it themselves. Rather, it took a blogger outside FreeRepublic to repeat it as a legitimate rumor.

Four days later, on March 4, 2008, FARS’ rumor was cited by pseudonymous blogger “Alan Peters” on his blog “Ruthless Roundup.” The post began with a link to FreedomsEnemies.com**, and followed that link with this addendum:

Add to the family history shown in this article that Obama's mother was allegedly visiting Kenya with Obama's father in the final months of her pregnancy and was not allowed to board a flight in her late term to return home.She allegedly had Obama in Kenya and quickly boarded a flight to Hawaii. Airlines do not accept late term pregancies but do not refuse passage to a newborn, usually issuing a 10% or free fare ticket for the trip.Once in Hawaii, his mother registered him as being born in Hawaii.

Apart from his bloodline making him an Arab American NOT an African American, (his African blood only reaches less than 7% and insufficient to qualify for Federal standards of a minimum 12.5% as a given minority) he may not even be born in the USA, and unlike McCain without being on an American military base and with BOTH parents being Americans.

Like FARS, Peters provided no source for the rumor, choosing only to frame the rumor with “allegedly,” giving it marginally more credence than FARS’s “I was told today.” Also, just as FARS had paired the birth rumor with another popular false rumor about Obama, Peters does precisely the same, with the claim that Obama is “an Arab American NOT an African American”*** (a rumor that FARS had mentioned in subsequent posts in the ‘Middle Name’ thread). Peters also adds the remaining core elements of the rumor, pinpointing Kenya as the supposed location of birth, and offering rationales for why Ann Dunham would have been in Kenya and why she would not have returned to the U.S. prior to giving birth.

Peters does not cite FARS as his source for this rumor, but there can be little doubt as to that. FARS regularly posts links to Peters’ blogs on FreeRepublic, and Peters occasionally incorporates comments from FARS into his blog posts. FARS actually tends to talk more about Peters than himself, and in my communications with FARS, he responded for the both of them. At the very minimum they are long-time friends who are in regular communication; on the other hand, it is entirely possible that they are actually the same person, and “FARS” is just a secondary internet identity for Peters.

“Alan Peters” is itself a pseudonym, and the 70-year-old Santa Ana resident who uses it is a prolific anti-Muslim blogger who maintains several websites, most notably Anti-Mullah. He describes himself as having been “For many years involved with intelligence and security matters in Iran with significant access at top levels during the rule of the Shah, until early 1979. Currently an Iran SME (subject matter expert), analyst/commentator, and multi-linguist.” A writer in Forbes Magazine cited Iranian sources who said Peters has become “a sensationalist and even fantasist in his later years.”

That description is, if anything, an understatement. Peters’ disdain for the Muslim religion is exceeded only by his outright hatred of Barack Obama. During the two years since the Kenyan birth rumor debuted on Peters’ blog, he has been one of the most steadfast purveyors of anti-Obama rhetoric and Birther conspiracy theories, ably assisted by FARS’s posts at FreeRepublic. Peters is also personally responsible for starting one of the most widespread secondary rumors about the supposed Kenyan birth, the completely false claim that Obama's half-siblings had said he was born in Kenya. If Birtherism has a founding father, it is Alan Peters.

So how can it be certain that the Kenyan birth rumor began with FARS and Peters? FARS’s source could have been a liar or a practical joker or a nut. Perhaps it all started with a random e-mail, or perhaps there never was a source, and it was created out of whole cloth.

Amazingly, I found the answer on a website I had frequented for years. And it was not on an extremist or racist or conspiracist website, but rather on a highly respected law blog. On February 28, 2008, UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh posted to The Volokh Conspiracy a short item where he stated that he was certain that John McCain was a natural-born citizen. In the comments thread to this post, one commenter posited this legal scenario:

Let's change the hypothetical (just for grins and giggles).

Barack Obama's father was a citizen of Kenya. What would Senator Obama's citizenship status (and Presidential eligibility) be if:

1) He had been born in Kenya, but taken by his mother to the United States immediately after birth and then spent the rest of his life as he has subsequently lived it?

2) He was born in a third country, and like my first hypothetical, immediately taken to the United States? Does that change the analysis?

3) Would these results change if Senator Obama had been raised in a foreign country for any length of time before his mother returned with him to the United States?

That was posted at The Volokh Conspiracy at 2:02 a.m. on February 29, 2008. Just over 24 hours later, FARS was sharing at FreeRepublic what he had “been told today” about Obama having been born overseas, but taken by his mother to the United States immediately after birth. All the details subsequently expressed in the rumor are there, a rumor that shows no signs of having existed prior to February 29.

Thus, before it was a rumor that gave birth to a fringe movement and dozens of attempted lawsuits, Birtherism was borne out of nothing more than a legal hypothetical. No family confessions, no stories out of Africa, no investigative reporting. Just a mere thought exercise about citizenship law.

That is how Birtherism was conceived. After gestating for three months, during which time it elicited comment on perhaps a dozen or two websites in all, mostly just in passing, it was eventually born on June 9, 2008, when it finally ‘tipped’ into being a full-fledged conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory that even three years later continues to inspire lawsuits, books, and even White House press conferences.

- Copyright Loren Collins
June 22, 2011

Continue reading The Secret Origin of the Birthers, Part 2
______________________
*The Kenyan newspaper is easily one of the top 3 favorite pieces of Birther evidence. It is often presented as proof that Obama's 'secret' African birth is a widely-known and published fact in Kenya despite simultaneously being the subject of an elaborate fifty-year cover-up in the United States. Birthers see such wild internal inconsistency as the preferable interpretation to "The foreign newspaper made a mistake."

**FreedomsEnemies.com was operated by Parker "Beckwith" Shannon, and was originally dedicated to commentary on Muslims. Shannon later shifted his focus to Obama (whom he was calling "the Muslim stealth candidate" as early as 2006), and rebranded his site TheObamaFile.com, which continues to be the internet's one-stop-shop for smears and unverified rumors about Barack Obama.

***The false claim that Obama is Arab and not African-American was invented by blogger and radio host Kenneth Lamb in a February 14, 2008 post entitled "Is Obama Really African-American?" Lamb has since declined to produce any evidence whatsoever to support his claim.

The Provenance of the "Blaine" Birth Certificate

2011-04-30T23:09:00.002-04:00

With this week's release of the long-form, the time seems right to look back at one of the fake birth certificates that has floated around the web. Specifically, this one:

Commonly dubbed the "Blaine document," it appears that Orly was responsible for the spread of this starting on October 19, 2009, though she apparently received it from one "William Blaine". Subsequent e-mails from "Blaine" make him appear rather anti-Orly. (Link to Google cache of Orly blog post with emails.)

There are several telling signs of fakery in the document. To cite just one, typed text throughout the document does not maintain horizontal consistency. See Barack/II/Hussein/Obama and Honolulu/1. Text produced on a typewriter would typically not feature such drops, as the typewriter would move in a straight line across the document.

Now compare the above document with this blanked-out certificate:

This redacted image was online at least as early as July 2009, when it appeared in the Western Journalism Center's "Clearing the Smoke" "report." I don't know if it was created for that purpose, but it's definitely the underlying document used to make the "Blaine" certificate.

There are several telling indicators of this. For instance, the "Blaine" document is missing portions of lines around certain boxes, that sync with the lines erased by the redactions in the WJC image. There's the same distinguishing hash mark in Box 7g. And most of all, in Box 21 the words "Signature of Local Registrar," which were partially erased by the white redaction box in the WJC image, are not only identically cut off in the Blaine certificate, but if you look closely, you can see how the words are identically obscured by the top edge of the handwritten signature that has been removed.

And where, in turn, did the WJC image come from? From a blogger who, in June 2008, posted his own Hawaiian birth certificate online:

The distinguishing hash mark in Box 7g? It's there. And so is the overly large signature in Box 21. Additional marks in Boxes 2, 3, 11, 12a, and others further establish that this is the document whose information was redacted to create the WJC image.

So in case the obvious fakery of the Blaine document wasn't enough, now you can also see precisely what legitimate document it was forged from. Additionally, you can see why it's in low-res black-and-white, because recreating and faking the color crosshatch patterns would have been considerably more difficult.

So is the "Blaine document" the creation of an overzealous Birther, or a hoax a la the Bomford certificate?

The latter, as it turns out. I tracked down the individual behind it, the eponymous Mr. "Blaine," who informed me that the document was thrown together one evening to punk Birthers. And although it never gained the widespread attention of the Bomford or Lucas Smith certificates, and although many Birthers dismissed it as fake from the start, it still continues to display occasional signs of life around the web. As we've seen with so many other rumors, it's hard for any bit of wrong information to ever truly die and disappear for good.

One More WND Quote

2011-04-23T16:06:00.000-04:00

Joseph Farah, April 23, 2011

"WND never reported that Obama had spent $2 million hiding his birth certificate."

Joseph Farah, December 9, 2010

"Obama has spent at least $2 million fighting efforts to release his birth certificate."

Has WND reported that Obama spent millions to hide his birth certificate?

2011-04-23T16:02:00.000-04:00

"WND never reported that Obama had spent $2 million hiding his birth certificate."
- Joseph Farah, April 23, 2011

Joseph Farah wrote the above in his column today at WorldNetDaily, as part of a follow-up rebuttal to a Salon article about Donald Trump repeating a Birther allegation.

Is Farah correct? Has WND only reported the amount that Obama paid his legal counsel, without suggesting that all of those funds were spent on eligibility issues? Has WND never reported that Obama spent millions to hide his birth certificate?

Consider the following 48 quotes from WND articles. This is not a comprehensive list; I simply gave up when I reached the four dozen mark. Also included for timeline purposes are the three Chelsea Schilling articles mentioned by Farah and Salon.

---

("Is Obama campaign cash quashing eligibility suits?" - Chelsea Schilling, April 22, 2009)

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Bob Unruh, May 9, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Bob Unruh, May 13, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Bob Unruh, May 16, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Jerome Corsi, July 12, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate and other documentation."
- Jerome Corsi, August 2, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Jerome Corsi, August 6, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Jerome Corsi, August 7, 2009

("Obama law tab up to $1.4 million" - Chelsea Schilling, August 10, 2009)

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend an estimated sum approaching $1.4 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- uncredited, August 13, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- Jerome Corsi, August 25, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- Drew Zahn, September 6, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated at more than $1 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest some questions."
- Bob Unruh, September 7, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated at more than $1 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- Chelsea Schilling, September 16, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated at more than $1 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- uncredited, September 17, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated at more than $1 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- uncredited, September 17, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated at more than $1 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- Bob Unruh, September 19, 2009

("Obama law tab up to $1.7 million" - Chelsea Schilling, October 27, 2009)

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- uncredited, October 27, 2009

"The ruling came this morning from Judge David Carter who as WND reported last night apparently recently hired a law clerk out of the law firm that has been paid nearly $1.7 million to defend Obama from eligibility challenges."
- Bob Unruh, October 29, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, October 29, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums exceeding $1.7 million to avoid releasing an original long-form state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- uncredited, November 12, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums exceeding $1.7 million to avoid releasing an original long-form state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- Bob Unruh, November 13, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, November 18, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, November 29, 2009

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in excess of $1.7 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Bob Unruh, December 2, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, December 8, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, December 22, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, December 28, 2009

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, January 8, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- uncredited, January 9, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Drew Zahn, January 12, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- uncredited, January 15, 2010

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in excess of $1.7 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Bob Unruh, January 18, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, January 20, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, February 3, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation, such as his original birth certificate."
- uncredited, February 4, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – and payments to one of his eligibility lawyers at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of numerous lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation. That's in addition to the work done by U.S. attorneys defending Obama's eligibility, as in this case."
- Chelsea Schilling, February 4, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, February 23, 2010

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in excess of $1.7 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Joe Kovacs, February 24, 2010

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in excess of $1.7 million to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- uncredited, February 24, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, March 8, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, March 17, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, March 25, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, March 25, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, April 8, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Chelsea Schilling, April 8, 2010

"Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation."
- Bob Unruh, June 29, 2010

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions."
- Bob Unruh, August 12, 2010

"If one court had guts enough to deal with this and allow discovery, Obama would be out of office," Berg told WND. "We would ask for a lift of Obama's ban on all of his documents. The last official report said Obama has spent $1.6 million in legal fees [keeping his papers secret], and the total is probably over $2 million now."
- Brian Fitzpatrick, November 23, 2010

"Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest the questions."
- Bob Unruh, March 31, 2011

An American Expat's Autobiographical Exaggerations

2011-04-16T15:27:00.001-04:00

Larry Martin is a Birther and blogger who lives in Malaysia, and does his blogging at An American Expat in Southeast Asia. Martin gained brief notoriety in mid-2008 when his blog was cited as a source in Jerome Corsi's The Obama Nation, and when he was subsequently profiled and interviewed by Time Magazine in an article entitled The Blogger Behind the Obama Hit Job.

The focus in both publications were several posts Martin made in January 2007 under the title "Tracking Down Obama in Indonesia." Most of these entries were explicitly identified as being foreign news articles that Martin had translated from Indonesian into English.

On January 24, 2007, Martin posted part 3 of that series, where he described information that appeared on school documents of Obama's from the Fransiskus Assisi school in Jakarta. He did not provide images of any documents, however. The Associated Press reported on the document and its contents at the same time.

At the time, Martin didn't frame his posts as being anything other than the fruit of online research. He wrote at FreeRepublic on January 17, 2007 that "contacts of mine informed me that there are some 'american' people in Indonesia looking for photos and other evidence." Not himself; just others. According to second-hand information.

A year and a half later, though, Martin's story had changed significantly. In June 2008, he said at FreeRepublic:

"Im been investigating this since 2006 at my own expense - I never questioned the school documents when I first saw them with my own eyes - even though he was listed as an Indonesian citizen - maybe I overlooked it - I asked for a certified copy and at the time was politely refused."

This new story of a personal journey to Jakarta was also relayed in the Time Magazine article two months later, in August 2008:

Martin says he got the information independently, having traveled to Obama's former school himself in January 2007 to view the documents. "They had it in a book and I just looked in a book," he says. "I just happened to say, 'Hey, I'm a blogger, can I see [the documents]?' and they said, 'Yeah no problem.' " Martin says the AP photo "vindicates" his research.

More recently, Martin has begun to embellish his story further at FreeRepublic:

What I can say now is that I have seen the BC with my own eyes and it does exist - however it was a BC for Barry Soetoro and not for Barack Obama - at the time I did not think to look at the copy or to write down what was on it - the concern was whether or not Obama was a Muslim - the school registration was all I saw that mentioned Islam and as such - it was reported by me on 24 Jan 2007.

and on his blog:

Barack Hussein Obama was known as Barry Soetoro when he was in Indonesia and was registered for school by Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo as first reported here on this blog on 24 January 2007. It would be August of 2008 before the Associated Press would release the photo of Barry Soetoro's school registration and as such vindicating what I originally wrote.

As part of my book research, I contacted Mr. Martin to inquire about this escalating account. How in January 2007 he'd focused only on translating online articles; how a year and a half later that changed to him claiming that he'd conducted a personal investigation to Jakarta and had seen the school document in person; and how after another two and a half years he suddenly claimed that he'd also seen a previously-unmentioned birth certificate during that trip.

In addition to this four-year-long evolving saga, Martin has also never produced any evidence of making this purported trip. Time Magazine apparently took his claim of an in-person visit to the school at face value; but all Martin has ever provided is his own incredibly-belated personal testimony.

Still, Martin has insinuated in the past that such a trip must have occurred because he posted about the registration form on January 24, 2007, and the Associated Press reported on it on January 25. (At other times, such as in the blog quote seen above, Martin has erroneously claimed that the AP didn't publish the information until August 2008.) If Martin didn't get the data from the AP, where could he have gotten it from?

That's easy. He got it from the same place he got all of the other information in the "Tracking Down Obama in Indonesia" series: from Indonesian-language news articles. Specifically in this case, a July 7, 2006 article from detikNews.

That detikNews article cited every single feature of the school registration form that Martin mentioned. Every date, description, name, and number. It did not include a photo, and so neither did Martin. And of course, it was published over six months before Martin's blog post.

Additionally, there's even good reason to believe that Martin read this very article. His first installment of "Tracking Down Obama in Indonesia", posted just four days before the one about the school form, was an English translation of a July 4, 2006 detikNews article.

This information was subsequently republished in Indonesian media. A December 7, 2006 Indonesian article on Obama casually tossed off several of the features of the document: the entry date, the classroom, and of course, the name 'Barry Soetoro' (which originated with the school document).

Martin wasn't even the first person to post online in English about the document. For instance, on January 22, a commenter at abcnews.com wrote "Indonesian journalist already investigated since July 2006 that Barack Obama, formerly known as Barry Soetoro, attended St Franciscus Assisi Elementary School...you should contact Detik’s editor at redaksi@staff.detik.com."

For some reason, however, Martin has decided during the past four years to escalate his story from 'I translated a six-month-old news story' to 'I traveled to Indonesia and saw school documents AND a secret birth certificate.'

To believe that he actually made such a trip in January 2007 is to believe that he failed to take a camera even though the document's existence was public knowledge (and thus obtaining first-hand proof would presumably be the goal of making such a trip in the first place), and to believe that when he copied down the information provided to him at the school, he only happened to copy down the exact same information that detikNews included in its story from six months earlier, and to believe that he failed to mention that it was an in-person investigation until 17 months later.

And finally, to believe that all of that is more plausible than accepting that he copied the information from a news site that he admits he reads, from an article just a couple of days removed from another Obama article he'd translated earlier that week.

So why make up a story about going to Jakarta in January 2007? And more importantly, why tell that lie to a national newsmagazine? I approached Mr. Martin for an explanation, but he declined to respond. Still, as we've seen time and again, Birthers are willing to go public with fictionalized first-person accounts. Ed Hale. Lucas Smith. Jim Bancroft. Tom Fife. Everyone who claims to have seen the non-existent Keyes/Obama Birther debate. Martin has ample company.

John Oliver on Nerdist, on Birthers

2011-03-17T16:51:00.000-04:00

"The Daily Show"'s John Oliver was this week's guest on the Nerdist podcast. In discussing the sorts of people the show profiles, and how they often have a different opinion as to their onscreen performance, Oliver had this to say:

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Did Brad O'Leary Commit Plagiarism in 'The Audacity of Deceit'?

2011-02-26T12:25:00.000-05:00

In the course of some unrelated research, I happened to notice that a portion of Chapter 12 of Brad O'Leary's 2008 book, "The Audacity of Deceit," bore a striking resemblance to an April 3, 2008 WorldNetDaily article written by Aaron Klein, entitled "Obama was 'quite religious in Islam'."

Several of Klein's articles are cited as sources by O'Leary throughout the book, and Klein is among a handful of people O'Leary thanks in the early part of his book. But there is no reference to Klein's April 3, 2008 article, either by title or web address, in either Chapter 12 or in the footnotes.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the similar text from Klein's article and O'Leary's book. Matching text has been colored red. Not included are two embedded links in Klein's article which appear as footnotes in O'Leary's book. Additionally, one can see a distinctive misspelling of "Laotze" as "Loatze" that appeared in Klein's article is reproduced identically in The Audacity of Deceit.

Aaron Klein vs. 'The Audacity of Deceit'

Birther Mythbusting: Maya Soetoro's Hawaiian COLB

2010-11-18T22:54:00.003-05:00

Many Birther rumors are the product of creative misinterpretation. A Birther sees a false statement in an article that also includes quotes from Obama's sister, and so the Birther concludes that Obama's sister must have been the source of the author's erroneous statement.

But some rumors are just cut from whole cloth, and have absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever. They are nothing more than the fantastical creations of one person's imagination, but the Birther, always gullible for anything that supports his worldview, will blindly accept it as fact without making even a cursory effort to investigate the claim being made. Then they turn around and repeat it as fact for other gullible eyes and ears to absorb.

Take, for instance, this Birther claim:

"Obama's sister Maya was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, but Anna Dunham registered her as "born in Honolulu" shortly after her birth. Maya has a State of Hawaii Certification of Live Birth, just like Obama"

This is false. Not 'misinterpretation of a real fact' false, but 'complete and utter fiction' false. 'Hitler Diaries' false. 'The planes that flew into the WTC were holograms' false.

One reason we know this is because no one has ever actually produced a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth for Maya. A second reason we know this is because there has never been even a single instance of anyone who claims to have seen a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth for Maya. A third reason is that there has never been even a single credible instance of anyone who claims thatt a Hawaii Certification of Live Birth for Maya exists.* A fourth reason is that the Hawaii Department of Health has confirmed that they have no index data whatsoever for a birth of Maya Soetoro.**

So where, then, did this claim come from? Not from a credible source, but rather from one of Birtherdom's most infamously non-credible sources: TechDude.

TechDude first appeared in the comments section of Pam Geller's 'Atlas Shrugs' blog on July 4, 2008. His last appearance, before disappearing forever, was a month later, at the start of August. TechDude's sudden disappearance was concurrent with the revelation that all of his claimed personal details, including his entire expert resume, were stolen from a Missouri forensic analyst. TexasDarlin conceded that she had been fooled and she pulled down all of TechDude's submissions to her site, and even Israel Insider, which had repeatedly plugged TechDude over the past month, retracted their support of him and his work. Just five weeks after he showed up out of nowhere, TechDude was again gone.

But he left behind one rumor that refuses to die. Just days before he vanished, on August 4, 2008, TechDude posted some leading comments at TexasDarlin's website:

One more real fast comment before I get back to some other things here at the lab. The reason I am giving the guilty parties a few days is to see 1) if they even know their COLB was used 2) if they do know their COLB was used they can come clean and 3) to give others a chance to find the names on the COLB and post them before I do.

A 3rd party finding the same information - particularly one who does not know me from Adam (teehee) - would be the final nail in the COLB’s coffin. I am not some sort of genius and there are many others who can do a much better job at this analysis but every time I try and let others step in they just sit on the sidelines and pick their noses.

So here is a challenge to those who want the name out there ASAP. To the first person to accurately reconstruct the names and text on the COLB and also include screen shots and a description on how they did it so that others can follow (before I post my results anyplace) I will send them to Vegas for the weekend and pay for the trip myself. (why you ask?….simply put I think we need to get other’s involved and an incentive never seemed to hurt in the past – and who does not love Vegas?.)

But they better hurry since I will be posting the full info (screen shots, methods, etc) very soon. Now is the time for all good geeks to come to the aid of their country and also win a trip to Vegas.

...which was soon followed by a second TechDude comment:

"For a quick preview – the original COLB used to create the KOS COLB image belongs to a female and does not belong to Obama. Another follow up report will reveal exactly who the original underlying COLB did belong to. Trust me when I tell you it is going to be one hell of a major twist that no one would have seen coming."

A fellow commenter, "KG," responded as follows:

KG // August 4, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Holy crap. I’ve just duplicated the effort. It’s Maya’s - Maya Kassandra Soetoro. Her name fits perfectly in the artifacts.

And then, a few hours later:

techdude // August 5, 2008 at 12:06 am
Congrats KG (I really wanted to play online all night but I am exhausted and will reply more in the AM)

Later that August 5, TexasDarlin devoted an entire post to TechDude's claim that Maya's name was hidden on Obama's birth certificate. It stated that TechDude planned to release a full report detailing this discovery, but that report never materialized, because TechDude disappeared less than a week later.

Birthers took this unevidenced 'discovery' of Maya's name on Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate to mean that Maya had a Hawaiian birth certificate. How else could her name appear? Obama certainly wouldn't have forged a birth certificate from another forged birth certificate. So, by Birther logic, Maya had a COLB. And since Maya was actually born in Indonesia, her possession of a COLB was evidence that Hawaii gave out COLBs to people born outside Hawaii. It's a very circular, self-serving logic which, conveniently, relies on absolutely no actual facts whatsoever.

And so, despite the lack of any supporting evidence, the Birther lie that Maya Soetoro has a Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth was created, and its zombie-like corpse continues to haunt the internet, refusing to die. It shuffles on thanks to the stubborn fact-blindness of gullible fools like the one quoted above, who just prefer repeating rumor to taking a moment to ask themselves "Is this outrageous fact I'm repeating actually true?"

-----

* Credibility is important. Anyone can just say it exists. I can say I have an original Monet hanging on my wall. I asked the Birther who made the original claim above what his source was for the claim that Maya has a COLB. He cited an online post by some random Birther in Florida, who in turn cited no source at all.

** I link here to two different sites, one pro-Birther and one anti-Birther, because the page they both quote at Leo Donofrio's blog was deleted by Leo.

Fact

2010-10-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."

- Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes (1983)

Birther Mythbusting: Leiutenant Quarles Harris Jr. & Passport Crimes

2010-09-26T09:58:00.006-04:00

When Birthers attempt to change the subject during a debate they're losing, they usually resort to utilizing one of a number of standard Birther talking points. One such talking point, which has the added charm of being its own mini-conspiracy theory that attempts to implicate Obama in nothing less than premeditated murder, is the name-dropping of "Lt. Quarles Harris."

For instance, in a FreeRepublic thread about Ann Dunham's passport application, "conservativegramma" responds to an on-topic post by starting with this non-sequitur:

Have you not heard of Obama’s passport files break-in back in 2008? Then later a man who supposedly knew about this event or had information preparing to testify was found shot to death in his car??? Lt. Quarles I believe his name was.

First of all, as anyone who's made even the most cursory attempt to check their facts knows, the individual in question was not "Lt." He was not an officer at all, military or police. This error was first made by the Washington Times (thus illustrating how attentively the Times checks its facts), and has been regularly repeated since then, including in two WorldNetDaily articles.

No, his name was "Leiutenant Quarles Harris Jr." He's listed, with that nontraditional spelling of his first name, in the Social Security Death Index, where it also gives his birthdate in 1983 and his date of death, which was April 18, 2008.

Harris was shot and killed that day in Washington D.C. From WJLA, Channel 7:

Officers responding to a report of gunfire in the 2800 block of 12th Street, NE, found the body of 24-year-old Leiutenant Quarles Harris, Jr in a vehicle. Police say he had been shot several times.

And from a WJLA follow-up report:

Police stopped [Harris] and found 20 credit cards and eight completed passport applications. According to court documents, Leiutenant Harris told police he and someone inside the State Department were taking information off passport applications, which they used to get fraudulent credit cards. Another conspirator, inside the Postal Service, intercepted the cards before they could get to the actual people.

Leiutenant Harris was in court for that case three days before his murder. "He felt like he was going to do jail time. He was willing to do jail time."...

Police are investigating the murder, while State Department Diplomatic Security, Secret Service and the Postal Inspector are all investigating the fraud case. The only comment from law enforcement was that it's an ongoing investigation.

Leiutant Harris' murder comes after a spat of violence in the fifth ward. There were five homicides in a four day period.

You can read the actual criminal complaint filed against Harris here, wherein he was charged with credit card fraud.

You may notice something absent from both these articles and the complaint: any mention of the passport breach of the records of Clinton, McCain and Obama that broke in March 2008. It's absent for the simple reason that it's not related. At all.

In the case of the candidates' passport breach, three contract employees for the State Department improperly looked at the passport files of Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama. Two employees worked for Stanley Inc., and the third worked for Analysis Corp.*

In the case of Mr. Harris, he was charged with a credit card fraud scheme that he said involved a State Department employee who fed him passport information that Harris used to apply for credit cards, and a Postal Service employee who intercepted the cards before they were delivered. As I noted above, when he was arrested, Harris was found with 19 different credit cards (plus two duplicates) and 8 passport applications, none of which were in his name. None of the documents were said to be in the names of any Presidential candidates (who would be rather poorly chosen marks in an identity theft scheme).

Were the two cases related? No. There are no common facts or players between them. The Washington Times reported in November 2008 on precisely this question:

Mr. Harris was fatally shot in Northeast Washington in April. Police at the time said they had no information linking his shooting to his involvement in the passport case.

The breach came to light in March around the same time The Times first reported that three State Department contract employees were being investigated for improperly accessing the passport data of presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama, John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[State Department spokesman Sean] McCormack said the cases are not related.

Harris had indeed provided help to federal investigators, but it was with regard to his crimes, not the breach of the candidates' passport files. As noted in his criminal complaint, right after his arrest, at the police station, Harris was questioned by agents of the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Postal Service.** As best I can tell, the only assistance provided to federal investigators by Harris was through this post-arrest interrogation.

Where, then, did the notion that the two cases were related originate? It was probably inevitable that conspiracy theorists would try to connect the two, but they were dealt an assist by the Washington Times article about Harris' death. In that article, the Times mentioned the paper's previous coverage of the Presidential passport breach, but drew no direct connection between the two. Readers, however, appear to have interpreted the mention of the passport breach as evidence of a connection between the two cases.

Conspiracists have been further emboldened by even more inaccurate reporting on the subject, such as that by Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily. Unruh simply out-and-out falsely reports that Harris was a "key witness" in the breach investigation, based on Unruh's own misreading of the Washington Times article, which he cites as his only source for the connection.

So there you have it. Leiutenant Quarles Harris Jr. was a credit card fraudster and an identity thief, but he had no connections whatsoever with the breaching of the Presidential candidates' passport files, and the only assistance he provided to federal investigators was on his criminal case, not the breach-related misconduct.

-----

* Analysis Corp.'s President and CEO is John O. Brennan, an advisor to Obama during his campaign and administration. Birthers have yet another conspiracy theory about his supposed involvement in the passport breach, but that it wholly unrelated to Mr. Harris, and thus irrelevant to this post.

** To preempt the obvious and inevitable conspiracist response, among the roles of the U.S. Secret Service is to investigate credit card fraud.

Keeping the White House White

2010-07-28T00:06:00.000-04:00

FreeRepublic poster El Gato writes:

We're not talking about citizen at birth, but rather Natural Born Citizen, which remains what it was in the late 1780s when the Constitution was written and ratified. No meer [sic] law, which is what the US code is, can modify the meaning of a Constitution term.

Another relevant quote from El Gato is "Congress has no other power to confer citizenship, except via naturalization."

As one might expect, Gato is a Birther who subscribes to the standard Birther belief that natural-born citizenship requires birth to two citizen parents. (I disagree with this belief, but all that matters in this post is that El Gato holds this opinion, whether or not it's based in fact.)

These two beliefs taken together, however, create a rather unfortunate, and perhaps telling, consequence.

The Constitution did not establish any rules or guidelines regarding naturalization, instead stating in Article I, Section 8 that Congress shall have the power "To establish a uniform rule of naturalization." Pursuant to this authority, the United States' first law governing the granting of U.S. citizenship was the Naturalization Act of 1790. For the first time, the United States provided a means for persons other than those born on U.S. soil to become U.S. citizens. To quote from the Naturalization Act of 1790:

An Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term for two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof...

This same language, "any alien, being a free white person," was repeated and reiterated in the Naturalization Act of 1795.

Thus, during the decade following the passage of the Constitution, the time specified by "El Gato" as strictly defining the meaning of "natural born citizen," only immigrants with white skin could become naturalized U.S. citizens. Asian immigrants could not be naturalized citizens. African immigrants could not be naturalized citizens. Arab immigrants could not be naturalized citizens. Naturalization was an institution strictly limited to whites, and only whites.

It follows then that if non-white immigrants could not become naturalized citizens, then their native born children could never be born to two citizen parents. Such would be a legal impossibility. Thus, according to "El Gato," if "Natural Born Citizen...remains what it was in the late 1780s when the Constitution was written and ratified," and if he believes that the Founders intended natural-born citizenship to require two citizen parents, then he is categorically proposing that no child of a non-white immigrant is eligible to be President.

Children of white immigrants? Sure. That's fine. But children of non-white immigrants need not apply. According to El Gato, that is.

Polarik's Newest Conspiracy Theory

2010-07-24T10:04:00.000-04:00

So Polarik gave an unduly long "interview" to the Birther press the other day. And in addition to referring to yours truly as "the most clueless, irresponsible, deceitful, egotistical, and flat-out fraudulent person in the history of the Internet," Ron also introduced a brand-new conspiracy theory of his to a wider audience.

Specifically, towards the interview's end, this wild claim is advanced:

First of all, one of my two biggest discoveries that I made in the two years that I have been researching this birth certificate controversy has nothing to do with the birth certificate. It was discovering that Politifact had started the false rumor that Obama's middle name is Muhammed, and used it to endlessly "debunk" it in conjuction with facts about Obama.

This is a rather specific allegation, and since it's called a "discovery," that implies there's some kind of evidence to support it. (As opposed to it being just random speculation.) But no supporting evidence is identified; just the conclusion.

In fact, and contrary to the claim as made, the "Obama's middle name is Muhammed' rumor did not originate with Politifact. As far as I can tell, it started with this e-mail forward in December 2007. It started hitting a lot of websites in early January 2008 (for instance, it was posted at FreeRepublic on January 4), and got relatively major exposure via Bill Cunningham on January 6.

Politifact did indeed move to debunk the rumor quickly, but their article about it came on January 11, 2008, five days after Cunningham's usage on the radio, and nearly three weeks after the e-mail forward that was submitted to About.com.

So unless the allegation is that Politifact created the email forward in mid-December 2007, filling it with talk about Trinity Church, and using it to introduce a fake rumor that it would then shoot down a month later, this conspiracy theory simply has no legs to stand on.

And if the allegation IS that Politifact secretly created an email rumor about a Presidential candidate just to debunk it a month later, well, it's hard to imagine what secret evidence could have possibly been "discovered" to validate such a hypothesis.

Fake Certificates, Fake Court Cases, and Fake News

2010-06-23T16:09:00.000-04:00

Lucas Smith is, among other things, a novelist. Supposedly. On his YouTube profile, Smith says he "Penned my first book in the year 2002 and went on to publish it the year 2005. Murder By Tejuana & Treachery By Bush And The Supreme Court: A document in the form of a novel, Volume 1 of 4."

A couple of years ago, he created a Wikipedia page about this book. It was eventually deleted, but Deletionpedia saved it.

Various details are included about the plot and whatnot, but the most interesting section is "Litigation concerning this book." There, he writes:

The manuscript of this book was originally banned from publication by a US District Court whose ruling was affirmed by a US Circuit Court of Appeals. Due to a US Supreme Court ruling, this book was allowed to be published provided it would be "...published as a work of fiction..."

There is no Supreme Court case with that quote. I checked. The Supreme Court and Court of Appeals cases he mentions here simply don't exist. Given that he provides no citations or details as to any of these three cases, there's no reason to believe that any of them ever actually existed.

Similarly, in August 2007, Smith added citations to two supposed Australian newspaper articles about his book. As far as I can tell, neither of those articles are real either.

So to anyone inclined to believe that Smith really possesses secret evidence that supports his claims, remember that he's manufactured and promoted other fake stories in the recent past.

McRae/Shuhubia Affidavit Comparison

2010-06-22T12:57:00.001-04:00

You may recall that in Berg v. Obama, two affidavits were filed relating to the infamous telephone conversation with Sarah Obama. One affidavit was from Ron McRae, and the other was from the pseudonymous "Kweli Shuhubia".

It should be noted upfront that there are several glaring deficiencies in the latter affidavit. First, "Kweli Shuhubia" is a pseudonym, and not a real name. Second, nowhere in the affidavit does it mention that the name is fake. Third, the document is not notarized. Fourth, the document is not actually signed at all; the 'signature' is actually just a jpeg of an unintelligible signature cut-and-pasted onto the document. Fifth, unlike McRae's affidavit, Shuhubia's is not hand-dated; the alleged date of signature is pre-printed on the form.

But there is another facet of the Shuhubia document that I believe has long been overlooked: most of it is copied, wholesale, from McRae's affidavit. Shuhubia's description of the conversation is almost word-for-word identical to McRae's, with only occasional minor changes and the necessary shifts between first and third person.

To illustrate their similarity, I have produced this handy comparison sheet:

McRae-Shuhubia Affidavit Comparison

Thus, it's abundantly clear that one affidavit was drafted from the other. And given that McRae's is dated October 27 whereas Shuhubia's is dated October 30, and that Shuhubia's is hardly signed at all, I believe one could draw a reasonable conclusion as to which was the original, and which was the second draft.

Nancy Pelosi: Natural Born Citizen?

2010-06-14T12:11:00.000-04:00

When Birthers fantasize about what would happen if Obama were removed from office, they tend to ultimately put Senator Robert Byrd in the Oval Office. Joe Biden is deemed ineligible because he was elected as Obama's running-mate, and Nancy Pelosi is deemed ineligible due to some pseudo-legalistic arguments surrounding her signature on Obama's qualification form.

Curiously, in the seventeen months since Obama took office, I've never yet seen a Birther ask or answer what I should think would be a top priority for them: is Nancy Pelosi a "natural born citizen"?

After all, Birthers can talk a blue streak about why Obama's dual citizenship at birth or his father's citizenship makes him Constitutionally ineligible under their fabricated definitional scheme, but no one ever applies that to Speaker Pelosi.

The reason that is so curious is because, like Obama, Nancy Pelosi is the daughter of an immigrant. Her mother, Annunciata M. Lombardi, was born in Italy in 1909, and immigrated to the United States as a child.

Pelosi's paternal grandfather was also an Italian immigrant, and thus like Tom Tancredo, Pelosi may possess Italian citizenship.

Now I've checked, and in the 1930 census, Pelosi's mother is listed as a naturalized citizen. But I had to research that myself; Pelosi's mother's origins are publicly known, but no Birther has ever expended any effort to learn when or whether Annunciata naturalized. Birthers did not subject Pelosi to their "natural born citizen" standard and, after historical research, find her satisfactory; no, instead they've never bothered to check at all.

And thus, Birthers accidentally betray the truth. The reason they have never checked the citizenship of Nancy Pelosi's parents is because the citizenship of Nancy Pelosi's parents doesn't matter. Not Constitutionally, at least. And neither does the citizenship of Barack Obama's parents, or of any President's parents for the past two centuries. That's why prior to 2008, even the Birthers themselves never concerned themselves with the citizenship of the parents of Presidential candidates. Birthers have created an imaginary definition that they say disqualifies Obama, but they can't manage to employ it consistently even now.

Happy Birther-Versary!

2010-06-10T09:44:00.003-04:00

We all missed the occasion, but yesterday was the two-year anniversary of the ostensible birth of Birtherism. Although the 'born in Kenya' rumor had found its way onto a scant handful of websites during the prior three months, it didn't garner any attention or following until after Obama clinched the party nomination, when Jim Geraghty wrote this post on June 9, 2008.

Some people still claim that questions were being raised earlier in the campaign, back into 2007 or earlier. Simply put: they're wrong. Their memories deceive them. The story of Ann Dunham traveling to Kenya and secreting a baby back wasn't even created until after Super Tuesday 2008, and only the fringiest of bloggers paid it any heed until June.

This Saturday, June 12, is also the two-year anniversary of the publication of the Certification of Live Birth. Only three days after the issue broke. A very prompt response, and yet the nonsense lives on.

Andy Martin is not a Natural Born Citizen!?

2010-05-26T18:32:00.001-04:00

"Internet Powerhouse" Andy Martin put out a press release today with the following claim:

Obama is a U. S. Citizen and became one at birth. He is not and could not become an NBC...

Obama is ineligible by his own admission. He claims his father was Barack Hussein Obama BHO from Kenya. Ironically, Obama’s case illustrates exactly what the founders were trying to prevent: a drive-by president.

This convenient definition reiterates a position that Martin took in an interview last month:

Martin also said President Obama violates the constitutional requirement the President be a natural born citizen, because his father was a Kenyan national, so both his parents were not U.S. citizens.

KITV4 asked him if the child of an immigrant should not be the president of United States. "If his parents didn't meet the natural-born test when he was born, personally, I would enforce the constitution, yes,” he said.

Martin, it seems, has firmly staked his ground with those who allege that to be a "natural born citizen," and to thus be eligible to be the President of the United States, one must be born to two U.S. citizen parents.

As seen here, Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, a/k/a Andy Martin, was born in 1945 to Ralph Martin-Trigona (1913-1994) and Helen Vasilou.

Ralph Martin-Trigona, Andy's father, was not born in the United States. And according to U.S. immigration records, Ralph naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1950:

Thus, Andy Martin's himself was not born to two U.S. citizens, as his father did not naturalize until Andy was 5. And yet, this did not stop Martin from running for President in 1988 as a Democrat. Nor did it stop him from running for President in 2000 as a Republican.

Did the definition of "natural born citizen" change since 2000? Is Andy Martin attempting to hold Obama to a different definitional standard than himself?

Or was Andy Martin, the son of a foreign citizen, attempting his own usurpation of the American government?

The answer is, of course, that Andy Martin is indeed a natural born citizen, because his parents' citizenship is irrelevant. And just as his father's citizenship in 1945 has no bearing on Martin's eligibility, so too does Barack Obama Sr's citizenship have no bearing on President Obama's eligibility. Mr. Martin is free to run for President, but it is hypocritical to apply a different legal standard to Obama than he applies to himself.

John Charles Frémont and Natural Born Citizenship

2010-05-19T13:00:00.000-04:00

John Charles Frémont was the Republican Party's very first nominee for President of the United States, in 1856. Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1813, he was the son of Charles Fremon and Anne Beverley Whiting.

The traditional narrative holds that Frémont's father, Charles Fremon, was a French immigrant who had fought in the French Revolution. However, according to Andrew F. Rolle, author of John Charles Frémont: Character As Destiny, Frémont's father was actually born Louis-René Frémont in Quebec, Canada. Either way, Rolle reports that after some years of imprisonment overseas, the elder Frémont arrived in Virginia around 1810, and after arriving in Richmond, he began a relationship with Anne Whiting.

John Charles Frémont was born to these two on January 21, 1813. Rolle refers to Charles Fremon as Anne's "foreign lover," and gives no indication whatsoever that he ever naturalized as a U.S. citizen at any time prior to his death in 1818. Moreover, the scandalous origins of Frémont's father were hardly hidden from the public.

Thus, John Charles Frémont, the first Republican Presidential candidate in U.S. history and a man born a scant 26 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, was himself the son of a non-U.S. citizen father. Just like Barack Obama. And just as the citizenship of Frémont's father was no Constitutional impediment to his eligibility, neither is Obama Senior's an obstacle to his son's.

The question then is: will the 'Birthers' accept this as evidence that their favored definition of "natural born citizen" is wrong, or will they attempt to retroactively declare America's first Republican Presidential candidate to be an attempted foreign usurper?

Obama Smoking Photo a Fake

2010-05-14T17:30:00.011-04:00

I'm going to take a break from Birtherism to address a widely-circulated photo of Obama smoking. Normally I don't deal with random Obama rumors, but considering that I believed this one for over a year myself, I feel it's worth sharing with others.

Chances are, if you're reading this blog, you've seen this image of President Obama at some point in the past couple of years:

I never scrutinized the photo, and given that Obama is known to smoke, I didn't give much thought to its authenticity. But as it turns out, it is just a Photoshopped fake.

Unlike Polarik and his ilk, I'm not going to establish this forgery though extensive amateur-hour pseudo-document analysis. I'm just going to show you this:

That's an original image from the Illinois News Bureau on August 5, 2004. With a little cropping, flipping, and pasting, the fake image was created. Notice that in the smoking photo, the button on Obama's shirt collar is on the wrong side. And now the Photoshopped image is plastered all over the web, with almost no one acknowledging that it's a total fake.

The Museum of Hoaxes also addressed this photo some time back. And the image above is from AngryWhiteboy.com, where it was posted in February 2007, the earliest usage I've found.

Barackryphal in the AJC

2010-04-30T08:30:00.000-04:00

A guest editorial I wrote about Birtherism and Georgia politicians is in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

‘Birther’ claptrap deserves our reproach

Birther Debating: The Motion Picture

2010-04-28T19:42:00.004-04:00

Someone adapted the Birther platonic dialogue I wrote last January into a short little animated video.

As it happens, I've drafted an updated version of the dialogue, but this was a nice surprise.

Birther Mythbusting: UPI and Queens Hospital

2010-04-20T12:24:00.007-04:00

Of all the newspaper articles with mistakes that Birthers love to cite, among the most popular is a November 4, 2008 UPI article that originally said "Obama described his birth at Queen's Memorial Hospital in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961..."

Although the article does not state that Obama identified Queen's by name in his speech, and although the article is somewhat ambiguous as to what speech it may even be referring to, and although there is no other news story claiming that Obama referenced Queen's, and although there is no video or audio of any speech wherein Obama referenced Queen's, Birthers have taken this article as gospel proof that Obama personally named Queen's Memorial Hospital as his place of birth in a speech.

Naturally, when this error was brought to UPI's attention, they corrected it and added an editorial note stating that the reference to Queen's was a mistake made by the writer. This did not dissuade the Birthers, as any correction of a mistake is viewed as "scrubbing" (whereas the failure to correct a mistake is viewed as continued endorsement of its accuracy).

In any case, exactly how reliable was UPI's reporting in this particular article? Did they write an article that was perfect on all factual details except for the name of the hospital?

No. Not by a long shot.

On a freezing day in February 2007, the first-term U.S. senator announced his candidacy for president outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., saying he could not wait until politics "boil the hope out of him."

The phrase "boil the hope out of him" was not used in Obama's February 10, 2007 speech announcing his candidacy. The only similar usage I've located is when Obama said "They say Obama has not been in Washington long enough. He needs to be seasoned and stewed to boil all that hope out of him," nearly a year later in January 2008.

His best-selling third book was called "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream."

"The Audacity of Hope" was Obama's second book, not his third. Obama has not written a third book.

He said his late mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who died of cancer at 53,

Stanley Ann Dunham died at age 52, not 53.

and his grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, 86,

Although UPI identifies Obama's mother as "late," it fails to do so with his grandmother, who was also deceased at the time of this article.

taught him how to dream and value hard work, and were the guiding forces of his life.

I can't find anything resembling such statements in his February 10, 2007 speech. If UPI is referring to another speech during the two-year campaign, it offers no hints as to when or where.

Obama described his birth at Queen's Medical Center

Obama was born at Kapi'olani Medical Center, not Queen's.

in Hawaii Aug. 4, 1961, to a young white woman from Kansas and a father of Luo ethnicity from Nyanza province in Kenya,

Again, there does not appear to be any talk of Obama's birth in his February 10, 2007 speech.

as an "all-America" story transcending orthodox racial stereotypes and experience.

The quoted phrase "all-America" definitely does not appear in the February 10, 2007 speech. If it appears in another speech, I cannot determine where.

That fall he won his Senate seat with more than 70 percent of the vote.

Obama won slightly less than 70 percent of the vote, not more. 69.97%, to be precise.

(Edit: A commenter below pointed out that one reference in the article, involving merely the use of punctuation, might have been an understandable mistake. Since this is by far the most minor of the items in this list, I elected to remove it.)

They married in 1992 and have two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 7.

At the time this article was published, Malia was 10, not 9.

That's a total of 4 outright errors about Obama's personal life, 2 technical errors, 1 inconsistency in tense, 2 quotes of unidentified origin, and at least 2 topics that are said to have been discussed in a speech but were not. So why is UPI's reporting in this article assumed by Birthers to be impeccable?

Tom Tancredo: Foreign Citizen? Attempted Usurper?

2010-04-17T14:12:00.000-04:00

Tom Tancredo, former Congressman from Colorado, was among the Republicans vying for the party's 2008 Presidential nomination. Tancredo made a name for himself on the issue of immigration, not only calling for strong measures to halt illegal immigration, but also proposing such measures as a three-year moratorium on legal immigration and the complete elimination of H-1B visas for temporary workers. In February 2010, Tancredo shared the stage at the National Tea Party Convention with Sarah Palin and Birther advocate Joseph Farah.

Farah, as it happens, also endorsed Tancredo during the 2008 campaign. Such an endorsement would rather suggest that Tancredo's eligibility was not in question.

But under the Birther standard of Presidential eligibility, that is far from certain. Tancredo's website states that he was born in Denver, Colorado, but there is no publicly-available evidence supporting this. No birth certificate, no newspaper announcements, nothing. What was the name of the hospital Tom Tancredo was born in? What was the name of the doctor who delivered him? We don't know. And yet, this lack of information did not stand in the way of Tancredo garnering the endorsement of the man who demands this same information from Obama.

Moreover, Tancredo's website states that he is the "grandson of Italian immigrants." Whereas Barack Obama has American ancestors dating back to the eighteenth century, Tom Tancredo is only two generations (at most) removed from Europe. Indeed, his grandparents' nationality is reflected in Tancredo's genealogy, as provided by William Reitweisner. But even Reitweisner doesn't identify a birthplace for Tom's father, Gerald Tancredo. And despite a birthdate in 1911, there is no "Gerald Tancredo" in the 1920 or 1930 Censuses. In other words: we have no evidence that Gerald Tancredo was born in the United States, or that he was a U.S. citizen when Tom was born in 1945.

Still, that remains speculative. Perhaps Tom could prove he was born in Denver, satisfying that prong of Birtherism. Perhaps he could prove that his father was a U.S. citizen, satisfying that prong. But there is one prog of Birtherism that he very likely does not satisfy.

Tom's paternal grandfather was an Italian native and citizen. As was, one should imagine, his paternal great-grandfather. Under Italian citizenship law, that makes Tom Tancredo a citizen of Italy. And if persons entitled to dual citizenships are excluded from the Presidency, as many Birthers insist, then Tom Tancredo was running for an office he was Constitutionally ineligible for.

Of course, no one ever questioned Tancredo's eligibility, or inquired into his parents' citizenship, or investigated the nuances of Italian citizenship law as it pertained to his father and grandfather. Indeed, he was personally endorsed by no less than Birtherism's greatest spokesman. Perhaps if Tancredo runs again in 2012, we'll see how consistent the Birthers are.

Top Five Birther Debate Tactics

2010-04-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

As an aid to my fellow Americans who might find themselves confronted with a Birther and his arguments, I thought to prepare a top ten list of rhetorical devices that Birthers tend to use when confronted with counter-arguments and evidence that contradicts their existing beliefs. Learning to recognize these methods and logical fallacies is the first step in promoting useful dialogue and avoiding unnecessary conflict. And as might be appropriate for April Fools Day, it should serve as a handy list of the most common ways that Birthers try to fool others everyday.

However, as I attempted to assemble a list, I was amused to find that I could not think of ten different Birther devices. Rather, the typical Birther responses to critical analysis of their position can be broken down into as few as five categories.

Note, this is a breakdown of Birther responses to questions or criticism, not initial Birther arguments. Those can be summed up largely as Argument from Ignorance (something is true because we don't know it isn't true) and Misrepresenting Evidence (take your pick). These items below are the ways that Birthers respond to challenges to their statements, positions, or worldview.

5. Ad Hominem Attacks

Here, the Birther responds to substantive criticism not by defending his position, but by levying a personal attack upon the questioner, or upon a third party (such as Obama, or FactCheck, or a judge). The subject itself is evaded entirely, and the Birther substitutes an on-topic response with mocking of the questioner, smearing of a third party, or making negative insinuations about whoever might disagree with them.

EXAMPLE: Marvin stated that "the Senate held hearings regarding McCain’s natural born citizenship." I responded to Marvin showing that no such hearings ever took place, and that the only testimony was a single question during a Judiciary Committee briefing. Marvin's entire response was "Your hatred of those questioning your pres_ _ent is coloring your mind. Maybe the kneepads are too tight?" As you see, rather than defend his previous statement, Marvin completely ignored my factual evidence and chose to redirect the subject of the conversation to be about me, making accusations about my emotional state, my mental acuity, and my partisan stance.

4. Special Pleading / Conspiracy Pleading

Special pleading is a logical fallacy where one deflects criticism by concocting an external rationale as to why the usual rules of evidence should not apply to the argument they're making. With Birthers, this most often takes the form of suggesting or implying the existence of a covert conspiracy that has interfered with the available evidence. When confronted with evidence that contradicts Birther beliefs, the Birther alleges that the conspiracy created that evidence to fool the public. When confronted with the lack of evidence supporting Birther beliefs, the Birther alleges that the conspiracy has destroyed or hidden all the secret evidence that would support his beliefs.

EXAMPLE: Birth announcements of Obama's birth were found in two Hawaii newspapers. Solid evidence, no? But Ron responded to this evidence by proposing an elaborate scheme whereby the library's microfiche was altered or forged. The end result is that the birth announcements are discounted because Ron thinks the conspirators created them.

3. Moving the Goalposts

Sometimes new evidence presents itself that meets a Birther's previously-stated evidentiary demand. When confronted with this new evidence, such as newspaper birth announcements or official health official statements, the Birther response is to claim that that new evidence, despite being what they had previously demanded, is now insufficient to satisfy them. So it's no longer enough that the Director of the Hawaii Department of Health issued a statement, they want the Hawaiian Governor to issue a statement too. This turns any attempt to satisfy the Birther's curiosity into a neverending marathon, as the Birther's standard of proof continues to grow higher and higher.

EXAMPLE: "Steven" complained that when Obama took the Oath of Office a second time, the "redo was held a few days later, no witness, no media, behind closed doors." I pointed out that not only was this incorrect in several respects, but CBS Radio released an audio recording of the second oath. "Steven" responded not by conceding his mistake, but only by demanding video footage in addition to the available audio and photographic record.

2. Shifting the Burden / Refusing to Prove Factual Claims

Given the frequency with which Birthers fall back on unsourced claims, a ready response is often to simply ask the Birther to produce a source for his factual claim. On the occasions that the Birther is willing to actually stay on topic (as opposed to the responses exemplified by Tactics 1, 4, or 5), the most common reaction is to refuse to provide any evidence for the factual claim they just made, and to instead tell the skeptic to go look for it himself. This not only allows the Birther to create work for the skeptic but not himself, but it also allows the Birther to claim that any failure to find evidence supporting his factual assertion is the fault of the skeptic questioning the alleged fact, rather than the fault of the Birther who made the questionable assertion.

EXAMPLE: Leonard wrote of Obama that there are "a few witnesses claiming he was born in Kenya." I asked him who. He cited a supposed encounter between Jerome Corsi and a Kenyan health official. Having never heard of such an encounter, I asked Leonard where Corsi reported this event. Leonard's response was "Do your own searches." He never produced any evidence to support his initial claim of witnesses or his specific claim of a Corsi conversation. Instead, he acted like it was my job to find evidence of his claims.

1. Non-Sequiturs / Changing the Subject

My personal favorite of all Birther debating tactics, because they utilize it so incredibly often. If a Birther finds himself pinned down on a position or statement that he simply cannot defend, he will frequently avoid conceding by attempting to shift the topic of discussion to another Birther topic. And often, it will be a topic that is less factually-specific and more speculative or interpretative, and thus less susceptible to absolute proof of falsehood.

Point out that there never was a Pakistani travel ban, and the Birther starts talking about adoption. Illustrate that it was TechDude who made up the claim about Maya's COLB, and suddenly the Birther wants to talk about Vattel. By shifting the focus onto an unrelated issue, the Birther attempts to take the attention off the demonstratably false factual situation, hoping that the new issue will be a distraction.

EXAMPLE: Steve was confronted with the allegation that he is not the credentialed expert that he has posed as and as other Birthers have treated him. Does Steve have forensic experience or not? Steve could have answered the question, or at least address it, but he didn't. Instead, he penned a lengthy response where he completely ignored the questions about his document experience, and opts to talk about about everything from Perkins Coie to citizen grand juries to criminal conspiracies to Obama's poll numbers to Bill Richardson quotes to the issue of legal standing. Having been caught in a statement he cannnot defend, Steve started throwing out multiple other topics in the hopes of diverting attention away from his original, unsupportable position.

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So if you find yourself tangling with a Birther, and you get one of the above responses, consider replying with a simple number citation and a link to this post. Whatever you do, don't allow yourself to get distracted by tricks like these.

Fair warning, though: don't be surprised if failing to fall for tricks #1-4 results in #5 being levied at you soon thereafter.

Paul Broun is Still a Birther

2010-03-10T13:38:00.004-05:00

My buddy Jason Pye conducted an interview of Rep. Paul Broun last night. Addressed briefly, starting around the seventeen minute mark, were Broun's recent comments regarding President Obama's citizenship:

DOMINICK: You think he’s an American citizen and a Christian?
BROUN: I’m not gonna get involved in that.
DOMINICK: You can’t say that he’s an American citizen?
BROUN: Well —
DOMINICK: You can’t say the president’s an American citizen?
BROUN: I don’t know.

Jason provided Broun with a chance to clear the air on this, asking him straightforwardly, "Do you believe the President's citizenship is in question?" Broun's response to that yes/no question was an unfocused three-minute-long ramble that discussed everything from health care to Argentina. Broun claimed that he is not questioning Obama's citizenship ("because I've not gotten engaged in all that"), but wraps up by saying:

"That's what I said when I was asked: I don't know, nobody knows for sure, we've not seen any documentation one way or the other."

Like Nathan Deal, Broun has resorted to weasel code. "We've not seen any documentation?" Horse-apples.

We've seen his birth certificate. We've seen his newspaper birth announcements. We've seen the director of Hawaii's vital records department formally declare that he was born in Hawaii.

Thus, Broun's claim that "we've not seen any documentation" can mean only one of two things. One possibility is that he is ignorant of all of this evidence. I find this doubtful, considering that in the same interview, Broun acknowledges his familiarity with the questions that others have been asking. In any case, he's only promoting an image of ignorance if he's claiming to be unaware of the birth certificate that has been available online for almost two years.

The other possibility is that Broun is aware of the existence of this evidence, but for some reason, does not consider it to be decisive "one way or the other." Is Broun expressing doubt as to the authenticity or reliability of the available evidence? Does he subscribe to the conspiracist view that Obama's family and/or the state of Hawaii have been engaged in a conspiracy to cover up a non-Hawaiian birth? Is he suggesting that the evidence should be doubted in the face of baseless online rumor? What does Broun mean by this obvious falsehood?

Birther Mythbusting: Barack Obama was not born "White"

2010-03-07T15:16:00.004-05:00

Conspiracism does not hold up consistency as a virtue. Every Birther is very familiar with the infamous Nordyke twins' birth certificates, issued in 1961 for girls born at Kapiolani Hospital within hours of Obama himself.

Birthers are also quite fond of arguing that Obama's hospital birth certificate might identify the newborn Obama's race as "white." To wit, "I read that Obama will not release his birth certificate. Have heard rumors it's because he is listed as white."

This is a patently foolish theory for at least two reasons. First, we've seen baby photos of Barack Obama, and it's hard to imagine anyone in 1961 looking at such a baby and declaring him "white."

Second, just look at the Nordyke certificate itself:

There are only two boxes for "Race" on the entire certificate, both of which I've marked above. One for the father's race, the other is for the mother's race. Both of these categories are repeated on the COLB. There is no box for the race of the newborn child.

Again, let me repeat that: a 1961 long-form Hawaiian birth certificate does not have any box for "Race of Child." Obama's long-form birth certificate does not say he was born "white" because it CAN'T say his race. There's no spot for it. It's a simple and outright impossibility. Simply looking at the Nordyke certificate should instantly tell you that the theory has no factual grounds to even start building on. You might as well speculate that his birth certificate claims that he was born "Communist" or "Handsome."

This should hardly be a surprise either, since modern American birth certificates almost never have a box for the race of the newborn. That's a judgment call that hospital staff have no business making.

So why does this canard continue to be repeated, seven months after the Nordyke certificates should have put this to rest forever? Because Birthers don't pay attention to evidence, and don't allow contrary evidence to affect their postitions.

Fighting the Urge

2010-02-17T20:42:00.000-05:00

- xkcd

Birther Mythbusting: Maya Soetoro and The Rainbow Edition Newsletter

2010-02-06T18:33:00.014-05:00

Patrick McKinnion has been doing a good series on Birther Mythbusting, and there's one myth that's irritated me enough that I want to take it down. I speak of the fabled Maya Soetoro interview in the Rainbow Edition. I'll let Jerome Corsi summarize it briefly for me:

"In a November 2004 interview with the Rainbow Newsletter, Maya told reporters her half-brother Sen. Barack Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961, at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu."

This myth originated, as with so many of Birtherism's core beliefs, with Phil Berg. In his Response to Defendants' Motion to Dismiss in September 2008, Berg wrote:

Furthermore, the Rainbow Edition News Letter, November 2004 Edition, published by the Education Laboratory School, attached as EXHIBIT “1”, did a several page article of an interview with Obama and his half-sister, Maya. The Rainbow Edition News Letter reports Obama was born August 4, 1961 at Queens Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Note that Berg does not explicitly state that Maya was quoted as saying Queens, though he would appear to want the reader to draw that conclusion. Also, Berg erroneously claims that the article included an interview with Obama, and to be nitpicky, even the most generous definition of "several" does not encompass the actual two-page length of the article.

Berg, however, does get right what Corsi and many others have subsequently gotten wrong: the Rainbow Edition Newsletter is nothing more than a high school newspaper. The article in question was written not by a reporter, and not by a colleague of Maya Soetoro, but by a high school junior.

Additionally, what is immediately obvious upon actually viewing the article is that the "Queens Medical Center" reference is not a quote from Maya at all. It's simply referenced in the introductory paragraph. In fact, it's such a mundane fact that it's hard to imagine even an amateur journalist wasting time asking for it during an interview. Still, the fact that the reference is not credited to Maya, and the fact that the article is full of mundane facts that it would be foolhardy to attribute to Maya, this has not stopped some Birthers, like BP2 (or as I'll call him, Beeps), from insisting that the source must have been Maya Soetoro.

Sadly for Beeps and others, the source was not Maya, but rather Wikipedia. The Rainbow Edition author actually cribbed a considerable portion of his article straight from Wikipedia, as I'll now illustrate:

From the Rainbow Edition:

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 at the Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama lived here with his parents Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham until they divorced when he was two. Obama moved back to Hawaii when he was ten and lived with his grandmother Madelyn Dunham and half-sister of our very own, Maya Soetoro.

From Wikipedia:

Barack Obama was born at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents were economist Barack Obama, Sr., of Kenya and S. Ann Dunham,...When Obama was two years old, the couple divorced...When Obama was ten, he returned to Hawaii under the care of his grandmother Madelyn Dunham.

In addition to the textual similarity, notice what's missing from the Rainbow Edition account above. It describes when Obama "moved back to Hawaii," but gives no prior indication that he'd ever left. That's because the Rainbow Edition omitted the Wikipedia information (between the ellipses above) about his childhood move to Jakarta.

Further down the article, from the Rainbow Edition:

His Republican opponent, Jack Ryan was forced to dropout of the race after Republican leaders questioned his integrity.

Mike Ditka, former NFL Coach, was going to be the new Republican candidate but he decided not to join because of family and business reasons. Alan Keyes, from Maryland, was nominated by Illinois Republican Chairwoman, Judy Baar Topinka. It looked like Obama was guaranteed a win because of his growing popularity around the state of Chicago. In the end, Obama won almost seventy percent of the vote.

From Wikipedia:

...leading Republican leaders to question Ryan's integrity. Ryan was forced to leave the race...

Former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka had considered running as a Republican to replace Ryan, but opted not to because of family and business considerations. On August 3, Illinois Republican Chairwoman Judy Baar Topinka announced two possible replacements: Alan Keyes and former presidential advisor Andrea Barthwell. After much deliberation, Keyes, at the time living in Maryland, was nominated...Obama received nearly 70% of the popular vote.

Again, from the Rainbow Edition:

Obama first became involved with politics when he was voted onto the Illinois State Senate in 1996. During his time, he helped to provide the poor with benefits andpassed bills for increased funding for AIDS programs. In 2000, he ran in the Democratic primary for Illiois’ 1st Congressinoal district but he lost to the incumbent Repersentative Bobby Rush.

From Wikipedia:

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate...during his tenure in the legislature, he helped to author a state earned income tax credit providing benefits to the poor...he successfully passed bills to increase funding for AIDS prevention and care programs. In 2000, he ran in the Democratic primary for Illinois' 1st Congressional district against incumbent Representative Bobby Rush, but was badly defeated.

Finally, from the Rainbow Edition:

This past year, he became the third African-American to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. After winning his race, Obama became only the fifth African-American Senator in our nation’s history. Right now, Obama is also a law professor at the University of Chicago.

The reference to his professorship is an odd non-sequitur to close out this unrelated paragraph. But, from Wikipedia:

A University of Chicago law professor, Obama in November, 2004, won an open seat in the U.S. Senate against Republican candidate Alan Keyes, becoming the only serving black U.S. senator in 2004 and just the fifth in the country's history...Obama was chosen to deliver a keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, and became the third African American to do so.

Berg and Beeps have argued that the high school student also interviewed Obama himself, and "Queen's" came from him. But in addition to the above, there is no evidence in the article that Obama was interviewed at all. One of the two Obama quotes included in the Rainbow Edition ("The irony is that my decision to work in politics...") is taken straight from the Wikipedia page. The only other Obama quote came from this January 2004 video interview. In our discussion some months back, Beeps initially argued that the high school kid must have personally interviewed Obama to obtain this quote, and then when I confronted him with this video transcript, he resorted to allegations of historical revisionism, and then abruptly changed the subject. Typical Birther behavior, in other words.

Beeps also argued that "They properly checked the spelling, grammar, punctuation, style – ONLY to get that birth place wrong." Which is, again, grossly inaccurate. There are, in fact, multiple spelling, grammatical, punctuation, and style errors throughout the Rainbow Edition article. In the category of spelling errors alone, the author wrote "Illiois," "Congressinoal," "Repersentative," "whoe," "chilhood," "competetive" and "accoplishments."

And who, you may ask, was Wikipedia's ultimate source for "Queen's Medical Center," since no source citation was given in the Wiki entry? It was simply a Hawaiian college kid who liked editing Wikipedia, and took a guess as to which hospital Obama was born in. He explained his reasoning to me, saying it "was based on presumption without original source. Conjecture based on Queen's being the largest hospital in Hawaii, near the University of Hawaii at Manoa where the Obamas went to school, presumed that they were still in school and probably lived near campus. Queen's is in a central location and a place of power, a block away from the Hawaii State Capitol, Iolani Palace and the governor's residence at Washington Place. As it turns out, the Obamas lived in an apartment just across the street from the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children, a location even closer to the university campus." And he concluded, "Put in simple terms: I was the source and the source was wrong."

So there you have it. Maya Soetoro never told the Rainbow Edition or any other publication that her brother was born at Queen's Medical Center.

Thank You, Nathan Deal

2010-01-28T22:14:00.001-05:00

Let me be the first to thank Rep. Nathan Deal for bringing an issue of vital importance to the attention of Georgia voters.

During an online chat in November, Rep. Deal wrote “I am joining several of my colleagues in the House in writing a letter to the President asking that he release a copy of his birth certificate.”

The other week Deal’s office confirmed that this letter was sent, though it bore only Deal’s signature. Thus far Deal has declined to release the letter or discuss its contents, but I still choose to believe that the letter exists, despite not having seen it for myself.

Of course, Deal’s concerns about the President are nonsense. President Obama’s birth is already more well-documented than any U.S. President in history; the public has his certification of birth in Hawaii, confirmation of that birth by Hawaiian vital records officials, and birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers. More Americans could probably name the hospital that birthed the current President than could name the state that gave us the last one (Connecticut).

But Nathan Deal nonetheless exposes another politician whose eligibility is hardly as settled as President Obama’s. And that person is Nathan Deal.

Deal is currently running for Georgia Governor. Per the Georgia Constitution, the Governor must have been a U.S. citizen for at least 15 years.

I have never seen any proof that Nathan Deal is a U.S. citizen. Unlike President Obama, he has never released any records of his birth. The documentation that is publicly available leaves many things to be desired. Extensive online research turns up only an alleged birthdate and birthplace of Millen, Georgia. Who were his parents? What was the hospital? Who was the delivering doctor? These are questions that need answers.

You see, there are unsourced internet rumors that Nathan Deal was not born in Georgia at all. That instead, his mother gave birth to him while his parents were in Canada, dodging the WWII draft. They then returned to Georgia and registered his birth here. Moreover, there is further rumor that Nathan is actually the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I’m not saying these rumors are true, but when can we expect Deal to produce the documents that would put them to rest? What is he hiding?

And unfortunately, a birth certificate alone cannot settle this matter, even after it’s been forensically examined. Deal has been a U.S. Congressman since 1993, and was previously a Georgia State Senator beginning in 1981. Both offices have citizenship requirements, yet in his nearly three decades in elected office, Nathan Deal has never publicly produced a shred of evidence to support his presumed U.S. birth and citizenship. Three decades of evasion. Even his Congressional website says nothing about his birth, opting instead for the conveniently ambiguous statement that he “was raised in Sandersville, Georgia.” His gubernatorial campaign website avoids the subject of his youth entirely.

And are you aware his first name is not actually “Nathan”? It’s John. John Nathan Deal. Did he ever legally change his name? Could his surname still be Rosenberg? We simply don’t know.

All of this means that Georgians deserve firm proof of Deal’s eligibility for the office he now seeks. He should produce witnesses to his birth, and evidence of his parentage. He should release his records from law school, college, high school, and kindergarten. Plus his parents’ marriage license, military records, Bar records, and baptism records.

Before he objects, these rumors merely mirror those that Deal’s fellow eligibility skeptics, his fellow ‘Birthers,’ have levied against Obama as grounds for their skepticism, and records that they have demanded the President produce. So if Deal empathizes with their conspiracist campaign, surely he cannot consider it unreasonable to be held to a similar standard. And I, for one, eagerly await him to live up to it.

Nathan Deal: Birther for Governor

2010-01-21T15:20:00.003-05:00

Jason Pye provides a thorough look at the birther-related comments that were made at and by Nathan Deal at Tuesday's gubernatorial debate.

My thoughts on Deal's actual comments?

None of them get asked the questions that I get asked by constituents, "tell me what the status of the president's birth certificate is."

You're a U.S. Congressman. I'm sure you get asked a lot of stupid things. Everything from people who claim that Bush coordinated 9/11 to people who believe Obama is a reptilian.

So do you take all ridiculous constituent questions seriously, or just some of them?

I have simply asked the president, "tell me where I can refer these constituent inquiries to, to a source that you think is credible so that we can answer their questions."

You may not be familiar with it, Rep. Deal, but there's this wonderful modern invention called "The Internet." You refer them to his website. Or to FactCheck. Or to PolitiFact.

I think that is a reasonable proposition and certainly something that I think the president should respond to.

He did respond to it. Nineteen months ago.

Although at this point, he has not.

And when, Rep. Deal, do you plan on responding to rumors that your parents were actually Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? I think that's something that you should respond to, but at this point, you have not.

The Tribe/Olson Memo on Natural Born Citizenship

2010-01-19T23:00:00.002-05:00

In early 2008, the John McCain campaign commissioned a report by Laurence Tribe and Theodore Olson on the subject of the Constitution's definition of "natural born citizen," and specifically how it applied to John McCain.

Laurence Tribe is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, and is considered one of the foremost scholars on constitutional law in the country. Theodore Olson served as Assistant Attorney General during the Reagan Administration, and was Solicitor General under George W. Bush. Both men have argued before the Supreme Court multiple times, and they were founding members of, respectively, the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society. Simply put, these two men are among the most accomplished and respected legal minds in the U.S. Additionally, Tribe is politically liberal whereas Olson is politically conservative.

On March 19, 2008, the two men issued their report. The portion most relevant to the Birthers' claims has been excerpted previously:

"The Constitution does not define the meaning of “natural born Citizen.” The U.S. Supreme Court gives meaning to terms that are not expressly defined in the Constitution by looking to the context in which those terms are used; to statutes enacted by the First Congress...and to the common law at the time of the Founding.... These sources all confirm that the phrase “natural born” includes both birth abroad to parents who were citizens, and birth within a nation’s territory and allegiance....

"If the Panama Canal Zone was sovereign U.S. territory at the time of Senator McCain’s birth, then that fact alone would make him a “natural born” citizen under the well-established principle that “natural born” citizenship includes birth within the territory and allegiance of the United States...Premising “natural born” citizenship on the character of the territory in which one is born is rooted in the common-law understanding that persons born within the British kingdom and under loyalty to the British Crown–including most of the Framers themselves, who were born in the American colonies–were deemed natural born subjects."

Given the stature of Messrs Tribe and Olson, this should, by any measure, be a nail in the coffin of the 'two-citizen-parent' theory of Presidential eligibility. However, it appears that the memo in its entirety is rather hard to come by online. So I present it here, for your reading pleasure:

The Tribe/Olson 'Natural Born Citizen' Memo

Spiro Agnew

2010-01-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

Spiro Theodore Agnew, born 1918, was the 39th Vice-President of the United States, serving under Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973.

As one might guess from his name, Agnew was of Greek heritage. His father was Theodore Spiros Agnew (formerly Anagnostopoulos), who immigrated to the United States from Greece in 1897.

And like Barack Obama, Agnew's father was not a U.S. citizen when Agnew was born. To evidence this, I offer the Agnew family's entry in the 1920 U.S. Census (see lines 72-75), where just three lines above the entry for one-year-old Spiro Agnew, Theodore Agnew's citizenship is clearly listed as "Alien":

Under the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." Ergo, the Vice-President must be a natural born citizen, just like the President.

Agnew's Greek heritage was conspicuous (especially given the name "Spiro Agnew"). His father's status as an immigrant was hardly obscure; to the contrary, his immigrant background helped him in becoming Nixon's running-mate.

And yet, Agnew was never accused of not being a natural born citizen. Nor was his Constitutional eligibility ever challenged on the grounds of his father's citizenship. Nor was his eligibility ever doubted on the grounds that he may have possibly inherited Greek citizenship through his father.

Spiro Agnew had a non-citizen father, and yet he was a natural born citizen. That is historical fact. To apply a different and novel test to Barack Obama, when the only difference between the two is that Agnew's father was from Greece whereas Obama's father was from Kenya, is simply inconsistent and hypocritical, and reeks of being a double standard.

Presidential/VP Candidates with Immigrant Parents*

2010-01-12T17:47:00.004-05:00

Elected Officials

Barack Obama (President, 2009-present)
- Father was born in Kenya.

Spiro Agnew (Vice-President, 1969-1973)
- Father was a Greek immigrant.

Hubert Humphrey (Vice-President, 1965-1969)
- Mother was a Norwegian immigrant.

Charles Curtis (Vice-President, 1929-1933)
- Mother was a Native American.

Chester A. Arthur (President, 1881-1885)
- Father was an Irish immigrant.

Party Nominees

John Kerry (Democratic Presidential nominee, 2004)
- Mother was born in France.

Ralph Nader (Green Presidential nominee, 2000)
- Both parents were Lebanese immigrants.

Michael Dukakis (Democratic Presidential nominee, 1988)
- Both parents were Greek immigrants.

Geraldine Ferraro (Democratic VP nominee, 1984)
- Father was an Italian immigrant.

John B. Anderson (Independent Presidential nominee, 1980)
- Father was a Swedish immigrant.

George McGovern (Democratic Presidential nominee, 1972)
- Mother was a Canadian immigrant.

Edmund Muskie (Democratic VP nominee, 1968)
- Father was a Polish immigrant.

Primary Contenders

Mike Gravel (Democratic and Libertarian contender, 2008)
- Both parents were French-Canadian immigrants.

Dennis Kucinich (Democratic contender, 2008)
- One or both parents were possibly born in Slovenia.

Bill Richardson (Democratic contender, 2008)
- Mother was born in Mexico.

Andy Martin (Republican contender, 2000)
- Father became a U.S. citizen when he was 5.

Arlen Specter (Republican contender, 1996)
- Father was a Russian immigrant.

Popular Rumored Candidates

Mario Cuomo
- Both parents were Italian immigrants.

Bobby Jindal
- Both parents were Indian immigrants.

Colin Powell
- Both parents were Jamaican immigrants.

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I would like to note that this list is, in no way, comprehensive. You can see for yourself that 'Party Nominees' only extends back to 1968, and 'Primary Contenders' only to 1996. And yet this list still has 20 names on it. Only one of whom was ever alleged to be ineligible because of his foreign parentage.

*You may notice that many persons on this list only have one immigrant parent each. That is because "Candidates with Immigrant Parents," despite being plural, does not imply that each candidate in question had two immigrant parents. Such an interpretation would be grammatically foolish.

My Life as a Conservative Anti-Birther

2009-12-30T13:19:00.001-05:00

Steve Cee's Desperation

2009-12-27T18:14:00.006-05:00

So Steve finally responds to my allegations that he lied by...trying to cover it up. Here's what he wrote on Christmas Eve:

"I have updated my previous post to include the origional image that was to be posted, but swapped to keep Loren Christopher Collins, Obot lawyer and George Soros little hack’s panties in a wad."

Here's what he added to his original post:

An Obot lawyer, who is too stupid and arrogant to realize that the image above, has been resized, by this blog hosting. Has decided to post a comparison image. The image below demonstrates that the FactCheck people used to verify the COLB were not only inexperienced, but were deceptive as well. They were not qualified to even photograph the document and took every effort to decieve anyone looking at it, just like the questionalbe lawyer. Regardless of the level of focus that the deranged lawyer is pawning, there are no defects from the embossing that are visible in other images. Since he can’t explain that away, he’s throwing a temper tantrum.

UPDATE 12/24/2009 As I have posted a new post today I am inserting the origional image that was to go here. Here is the one that I changed from to keep the Obot’s off-guard. The original was to have stated ‘Some degree of being in focus’ and an cropped section showing that even the date was visible.

First off, Steve's attempt to blame his blog host for the image resizing completely ignores the fact that Steve, himself, chose not to link to FactCheck's image or website. If WordPress resizes uploaded images (and I'm not sure that it does), Steve still knew that he was presenting his readers with a shrunken image and ONLY a shrunken image.

More importantly, Steve's being inconsistent with his stories. On December 21, he wrote that he himself resized the image: "In reality, I resized the image for posting only a reference image only..." Then three days later, he blames the blog host: "An Obot lawyer, who is too stupid and arrogant to realize that the image above, has been resized, by this blog hosting."

Second, Steve proposes that this new image is the "origional" that he intended to post, but apparently didn't in an effort to smoke me out, or somesuch nonsense. This, of course, ignores that the new words "Some degree of being" are in a different font than "In focus." And they're a different font size. And it means he randomly capitalized "In" for no reason. Yes, I'm sure that this was the original image, and that what we don't have here is Steve altering the image and making up a story to explain away his lie.

Take a step back, and consider the tale that Steve is spinning at this point. He's proposing that his plan was:

1) Before December 13, Steve draws up an illustration saying "Out of focus" and "In focus" in one font, and "Some degree of being" in another font.
2) Steve posts on December 13 the image without "Some degree of being," in the hopes that Loren will spot the lie and call Steve out on it.
3) Loren responds to Steve's post, pointing out where Steve lied in his labeling.
4) Steve makes a follow-up post a week later on December 21 that mocks Loren, but doesn't share this "origional" image and doesn't address the lying allegation.
5) After Loren points out Steve's lie again, then on December 24, eleven days after the original post, Steve posts the "origional" image and declares that it was always his Machiavellian plan to share a phony image in order to get Loren to call Steve a liar and thus link to Steve's page.

Of course, such a ridiculous plan should be no surprise coming from someone whose central thesis involves some vague but elaborate scheming where the Obama campaign swaps out two or three different documents during a FactCheck photo shoot, and the FactCheck folks don't notice.

No wait...the FactCheck agents being innocent dupes was Steve's old conspiracy theory. His new conspiracy theory is: "The image below demonstrates that the FactCheck people used to verify the COLB were not only inexperienced, but were deceptive as well. They were not qualified to even photograph the document and took every effort to decieve anyone looking at it." I admit, it makes it difficult to shoot down someone's conspiracy theory when they keep changing it.

Also, in an effort to fabricate a reason why he lied in the original image, Steve concocts an explanation that totally defeats his initial reason for posting it. Steve's point was that the impressed seal ought to be visible because part of the document was in focus; if the whole document is out-of-focus, only in varying degrees, then that's precisely what I said to start with, and which he called "lies."

Strike Three for Steve

2009-12-21T20:37:00.003-05:00

In no time flat, Steve responded to my post from yesterday. Fortunately, he doesn't have much substantive to say, so this post will be considerably shorter than the last one. In fact, I'll do it bullet-point style.

- Steve begins "A lawyer claiming to know ’something’ about images is pawning himself as a legitimate authority on the Obama COLB forgery." That's absurd. I'm not claiming to be an authority on any forgery. That would require there to BE a forgery.

- In response to where I pointed out that Steve provided only a relatively tiny version of a FactCheck image that obscured the fact that his labels were blatantly untrue, Steve writes "I resized the image for posting only a reference image only and allowed the readers to judge for themselves by downloading the FactCheck image off FactCheck’s own web-site."

I suppose Steve "allowed the readers" to do that, to the extent that he didn't somehow prohibit them from doing so. But Steve did not provide a link to the FactCheck image in question. Nor did he provide a link to the FactCheck page where it appeared. Or the name or date of the article to narrow a search. The only way Steve's readers could download the FactCheck image would be if they first searched out and located the image for themselves, without any guidance whatsoever from Steve. And they had no reason to do that, since Steve gave no indication that the FactCheck image was any better or larger than the one he was sharing. Meanwhile, Steve had EVERY reason to hope that his readers wouldn't go to that trouble, because if they did, they would discover that he'd lied in his labeling.

- Similarly, notice that when I respond to a post of Steve's, I include a link to his post, so that my readers can read his comments for themselves. By contrast, notice that when Steve responds to me, he does not post a link to my post, or to this blog, or even mention this blog by name. This way he keeps his readers in the dark, and they have no clue what he's responding to apart from how Steve himself presents it.

- By not linking to my post, Steve successfully avoids having to ever address the fact that he flat-out lied when he called the image "In focus." He just glosses over that entirely. He also avoids having to address his use of inconsistent standards and the other problems I pointed out.

- Steve again asks "Why is ALL the lettering, including the date indicated, but no evidence of the SEAL." Because common sense should tell you that a lightly impressed stamp, on the reverse side of patterned paper, may not be visible in a blurry photo. In the one blurry photo out of nine FactCheck photos, the seal isn't visible. It's that simple. Running a photo through color filters doesn't unblur it.

- Naturally, once again, Steve says I "misrepresent the facts, and that he's caught me in "lies, fraud, and deciet." And once again, he totally fails to identify a single actual lie or fraudulent statement.

The 'Duh' of Steve

2009-12-19T17:53:00.013-05:00

I don't intend to make a habit of rebutting Birther 'proofs,' but when one is issued directly at me, how can I not?

Following my critique of Steve Christiansen's excuse for document analysis, Steve wrote a response post with a bunch of new graphics that he claims support his conspiracy theory. I'll jump right in with his first reference to me:

Now we look at an what an Obama supporter claims as false representation on the FactCheck image.

To quote his lies; “Now a real expert, or even just a person of reasonable common sense, would chalk this up to factors like how the photo isn’t in focus, making it difficult to see a pressure seal, or how it might be obscured somewhat by the shadow. Here, for instance, is how one portion of this JPEG looks, without any modification”

The is attempting to take a portion, at the furthest point of the image and state that, ‘that area represents the entire image’.

Steve then links to this COLB picture, which he observes has portions of the document that are in focus and others that are out of focus, and to this image (note: the image below is the exact size of Steve's image, copied from his site):

Steve's utilization of the first image demonstrates only one thing: his seeming ignorance of photography. Of course the seal is in focus and the far side of the document isn't; the camera focused on the seal. It wasn't a deep focus image, so at that distance, the far side is unfocused. This is unsurprising and irrelevant to the issue at hand. And if Steve is aware of the focal issues presented by this shot, it's not clear why he's sharing it at all.

As for the second image, Steve simply resorted to lying. See where he wrote "In focus" in blue on the image? Total hogwash. The reason I pointed out that the above image is the largest size that Steve shared is because the FULL size of the image (as posted by FactCheck and as linked to by myself) conclusively shows that Steve is full of it. The portion of the COLB that Steve calls "In focus" is anything but; only because he shrunk the photo down to approximately three percent of its original size, and conveniently failed to link to the original image size, he's made it impossible for readers to see those details.

Seriously, to illustrate just how much Steve shrunk the image to suit his purposes, and how ridiculously small his image is compared to FactCheck's original photo, here's a side-by-side comparison of how Steve's image compares to the size of the original FactCheck image it's derived from:

And the part that Steve considers and calls "In focus," but doesn't provide a full-size image of? It would be plainly obvious that it is NOT in focus, if Steve had linked to the actual size. But of course, to do that would have contradicted his own lie. So here it is, actual size:

If you think that image is in focus, please make an appointment to see your opthamologist. If you agree that it isn't, then you understand that Steve flat-out lied to his readers. Here, for comparison, is a crop of the same text from the other FactCheck photo that showed the whole document, again actual-size, and this time in focus:

Steve then goes on at length about how the inked date stamp on the back of the COLB doesn't appear to have affected the rattan lines on the document's front. He appears to consider this to be decisive evidence that the document is a forgery, but it's not clear why. It's an ink stamp; it shouldn't affect the texture of anything.

Then he says "The same anomolies and marking across the ‘Blank Hawaiian Template’, The DailyKos image, indicating that the same image was used to create them." Well, yes. Obviously. The 'Blank Hawaiian Template,' as Steve calls it, was made from Obama's COLB, so it shows the same marks. It's not like there was a blank COLB independently floating around the internet. Steve doesn't say where this 'Blank Template' comes from, but IIRC, it was the creation of Jay McKinnon, who admitted creating it from Obama's COLB.

He also repeats his previous claim (which he pontificated on at length in his original 'analysis') that the COLB as posted on Kos should be considered a forgery because you can't see any bleedthrough from the signature inkstamp. Of course, in another post he treated another COLB that similarly had no signature bleedthrough as unquestionably legitimate, which just serves to remind readers that Steve and other Birther 'analysts' pick and choose their evidentiary standards as they go along, without regard for consistency.

Well, that's about it. Inconsistent standards, imagined errors, and flat-out fibs. That's the kind of quality research you can expect from Steve.

Oh, and one final note. Steve repeatedly claims that I have engaged in lies or the misrepresentation of facts. However, he is remarkably vague as to what those specific falsehoods are. He is incapable of saying 'Loren said X, and that's false because the truth is Y,' because I haven't actually lied. So instead, he throws around the allegation as a broad charge, and doesn't back it up with any specifics.

By contrast, where I have above accused Steve of lying, I have been most specific. I identified the specific falsehood he posted ("In focus"), I demonstrated with superior evidence that it was indeed false, and I pointed out that Steve shrewdly manipulated image sizes and omitted relevant links so that his readers would not be able to tell that he was lying without searching out the original image that he didn't provide. And that's just one difference between me and Steve; he may be willing to throw around the 'liar' accusation just to avoid addressing arguments, but if I claim that a statement is a lie, I'm going to actually substantiate that claim.

"Glee," on Birtherism

2009-12-10T07:36:00.001-05:00

Glee had its fall finale last night. Songs were sung, rewards were reaped, and secrets were revealed. And one of those secrets was that cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester is a Birther.

OK no, not really. But she does talk like a Birther. When the exchange below took place, I was immediately struck by how perfectly it reflected Birther reasoning. It even involves the disputed authenticity of a document. The only significant difference is that the viewer knows that Sue is being disingenuous in her arguments; one can only guess at how disingenuous any given Birther is.

To set up the quote, first a little Glee backstory for the uninitiated. Cheerios coach Sue Sylvester (played by Jane Lynch) leaked the school's Glee Club's set list for a local competition to two rival schools. The other schools eventually admitted their complicity in this cheating, and the principal is confronting her as she continues to deny her involvement:

Principal Figgins: "Sue, the directors, both from the Jane Adams Academy and Haverbrook School for the Deaf, have informed me that you gave them the New Directions set list."

Sue: "You have no proof."

Principal Figgins: "The set lists were on Cheerios letterhead."

Sue: "I didn't do it."

Principal Figgins: "They say 'From the Desk of Sue Sylvester'."

Sue: "Circumstantial evidence."

Principal Figgins: "They're written in your handwriting!"

Sue: "Forgeries."

Principal Figgins: "Sue, there is an orgy of evidence stacked against you!"

Sue: "Well, you've clearly made up your mind not to be impartial in this case."

Birthers: the Sue Sylvesters of the political world. Great for laughs, but miserable company.

Scrutinizing Steve C.'s Conspiracy Theory

2009-12-05T08:29:00.009-05:00

*Sigh*

You demonstrate that a supposed "credentialed [forensic] examiner" is anything but, and what reaction do you get? 'Well, he may not actually be an expert, but that doesn't mean his material isn't correct!' And in a very broad sense, that's true.

Granted, it's true in the same sense that the local guy who's "proved" that George W. Bush detonated the World Trade Center *could* be correct, and all the real scientific experts are simply wrong, but it's theoretically possible.

So if only to preempt further complaints that I haven't actually addressed Steve's material, here's a cursory look at why it's conspiratorial hackwork.

(And to be clear upfront, it's a cursory look because I'm not wasting my time taking down every wrongheaded point made over the course of 21 pages.)

Let's just skip straight to the conclusion:

My original conclusion stands, that the Date on the COLB was printed on the top when the document was created, by printing out the ‘Fight the Smears’ COLB and then attempting to apply an embossed seal to the document in an attempt to produce a forged Birth Certification. However they produced two completely different documents one with a SEAL and the other without one. I believe they noticed that during the process that the document was missing a SEAL, applied one, and did not catch the image without one till it was too late and already posted.

They are forgeries, plain and simple.

Forgery #1 - The COLB posted on 'Fight the Smears' - No Stamp, No Seal, evidence of tampering and forgery. Sandra Ramsey Lines, Ron Polirak, and myself, among others.

Forgery #2 - FactCheck - Two different COLB's one with a SEAL, however NOT an Official State of Hawaii Department of Health SEAL

Forgery #3 - FactCheck - COLB without a SEAL, image of COLB being held up. High resolution and NO indicating of a SEAL.

Fom this closing breakdown, it's hard to tell how many different forgeries Steve is proposing the Obama campaign generated. "Forgery #2," for instance, is described as being "Two different COLB's." And right after he writes "they produced two completely different documents one with a SEAL and the other without one," explicitly suggesting two "completely different documents," he then immediately turns around and says "they noticed that during the process that the document was missing a SEAL, applied one," which suggests only one paper that was altered mid-photo-shoot. In other words, his theory is not even consistent from sentence to sentence.

It was also hard to tell from his writeup whether Steve was proposing that FactCheck was complicit in this alleged conspiracy of his, or whether he was proposing that the FactCheck staffers were snookered by the Obama campaign. Thankfully, he clarified his position at RSoL:

"And because of this, If I had been one of the two at FactCheck, I would have seen the discrepincies of the COLB and stated them at that time."

So Steve's thesis is clearly that the FactCheck staffers were fooled. Now in its article, FactCheck wrote:

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate...Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false...

[W]e can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates).

Thus, the FactCheck staffers were not foolishly ignorant of the verification marks on the COLB, as Steve would like to pretend they were. They knew to look for the seal. They knew to look for the signature. They said both were there. They took photos and posted them.

Steve's theory, quoted above, is that the Obama campaign gave the FactCheck staffers a COLB without no seal, and that FactCheck didn't notice its absence. Steve goes on to claim that after FactCheck took one or more photographs, the Obama campaign realized the document they'd given FactCheck didn't have a seal (something, according to Steve's theory, FactCheck *itself* hadn't realized yet). The Obama campaign then took the unsealed COLB away from the FactCheck staffers, applied a seal, and gave it back to the FactCheck staffers, who proceeded to take more photos without noticing that the document had been given a brand-new seal right in the middle of their photo shoot.

To reiterate highlight some of the absurdities of this theory:

- Steve proposes that the Obama campaign gave FactCheck photographers a COLB without a seal, during a photo shoot that was supposed to prove the COLB was *real*.
- Steve proposes that the Obama campaign gave FactCheck this unsealed COLB despite having a fake Hawaiian seal handy.
- Steve proposes that the FactCheck staffers managed to examine the COLB and start taking photographs without noticing that the seal was missing.
- Steve proposes that the Obama campaign interrupted the photograph-taking, took away the COLB from FactCheck, then either took it out of the room or applied a seal in the same room, and then gave it back to FactCheck, and the FactCheck staffers didn't find this suspicious or worthy of comment.

And how many photos does Steve allege managed to get past quality control without signs of a seal? Only one. Out of nine photos that FactCheck put online of the COLB, only one shows the area where the seal should be, but where it's not immediately visible to the naked eye.

Now a real expert, or even just a person of reasonable common sense, would chalk this up to factors like how the photo isn't in focus, making it difficult to see a pressure seal, or how it might be obscured somewhat by the shadow. Here, for instance, is how one portion of this JPEG looks, without any modification:

And he expects to see a lightly impressed seal? But no, in Steve's world, "It's blurry" isn't good enough; the seal isn't immediately visible because there was a conspiracy, multiple forgeries, and some remarkably foolish photographers.

It doesn't help Steve's case that he also uncritically repeats the old Polarik canard that the COLB posted at FightTheSmears does not have a seal. This claim always depended upon accepting that the Obama campaign would have sent a COLB image WITH a seal to the Daily Kos (which they did), and then turned around and posted a COLB image WITHOUT a seal on their own site. Why would they post an inferior image to their own site? I imagine that's a question that simply doesn't occur to someone who's willing to believe that they'd produce an inferior image to visiting photographers.

The only difference is that because the FightTheSmears image is considerably smaller than Kos's, the seal is considerably more difficult to see. Even at best only part of the circular seal can be pulled out, but it's there.

I'm not going to go through each of Steve's individual "proofs," but I do want to single out one claim of his. Steve alleges that one or more COLBs (he's somewhat vague on this point) lacks the signature stamp of Alvin Onaka. Here is the image of the back of the COLB, showing the signature stamp:

Nearly 2/3 of his 21-page paper is devoted to this signature stamp. Steve appears to allege that not only did the FactCheck staffers fail to notice that they took photos of a COLB with a seal AND a COLB without one, but that they also failed to notice that they took photos of COLBs with and without a signature stamp.

Again, where Steve sees conspiracies and multiple forgeries, the answer is in simple common sense. The date stamp and signature stamp were, naturally, made with two different stamps. The date stamp, you'll notice, is, on the back, darker and crisper than the signature stamp. The signature stamp is noticeably lighter, and almost failed to imprint at the top middle. And whereas the darker date stamp is just barely visible on the front of the COLB, the lighter signature isn't visible at all. Steve wrote "There is NO additional ink bleed through in the ENTIRE area," and this is true. The signature stamp simply didn't bleed through. There's no need for a more complicated, conspiratorial explanation.

So there you have it. Steve's analysis and theory may be considerably shorter than Polarik's, but it may be even more absurd and unscientific. That's quite a feat.

Steve Christensen, the Birther "Genealogist"

2009-12-01T00:35:00.009-05:00

Birthers love their experts. Specifically, they love anonymous experts. People who produce pseudo-academic work supporting the Birther cause while claiming to possess expert credentials, but who don't produce such things as their real names or any evidence of the expert credentials they claim they have.

TechDude was the original forensic expert darling of the Birther crowd, claiming to have extensive forensic credentials, but keeping his identity secret. He was eventually exposed as a fraud. After that, Ron Polarik took to creating an expert resume for himself, and for a year was the Birthers' new favorite expert, all while keeping his true identity secret and refusing to produce proof of any forensic credentials. Then he was exposed as a fraud too.

In the last four months, after Polarik was exposed, the Birthers have found themselves yet another document expert: "Steve Cee," a supposed genealogist. And, for a perfect strikeout, the Birthers seem to have fallen for a third fake expert.

Phil at 'The Right Side of Life' recently wrote:

"[Facebook's employees] may be very well credentialed in their chosen fields, but it hardly seems fitting that individuals who are not trained in the science of document forensics — like four otherwise credentialed examiners have been -"

Phil's link goes to Parker "Beckwith" Shannon's TheObamaFile, where the four "credentialed examiners" who are "trained in the science of document forensics" that Phil mentions are: "Dr. Ron Polarik," Sandra Ramsey Lines, "a genealogist," and "MissTickly -- aka TerriK.

Note that three out of four of Phil and Parker's "credentialed examiners" don't even have real names. TechDude thankfully isn't listed, but Shannon still falsely claims that Polarik/Polland "specializes in computer graphics," which everyone but Shannon has known to be flatly untrue for months.

One of these "credentialed examiners" isn't even listed with his fake name. Of the "genealogist," Shannon writes:

A third investigator, a genealogist, says The FactCheck.org Certificates of Live Birth (COLB) have been an issue since they were posted...

This genealogist concludes the COLBs are forgeries, plain and simple.

Forgery #1 - The COLB posted on 'Fight the Smears' - No Stamp, No Seal, evidence of tampering and forgery. Sandra Ramsey Lines, Ron Polirak, and myself, among others.

Forgery #2 - FactCheck - Two different COLB's one with a SEAL, however NOT an Official State of Hawaii Department of Health SEAL

Forgery #3 - FactCheck - COLB without a SEAL, image of COLB being held up. High resolution and NO indicating of a SEAL.

This post isn't about the "genealogist's" "research." But I do want to point out that his theory here is that Obama's people gave the FactCheck employees two different birth certificates during their visit, and that the FactCheck employees were either in on the scam or were too utterly incompetent to notice that they were given one document with a seal, which was then taken away, and then they were given a second document without a seal.

The "genealogist" behind this absurdity went by "Steve Cee". On July 28, 2009, The Steady Drip shared this material and wrote "This information was provided by Steve Cee, a genealogist, who has also authored this new analysis...Steve's contribution adds to Dr. Ron Polarik's extensive forensic examination." As it happened, the very next day "Dr. Ron Polarik" was revealed to possess precisely ZERO forensic credentials. "Steve Cee's" work is admittedly on par with that.

Where did The Steady Drip get the "genealogist" label? Two days earlier he'd written "Steve Cee decided to confirm if Klein's statement were factual and sent a series of emails to the State of Hawaii...Identifying himself as a genealogist, Steve specifically asked..." Steve is identified as a "genealogist" because when he'd ~~called~~ e-mailed and harassed some folks in Hawaii, that's what he called himself ~~on the phone~~ in the e-mail.

Enough backstory, let's get on with the real story. Who is the "genealogist" that Parker Shannon considers an expert and who RSoL Phil deems a "credentialed examiner" with forensic training?

He is Steve Christensen of Boise, Idaho. You may know him as "ch22240" or as "syc1959," the latter being the handle that he uses to post at RSoL itself, and the name he used to sign his "research". He runs Nobarack08 and he posts Birther YouTube videos. And at 50 years old, he's in the same age demographic that so many vocal Birthers seem to be.*

Is Steve a credentialed examiner, like Phil claimed and like Steve wants you to believe? No. Does he have forensic experience, like Phil claimed and like Steve wants you to believe? No more than Polarik does. He is yet another in a line of anonymous pseudo-experts that the Birthers keep putting their uncritical faith in.

Two months ago, I confronted Steve with this, and asked for his credentials. Here is how the conversation went down:

Me: "Everyone who cites your paper online offers only "genealogist" as your expertise. Now I rather enjoy genealogy, but what in your genealogy past gives you experience in digital image examination?"

Steve: "You’d be surprised at my past and experience."

Me: "So surprise me."

Steve: "You will be!"

Steve then promptly disappeared from FreeRepublic for two months, starting that very day. No credentials have been proffered in the eight weeks since. After Phil stated that Steve is a "credentialed expert" the other day, Steve made several dozen posts in the comments thread without even hinting that he was one of Phil's supposed forensic experts.

Finally, Steve was asked again for these alleged credentials. His response? "All in good time. When the time is right." He then promptly started talking about Perkins Coie and citizen grand juries and criminal conspiracies and Obama's poll numbers and Bill Richardson quotes and Obama's birth certificate from the 1970s and how complaints aren't being dismissed on the merits...all in the same post. When confronted with his months of deception, his response was not only to change the subject, but to attempt to change it to as many different subjects as possible.

When given one more chance to say whether he actually has any background in forensics, Steve wrote only: "I will not divulge this." Steve is apparently content with Phil describing him as a "credentialed examiner" with training in forensics, but adamantly refuses to provide so much as a scintilla of actual credentials to anyone to support this description.

When Steve has felt prompted to cite his credentials under other circumstances, unprompted by skeptics such as myself, what has he offered up? Only that he is a former service member (though he doesn't state which branch, or when or how long he served), and that he joined Oath Keepers earlier this year. That's quite a resume, isn't it?

As for his status as a "genealogist," there is no Steve Christiansen who is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, and he has actually described his own expertise as follows: "I've done some genealogy research myself." In other words, he's as much of a genealogist as I am.

So there you have it. Steve Christensen is a man who doesn't want you to know what credentials he may or may not possess, but who wants you and everyone else to believe that he really does have secret awesome credentials that totally validate his wild conspiracy theories. He's Polarik 2.0, and until he produces proof of expertise that support his claims of expertise, he is no more an "expert" than the next anonymous hack.

_____________________________________________

*In case you've never noticed, your most vocal and proactive Birthers were almost universally born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Leo Donofrio is practically the baby of the group, and he's 44.

+ Edited for spelling.

Emmerich de Vattel vs. Plural Nouns

2009-11-30T19:32:00.003-05:00

It is generally agreed among Birthers, and has been all but conceded by others, that Emmerich de Vattel wrote that two citizen parents were required for a child to be a "natural-born citizen."

But did he really? Stop and look at the exact quote cited:

"The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens."

Birthers automatically treat "of parents" as meaning "each of two parents." But that is not a given. The subject ("natives") is plural, so it stands to reason that "parents" should be plural too. While grammatically correct, "The natives...are those born in the country of at least one parent who is a citizen" is more than a bit stilted.

Vattel points out in his next sentence that "children naturally follow the condition of their fathers." So it would be perfectly accurate to rephrase the above Vattel sentence to read:

"The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of fathers who are citizens."

Fathers. Plural. Now, does that mean that a "natural born citizen" must have multiple fathers? Of course not. But multiple children must have multiple fathers; similarly, multiple children must have multiple parents.

As a point of comparison, consider the Sons of Confederate Veterans. How do they describe themselves?

"The SCV is the direct heir of the United Confederate Veterans, and the oldest hereditary organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers."

"of Confederate soldiers." Does this mean that to be a member, you must be descended from more than one Confederate soldier? Obviously not. (Though I would still qualify, being descended from five.)

Similarly, there's the United Daughters of the Confederacy. They write:

"Membership is open to women no less than 16 years of age who are blood descendants, lineal or collateral, of men and women who served honorably in the Army, Navy or Civil Service of the Confederate States of America, or gave Material Aid to the Cause."

"of men and women." So read as literally as Birthers read Vattel, not only must a Member be descended from multiple Confederates, rather than just a single one, but this says she must be descended from both Confederate men AND Confederate women. While, when taken in the context of other pages from the website, is clearly not the case.

This same tortured reading applies to virtually every 'two-citizen-parent' citation that Birthers have. Vattel, taken in context, reflects a definition of "native" that is governed wholly by the father's citizenship status, without regard to the mother's. It is a definition from a bygone era. If the Birthers wish to claim that in 1961 America, a child could be born whose citizenship and eligibility for the Presidency was governed only by the child's father and with no consideration given to the mother, then they should be upfront about it.

Why I Believe Obama is a Natural-Born Citizen

2009-09-30T10:08:00.004-04:00

Buried in the comments section of a Jay Bookman blog post at ajc.com, I've had a conversation with one fellow who asked me why I believe Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen. When he didn't like my first answer enough, here's what I wrote:

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I’m going to do it kinda bullet-point style, to keep things relatively short. So here goes. These first several assume birth in Hawaii, and all take into account the 'two-citizen-parent' theory of natural-born citizenship; I will deal with the Kenyan birth allegations further down.

- I have a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary in front of me. It defines “natural born citizen” as “A person born within the jurisdiction of a national government.” It then defines “naturalized citizen” as being “A foreign-born person who attains citizenship by law.” It does not list any other kinds of citizen, only by birth or naturalization. It does not require two citizen parents. This points to the conclusion that Obama is a natural-born citizen.

- I have an undergraduate degree in Political Science and a law degree. Everything I learned in school, both undergraduate and graduate, points to the conclusion that Obama is a natural-born citizen, and nothing I learned suggests otherwise.

- Two hundred plus years of electoral precedent and the public understanding of what constitutes a natural-born citizen (for instance, see WWI draft cards), and the lack of any prior eligibility challenges akin to the one made against Obama (and there have been other Presidential candidates who were not born to two citizen parents) supports the conclusion that Obama is a natural-born citizen.

- The consensus opinion of the legal scholarly community as to the meaning of “natural-born citizen” supports the conclusion that Obama is a natural-born citizen. Whereas there are essentially zero legal scholars who have given support to the ‘two-citizen-parent’ theory, which suggests that it is a fringe and wholly Constitutionally unsupported theory.

- Obama faced seven opponents in the Democratic primary, in addition to Republican opponent John McCain. All of them had election lawyers. Out of those eight, precisely zero of them ever so much as accused him of being ineligible for not being a natural-born citizen. Even Hillary, who refused to concede until the eleventh hour and who would have been the automatic Democratic nominee if he had been declared ineligible, never even suggested that he was ineligible. This supports the conclusion that he is a natural-born citizen.

So assuming a birth in Hawaii, my belief that Obama is a natural-born citizen is supported by the preeminent legal dictionary, my own legal and political education, two centuries of precedent, the legal scholarly community, and everyone who had a personal stake in Obama’s eligibility status.

As for why I believe he was born in Hawaii:

- The Certification of Live Birth says Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. The newspaper birth announcements say he was born in Hawaii. The director of the Hawaii State Department of Health has said “Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii.” Obama has consistently said, for 48 years, that he was born in Hawaii.

- There was never *any* doubt that Obama was born in Hawaii until spring 2008, four years after his name started getting mentioned as a Presidential contender, and over a year after he started his campaign. And the claims that he was born outside Hawaii were started and spread by anonymous and pseudonymous folks online, without any sources to back up their claims that ‘I heard that his mother had gone to Kenya…’ And in the year and a half since those initial rumors started being written online, not a single bit of evidence has turned up that the rumor-authors could have been relying on.

- Evidence ’supporting’ a Kenyan birth has consistently proven to be falsified, manipulated, grossly exaggerated, or non-existent. Meanwhile, the ‘experts’ who claimed that the Hawaii evidence was faked or forged consistently turned out to be liars and frauds themselves.

- And as obvious as this seems, I feel I should say it anyway: the notion that Ann Dunham traveled from Hawaii to Kenya to give birth is really, really stupid. I could mince words here, but I’m not. It’s just absurd on its face, and it’s barely even internally coherent. It’s a 10,000 mile plane trip from a first-world nation to a third-world nation, with no direct flights in-between. (By contrast, Joe Biden was born just a 200-mile car trip from Toronto, but no one claims he could’ve been born in Canada, even though it’s 1/50 the distance and could be driven in a few hours.) Until spring 2008, there had never been so much as the suggestion that Ann Dunham had ever set foot in Kenya during her lifetime, much less while she was pregnant. There is still no actual evidence that she ever traveled to Kenya. She knew no one there, and didn’t speak the language. And for her to obtain a birth registration by August 8, which said that her son was born in Honolulu, would have required a considerable amount of deception and fraud (which of course raises the internal consistency problem of: why go to Kenya in the first place to give birth if you want your child’s vital records to say he was born in Hawaii, and want it so hard that you’re willing to commit fraud?)

So there’s a lot of credible evidence to support a Hawaiian birth, as opposed to a lot of speculation and non-credible evidence to dispute a Hawaiian birth or support a birth anywhere else. There is no more credible reason to doubt that Obama was born in Hawaii than there is to doubt that Joe Biden was born in Pennsylvania, or that Bill Clinton was born in Arkansas, or that Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois. There is simply no reason to demand extraordinary birthplace evidence from Obama that was not demanded of previous candidates or Presidents.

Finally, to preempt any questions as to where my political loyalties lie, I am not a Democrat. I regularly vote Libertarian, and I have rarely voted Democratic for a federal office. I have never voted for a Democrat for President, and I did not vote for Obama last November. Rather, I voted for, and strongly supported, Libertarian candidate Bob Barr. And I fully stand by my choice, because I continue to oppose much of what Obama has done in office. But despite that, I can’t abide denialism, so I find myself forced to defend his eligibility against unsourced, unsubstantiated, and unsupported allegations. It’s something of a Golden Rule thing, really.

Lucas Smith is Back

2009-09-07T17:27:00.007-04:00

Back in July, I helped expose Lucas Smith, the BS artist who was auctioning on eBay a supposed Kenyan birth certificate for Obama. Smith disappeared for a while, but reemerged in mid-August in a series of WorldNetDaily articles. Amusingly, WND has simultaneously run headlining articles publicizing Smith's claims alongside separate articles declaring that his claims are bogus. Thus, they position themselves to help spread lies and falsehoods while positioning themselves to be able to deny any responsibility for spreading those same lies and falsehoods.

Anyhow, after releasing a couple of incredibly poorly shot videos, Smith has submitted an unsworn declaration in Orly's latest case of Barnett v. Obama. It's not an affidavit, because it is neither sworn nor notarized, but it's a form of federal declaration that is given equal consideration to an affidavit.

So let's consider some of the things Smith as to say in this declaration:

1. My name is Lucas Daniel Smith. I am over 18 years old, am of sound mind and free of any mental disease or psychological impairment of any kind or condition.

2. I am a citizen of the United States of America, I am 29 years old and I was born and raised in the state of Iowa.

Given that Orly is involved with this declaration, it's not terribly surprising that its content is already odd. Including "born and raised" information in a declaration is terribly irrelevant to the subject at hand. On the other hand, not including any information about where Mr. Smith can presently be found is an atypical omission for a declaration of this type. The court, after all, has no clue who "Lucas Daniel Smith" is, or how to locate him.

4. On February 19, 2009 I visited the Coast General hospital in Mombasa, Kenya.

In contrast to this claim in the declaration, back in late June/early July, Smith said "This spring I traveled through Kenya and it's capital Nairobi." Now instead of "this spring," he says he was in Kenya in February.

5. I visited the hospital accompanied by one more person, a natural born citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly known as “Zaire” and before independence as the “Belgian Congo”).

I see two things in this item worth noting, one questionable, and one just odd. The odd one is the inclusion of the political history of the Congo. Why that belongs in the declaration is beyond me; it's as relevant as the state of Smith's birth.

The other is the mention of Smith's associate, a "natural born citizen" (funny how that phrase makes it in) of the Congo. Based on previous postings by Smith, that person is "Andylenny." Here is a photo of Smith (left) and Andylenny (right):

I don't know the man, and I've never seen him in person, but "Andylenny," to me, looks hardly more like a Congolese citizen than I do. And I have five bucks that says the airport in that photo isn't even on the same continent as Kenya.

6. I traveled to Kenya and Mombasa in particular with the intent to obtain the original birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama, as I was told previously that it was on file in the hospital and under seal, due to the fact that the prime minister of Kenya Raela Odinga is Barack Hussein Obama's cousin.

A lot to unpack here:

First, there's the matter of Smith's intent. Here he claims he went to Kenya intending to get the birth certificate, having been told previously it was at a Mombasa hospital. Back in June, Smith said that he was in Kenya simply on travel, and that he first started hearing talk about a Kenyan birth certificate when he was already in Kenya.

Second, Smith says he was "told previously" that there was a birth certificate on file with the hospital. Back in June all he said that was he "delved and found" that a birth certificate was on file at the hospital. No substantive difference, but Smith's source both times remains unstated. If he learned it by calling the hospital or contacting the state, you think he'd say so. But given his subsequent claim that he had to pay off a military official to get at the physical document, why would the hospital or the state be so open on the phone? On the other hand, who else in Nairobi would even be able to tell him decisively that he should make a 200+ mile trip to Mombasa? And why is that information not relevant to share while the history of Congo's name-changes is?

Third, Smith repeats the outright lie that Obama and Odinga are cousins. Putting a proven false statement in a court declaration isn't very smart, and it certainly doesn't encourage the reader to trust all of his less-verifiable claims.

7. I had to pay a cash “consideration” to a Kenyan military officer on duty to look the other way, while I obtained the copy of the birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama.

8. The copy was signed by the hospital administrator.

9. The copy contain the embossed seal.

Kenya had a military officer in the hospital? In the records office? One that he simply slipped a few bucks, which not only allowed him to look at the records, or photograph them, but to walk away with a sealed document that was stamped and signed by the hospital administrator? Seriously?

Then there's the document itself:

There are some aspects of the document I find odd and curious (e.g., the lack of a birthday for Barack Sr.; the complete lack of a residence line for the father; ), but nothing that I can firmly state is hard evidence that it's a fake. But one feature stands out to me as the strongest evidence of fakery: the seal. Not only is it not a government seal for either Kenya or Mombasa, but it's terribly generic. It just says "SEAL" in the center, as though it was a bottom-level embossed sealmaker, bought from an office supplies dealer for about $25.

All in all, nothing totally concrete, but we have a combination of questionable and unsupported assertions along with some statements that are rather inconsistent with claims that Smith himself has previously made. Above I said that I'd put five bucks on the line that the photo of Smith and Andylenny wasn't taken in Kenya. I'd put another five bucks on the line to say that Smith hasn't so much as stepped foot in Kenya in 2009.

World War I and Natural Born Citizens

2009-08-23T20:08:00.007-04:00

When the U.S. government instituted a draft in World War I, a lot of information was collected from prospective draftees, namely young men of draft age. From a genealogy standpoint, the draft cards are unusually handy. In addition to providing details of vital records, they also included information about occupation, specific addresses, and even things like height and hair color.

There were three different types of cards used during the draft, with slight variation in the questioning. One of the cards looked like this one:

This card belongs to Artie Lee Barnwell, who was a first cousin four times removed of mine. (I have images for closer relatives, but this is the largest and most clear one.) I draw your attention to Question #4:

4. Are you (1) a natural-born citizen, (2) a naturalized citizen, (3) an alien, (4) or have you declared your intention (specify which)?

Notice that there are only two categories of citizen: (1) natural-born, and (2) naturalized. That's it. No third category that amounted to 'citizen since birth but not the natural-born variety.' To buy the Birther theory of citizenship is to suggest that a lot of young American men had no applicable box to check on this form.

The interpretation of these categories is also straightforward, as it would have been to the people of the time. For example, my great-great grandfather Ingwer Dockweiler, who immigrated from Germany and subsequently went through the naturalization process, was a 'naturalized' citizen. His son, Fred, who was born in North Dakota, was a 'natural-born' citizen, simply by virtue of being born in North Dakota.

The other two types of draft cards used different language for this question, but serve to bolster this straightforward duality of citizenship. One type of card had five boxes that one could check, three under the heading of 'U.S. Citizen' and two under the heading of 'Alien.'

The three 'Citizen' box options were "Native born," "Naturalized," or "Citizen by father's Naturalization before registrant's majority." The two 'Alien' options were "Declarant" or "Non-Declarant."

The third card had these options:

Native of the United States
Naturalized Citizen
Alien
Declared Intention

So not only did the U.S. Government not have a third category for 'Born in the U.S. but not a natural-born citizen,' but it considered "Natural-born citizen" to be effectively synonymous with "Native born citizen" and with "Native of the United States."

Now I'd love to close out this post with an image or two of young men born in the U.S. to aliens stating on their forms that they were "Natural born citizens." Unfortunately, my own family immigrated long before the 20th century, and I only have images handy for my own family. However, I do have research access. So I'll end with a request.

If you had ancestors who immigrated around 1900 and had a son soon thereafter, a son who would've been draft age in 1917, let me know. I'll pull the draft cards for you, and illustrate that a boy born of aliens in the United States was a natural-born citizen.

Why Polland Is Polarik

2009-07-31T00:00:00.005-04:00

My identification of pseudo-expert 'Ron Polarik' as statistician/self-proclaimed dating expert Ron Polland has drawn plenty of attention, but also questions about how I can so conclusively state that they are the same person. After all, my post largely consisted of my declaration that they were one and the same, with their similar names and resumes presented as the only real connection between the two. I initially held back additional evidence in anticipation of Polarik's reaction to my announcement, and now that he has reacted, I offer my proof that they are one and the same.

The initial finding that caused me to draw a connection between 'Polarik' and Ron Polland was this: On June 18, 2008, Polarik made a post on the Hannity.com forums. Two months earlier, on April 4, 2008, a poster with the handle of "DrRJP" posted at DanielPipes.org.

Both posts were strongly anti-Obama, while expressing only reluctant support for McCain. Both made Obama's position on Israel a high priority. Both spoke of Obama participating in fundraisers for Islamic causes. Both criticized Obama for his gradual distancing of himself from Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Both criticized Obama for calling his grandmother a "typical white woman."

And then there was this:

Posted by Polarik:

This fool is totally convinced that his silver tongued rhetoric can sway terrorists as easily as he swayed Democrats and media pundits. It is the height of hubris and chutzpah to think that the most pernicious and persistent enemy to human freedom can be won over with dialogue.

The "Change" that Obama preaches will be one from democracy to demagogery. Heck, this election is not a choice between the "lesser of two evils, "but the choice between someone who will resist evil and someone who will capitulate to it.

Posted by Polland:

Obama is totally convinced that his silver tongued rhetoric can sway terrorists as easily as he sway voters. It is the height of hubris and chutzpah to think that the most pernicious and persistent enemy to human freedom can be won over with dialogue.

The "Change" that Obama preaches will be one from democracy to demagogery. This election is not a choice between the lesser of two evils, but the choice between someone who will resist evil and someone who will capitulate to it.

At the absolute minimum, 'Polarik' is blatantly plagiarizing Polland. The word "demagogery" is even misspelled the same way both times.

Note, however, that this post of Polarik's came only five days after his first appearance on Townhall.com. 'Polarik' did not start calling himself 'Ron' until August. He did not claim a doctorate until September. And he did not claim degrees in "Instructional Systems" and "Educational Research," the specific degrees possessed by Polland, until December.

So 'Polarik' did not start trotting out personal details that mirrored Polland's until, at the earliest, two months after his post at Hannity.com. Polarik cannot claim ignorance of Polland; he was already copying his writing in June 2008. So either he stole his identity, and chose to do so by copying his writing months before he borrowed additional personal info, or they are, and always were, the same person.

So that was the starting point. It was this that allowed me to identify Polland's pre-Polarik online handles, DrRJP and DocRJP.

So what else connects the two?

First, Polarik posted comments on several websites that were able to confirm his IP address. Polland lives in the same metropolitan area associated with this IP address.

Second, both Polland and Polarik have very strong and very similar opinions on Israel. Israel is easily the second most common subject of Polarik posts at FreeRepublic, behind Obama's eligility. Polland has submitted multiple letters to the editor of the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union on the subject of Israel. One letter of Polland's was so inflammatory that the paper actually apologized for running it:

Misinformation, acrimony and a personal attack that could inspire fear for one's safety, marked a recent exchange of letters to the editor. It was typical fodder for the Internet, but a disappointing lapse in the Times-Union's editing process...

There followed a response letter, which Zogby claims was inaccurate, a personal attack on him and perhaps even dangerous in that it could incite those prone to hate crimes to seek him out.

Written by Ron Polland, the letter criticized Zogby for ignoring the fact that terrorists have used American passports to infiltrate Israel. He accused Zogby of "writing denigrating and inflammatory comments about Israel," and much more.

"Shame on him," Zogby said of Polland, a researcher at the University of North Florida who has written several letters critical of Muslims and Palestinians.

"This is the kind of bizarre ranting that occurs on a blog," Zogby said, asking for an apology.

"When it is in print, it has more merit and it should be viewed differently," he said. "I know you have standards. Someone didn't review it carefully."

Mike Clark, editorial page editor, said he regretted the failure to more carefully screen the letter.

In fact, what Polland described as the Palestine Human Rights Commission was actually known as the Palestine Human Rights Campaign...

Polland insisted on the veracity of the things he wrote. Asked to provide references for his assertions, Polland sent links to seven partisan Web sites, including one for the columnist Michelle Malkin. Those sites can be found by entering Zogby's name on a search engine.

"The blogosphere is the source of truth where people can really find out what is going on," Polland said.

Echoes of Polarik's online style abound, don't they?

Third, Polland is 61. Polarik has described his age as "I got my Masters degree before Krawetz was born, and my Doctorate while he was still in grade school," which puts him in his 60s.

Fourth, Polland has degrees in Educational Research and Instructional Systems. Polarik has claimed identical degrees in Educational Research and Instructional Systems. Additionally, Polland is a statistician with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, and Polarik has claimed (apparently false) graduate degrees in Statistics and Psychology.

Fifth, Polland's first name is Ronald. Polarik has said that his real first name is Ronald.

Sixth, both Polland and Polarik have identified themselves as being Jewish.

Seventh, both Polland and Polarik have been occasional commenters at DanielPipes.org. These two posts, for instance, involve both Polland and Polarik discussing how the Muslim concept of 'taqiyya' can allow Obama to be a secret Muslim through public deception.

Eighth, both Polland and Polarik are fans of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles." Coincidence, ridiculously overzealous impersonation, or same person? Take your pick.

Ninth, both Polland and Polarik are advocates and defenders of Bulgaria. See #8.

Tenth, and finally, you can actually listen to and compare audio of Polarik and audio of Polland, and watch video of Polarik and video of Polland:

In the 48 hours since my post went online naming Polarik, he has not had much to say on the subject. His only post on the subject had this to say: "Are they saying that I swiped his identity, now? I’ve heard this before. The trolls have been saying for a year now that I have a phony PhD, but this guy’s got a real one." Not a firm, outright denial, but he does refer to Polland as "this guy."

However, that was Polarik's public response. He was not so careful with his words elsewhere. After my post went online, a link to it was sent to Polarik by Steve "koyaan" Eddy, and Polarik responded:

Polarik's response: "Nice try, but that's not who I am."

If true, then Polarik has, for the past year, conducted the most unnecessarily elaborate impersonation of another person that I imagine any of us have ever witnessed. "It was coincidence" is simply not an option, especially after the common writing. And if Polarik is confessing to having effectively impersonated another man for the past year, he's confessing to a most elaborate lie.

Unfortunately, it's not that elaborate. The truth is that when Polarik wrote back "That's not who I am," he was unambiguously, flat-out lying. Ron Polarik is Ron Polland, despite his claim to the contrary. And Ron Polland is Ron Polarik. Once again Polarik has demonstrated his willingness to lie in the face of blatant fact. In only five words Polarik has successfully managed to demonstrate his capacity for dishonesty in even the most straightforward of situations.

Consequently, his 'research' must be viewed through the lens of the fact that it was conducted by a non-expert in computer matters who has a strong history of lying and misrepresenting facts, even about himself. This is precisely the reason why 'TechDude' was summarily dismissed ans non-credible and untrustworthy as soon as he was exposed last year. And it's precisely the reason why 'Polarik' should receive exactly the same treatment now.

Meet Ronald Jay Polland

2009-07-29T00:05:00.003-04:00

Allow me to introduce you to someone you may already know:

This is Dr. Ronald Jay Polland. He received a BA in Psychology from Florida State University in 1970, a Masters in Educational Research from FSU in 1972, and a Doctorate in Instructional Systems from FSU in 1978. His curriculum vitae lists the other accomplishments he finds noteworthy. He holds himself out as an expert on surveys and market research.

As of a few years ago, he worked in the Office of Institutional Research at the University of North Florida, where he helped conduct surveys and generate statistical reports. For instance, he wrote this Satisfaction Survey of A & P Employees. Polland is not currently listed as being on staff with that office, and it is unclear what his current occupation is.

However, surveys and statistical reports are not the only aspect of his life. He is the "President and Founder of Dr. RJP Consulting, an international consulting firm," begun in 1989. Polland's previous corporation, Innovative Systems, Inc., was involuntarily dissolved by the state of Florida in 1988.

Polland also has deemed himself an expert on dating. As he writes on his MySpace page, he is an "Expert advisor on relationships, romance and .. dating," and describes himself as "a psychologist by training who has devoted part of his life to helping others with questions and issues related to .. relationships, romance and dating."

He writes the following about how he came to find and recognize this expertise:

"His interest and research into Internet dating began in 1995, the year following the end of his 23-year marriage. His search for a woman to date also brought him into contact with many others who had previously used the Internet to find romance. From his own experience and the experience of others, he noted that both men and women often misrepresented themselves on the Internet. He found that people often lied about their age, looks, background, and occupations to others they met online."

With its talk of online misrepresentation, I imagine this passage is more autobiographically ironic than it was perhaps intended to be. Because if you have not realized it yet:

Ron Polland is Ron Polarik.

As you can see, Polland/Polarik does have the educational degrees he named in his anonymous declaration. He does not hold the other degrees he has claimed: a Masters in Statistics, a Masters in Experimental Psychology, and a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology. Additionally, the proper title for his doctorate is Instructional Systems, not Instructional Media.

It is, perhaps, ironic that the one and only time Polarik accurately named and represented his degrees was in a document that he refused to sign either his real name OR his online pseudonym to.

Also, despite specific (yet contradicted) claims that he was writing under his real last name, or that "I never said that Polarik was a pseudonym," it can now be firmly acknowledged that 'Polarik' is not his real name. Which is, of course, in agreement with the other occasions when he did say that 'Polarik' was a pseudonym.

Given Polarik's history, I fully expect him to respond to this revelation by trying to direct attention to the discrete details he's given that weren't lies. The degrees that he does have, as opposed to the ones he made up, or the false insinuations of technical expertise that he tried to draw from his educational resume. If he addresses his naming at all, I expect him to attempt to convince people that a mere history of misrepresentation shouldn't make him untrustworthy. That people shouldn't doubt his expertise in computers and scanners simply because he's not actually an expert in those things.

Because as is readily evident from his C.V., his education, and his work history, Polland/Polarik has no discernible expertise in computer forensics, digital imagery, or document examination.

I feel I should repeat that with emphasis: Ron Polland/Ron Polarik has no discernible expertise in computer forensics, digital imagery, or document examination.

His trade is in statistics and surveys. He has no degrees relating to computers or technology. He is not a computer expert; he has used computers. He is not a scanner expert; he has used scanners. At best, he is an amateur photography buff. He may have a doctorate, true, but it is in a field wholly unrelated to computer technology. Just see Florida State University's program profile. Even had he signed his real name to his 'XXXXXXXXX' declaration, he still would not have qualified as an expert in the field in which he was attempting to provide expert testimony. Polland would never survive a Daubert challenge, and any lawyer would be foolish to attempt to pass him off as an expert on these matters.

Thus, when Polarik was identified by Phil Berg as one of "three (3) Document Forensic Experts", this was a gross misrepresentation. A gross misrepresentation that Polland must not have minded, as he had his reports posted on Berg's website, without any comment or correction.

Contrast this lack of technological expertise with the credentials of one of his leading critics, Dr. Neal Krawetz. Krawetz holds a Bachelor's in Computer and Information Science, and a doctorate in Computer Science. His specialities are in computer security, software development, and computer forensics. Krawetz has given presentations on how digital images can be manipulated.

And what was Polland's response to this critic who has immensely more education and expertise with computers and digital forensics than himself? "[Krawetz is] a charlatan who falsely used his credentials to fool others into thinking that he is more than qualified to critique my research;" "He doesn't know what scanners can or cannot do;" and "I can say, flat-out, that Krawetz does not have anything close to the research skills I have."

Admittedly, Polland is correct on that last point; Krawetz does not have skills that are comparable to Polland's. Krawetz's relevant skills are far, far superior to Polland's. I refer any and all interested readers to Krawetz's criticism of Polarik's 'research'.

If all of this sounds comparable to the TechDude incident from last year, that's because it is. TechDude passed himself off as an expert in a field where he had no such expertise, declared that he'd made a bunch of stunning discoveries, a lot of people bought into his armchair 'forensic research,' and he was eventually exposed as a phony. They both even doctored their evidence. The reason why Polarik defended TechDude right up until the day he was exposed as a fraud was that Polland simply lacked the expertise to recognize TechDude's errors. Errors that Neal Krawetz, incidentally, did not miss.

The key difference between Polarik and TechDude is that TechDude only managed to pull off his charade for a month. Whereas Polland has managed to stretch his out for over a year.

Don't let him continue it any longer.

Obama's Pearl Harbor that Wasn't

2009-07-26T19:17:00.003-04:00

I fear I've been a little one-note in my Birther criticism lately, so let me take the opportunity to take a look back at another headliner of the Obama birth certificate crowd, Larry Johnson.

Slightly under a year ago, on August 9, 2008, Johnson wrote a post entitled "Obama's Impending Pearl Harbor". In it, he writes:

But then there is the Indonesian problem and his Hawaiian birth certificate.

I confirmed today that several teams/individuals visited Jakarta during the last six months to gather up critical documents regarding Barack. It is amazing what money can buy. The information includes details of how Barack made his way to Pakistan. Oh! Did I mention there have been similar efforts underway in Pakistan. There are several lessons and warnings in the John Edwards affair for Obama. First and foremost, you cannot hide your past.

Did I also mention how small Hawaii is? Republican operatives, with help from their own island backers, have unearthed critical information on Obama and are just biding their time until after the convention to drop it on him. Such as? Having a birth certificate that lists you as Barry Soetoro...

Meet the Obamas. You don’t know them? Don’t worry, Republican operatives are loaded for bear and you are going to meet a Barack Obama that was hidden and disguised during the Democratic primary. And when the introduction is over the Obama supporters will wish the only thing they had to worry about was a video with Michelle saying disparaging things about caucasians.

Dems. You’ve been warned. Don’t be surprised when the attacks come.

Notice that Johnson goes so far as to say he has "confirmed" at least some of this information. So, looking back a year later, how accurate were Johnson's predictions?

Destructive revelations and critical documents about Obama's trip to Pakistan that were unearthed by teams sent to Jakarta? Nope, never materialized. Johnson is 0-for-1.

Critical information on Obama's life in Hawaii found by Republican operatives? Nope, never materialized. 0-for-2.

A birth certificate giving Obama's name as 'Barry Soetoro'? Nope, never materialized. 0-for-3.

Ooooh, strikeout. Plus, I don't recall any surprise revelations in the last three months of the campaign that would've put the infamous "whitey" tape to shame. I hope Larry's found some more reliable sources.

Polarik's Faked Forgery

2009-07-24T23:58:00.007-04:00

I made it clear previously that I have no intention of meticulously debunking hundreds of pages of argument that "proves" Obama's birth certificate was forged out of two or more real Hawaiian COLBs, one of which may or may not have been Patricia DeCosta's, any more than I ever felt like debunking the books' worth of material from 9/11 Truthers who claimed that the photographic evidence "proved" the Pentagon was hit by a missile and not a plane. I'm especially not going to do it when the person presenting the argument hasn't produced any real forensic credentials, and yet who would fall back on those non-existant forensic credentials as to why my rebuttal shouldn't be trusted anyway.

After all, I have no forensic credentials. I'm an attorney. Granted, I have years of experience with computers, printers, and scanners, and I've read a lot of web pages and even built a few, and while that may be enough for Polarik to claim he's an expert, I have no such pretensions. I'm honest about that upfront.

However, since my central thesis is that Polarik is NOT honest, I'm most interested in demonstrating an occasion when his 'research' was not honest. Particularly one in contrast to an explicit claim of honesty. For instance:

"I HAVE NEVER FABRICATED ONE SINGLE BIT OF MY EVIDENCE. THE ONLY THING I MADE WAS A CLONE OF OBAMA'S FABRICATED COLB. ANYONE WHO SAYS THAT I FABRICATED EVIDENCE IS A LIAR!!"

Amazingly, all three of those sentences are lies.

Polarik's "clone" was presented in this post of July 23, 2008, just a smidgen over a year ago. In it, Polarik claimed that this image...

...was "actually the clone I created more from Michele's 2008 COLB image." He would subsequently describe the creation by saying that "I chose the highest quality image available to me, which was Michele's COLB, and made a bitmap of it. I then edited it, and saved it at a JPG comression of 45 percent."

He went on:

Keep in mind that this is not a point-for-point clone of the Kos image, since I did not proceed from an original, scanned image (a bitmap that has never been seen by the public), but it's darn close, and nobody was the wiser.

How do you tell my clone from Kos?

The "Time of Birth" on my clone is 7:25 AM; on the Kos it's 7:24 PM.

I replaced everything, EXCEPT the funky border. Like I said, the "security" border is not very secure when it can be reproduced by a scanner.

Making an exact "forgery" in terms of the Kos image dimensions, file size, JPG compression and resolution was not an easy job, although I spent less about an hour to make it.

I admit there is one kernel of truth in this: he's right about the times.

To begin with, I'm outright baffled by his claim that his "forgery" is exact in terms of image dimensions and file size. The Kos image is 2427 × 2369 pixels. His "clone" is 640 × 625 pixels. It's slightly under 7% of the size of the Kos COLB.

As for the claims that he created the above image from the "Michele COLB," and that this is "not a point-for-point clone of the Kos image, "I have created some simple illustrations. And I'm going to disclose upfront how I created them. They were all made with GIMP 2.6.6. All the underlying images were taken downloaded directly from the image locations provided on polarik.blogtownhall.com (e.g., the Kos image came from Kos). The underlying images were not manipulated in any way other than resizing, cropping only when noted, and resaving as animated gifs. There was no sharpening, blurring, recoloring, level-adjustment...nothing.

First, I trimmed the excess around the outside of the Michele COLB, to make the borders line up, and resized it to 640x625. I overlaid it with Polarik's "clone" image, allegedly built from it, and got this:

Very noticeably different. Different background, different word placement, different border, missing seal, etc. Polarik apparently did a *lot* of work to turn one into the other, and he did it in under an hour, no less.

So let's look at an animation of the "clone" and the Kos image. For this, I only had to resize the Kos image; the ratio of 2427 × 2369 pixels precisely equals the ratio of 640 × 625 pixels. Funny how that works.

Anyhow, here's *that* animation:

Now aside from some difference in clarity, you may not notice at first that *anything* is different. Even the rattan pattern in the background doesn't shift. Compare that to how well Polarik managed to imitate the background in his other attempt at mimickry:

Admittedly, he claimed this was the work of only two minutes, but that was a self-imposed deadline. In attempting a little digital trickery, this is what he produced, and it's the one point of comparison we have for his Photoshopping skills. It's not a very convincing fake, and it was admittedly made directly from the Obama image.

Meanwhile his "clone" was allegedly made from a completely different image, and yet it's ridiculously close. The rattan background is exactly placed. The border is indistinguishable. Every letter of text is exactly the right size and in exactly the right place (except for five).

However, two significant things are different. One, the reverse date stamp that is evident on the Kos is *almost* missing on the "clone." Almost, but not quite. As you can tell, it's mostly missing, but some remnants of it remain around the bottom of the '7,' '6,' and 'N,' in exactly the right places. It's curious that in making his "clone," Polarik would fake the bottom of those three figures, and be careful enough to place them exactly, but not bother with the whole date stamp.

Second, the time has been changed. Not merely the exchange of a '4' and 'P' for a '5' and 'A,' but the entire time has noticeably moved upwards. And it's conspicuously moved upwards in a way that is mirrored by no other text on the certificate. Here it is cropped and scaled up (notice too how the backgrounds match up):

So when Polarik claimed he never fabricated evidence, he lied. He fabricated his evidence of this "clone." When Polarik claimed the only thing he made was this "clone," he lied. He never made a clone. He took the original Obama image, made a sloppy and incomplete attempt to cover up the date stamp, replaced the time (in not-quite-the-right-place), shrunk the image down to 7% the size of the Kos, and resaved it. And then he falsely claimed that he had mocked it up from the Michele COLB.

Then again, I could be wrong. He might have replaced the time and THEN sloppily attempted to cover up the date stamp.

At the time a year ago, Polarik promised to publish within days "a step by step guide showing exactly how I produced this clone, as well as posting a sampling of all of the dead ends I reached using the explanations professed by the nonbelievers." Not surprisingly, this "step by step guide" never materialized.

Polarik Recap

2009-07-23T17:43:00.003-04:00

OK, so with all I've had to say on the subject of Ron Polarik, what do I think it all adds up to?

Simple: I don't believe he can be trusted. His willingness to outright lie is on full display in his accounting of the TechDude saga; in an attempt to redeem his own reliability after having defended TechDude, he fell back on the claim that he'd simply been lying to everyone for a month.

It's a similar problem with the name. It doesn't matter whether "Polarik" is a screen name or a real name. Lots of people post online under screen names, and I'm sure one of the explanations for is probably true. No, it's the fact that Polarik can't maintain a consistent story as to which it is. Here's a minor detail that really doesn't matter, but he's clearly giving different explanations at different times.

And what about the credentials? Over the last year, it's the credentials that have gotten the most attention. To be perfectly honest though, I don't think they're ALL bogus. In fact, I'd be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the credentials he gave in his anonymous, XXXXXXXXX declaration. Polarik's a liar, but I don't think he's dumb. And it would be very, very dumb to lie about your credentials in an expert legal filing, even anonymously. It's hard to plead mistake or ignorance on that, the way he could claim mistake with his work product.

Besides, if he's going to completely make up credentials to validate his "expert" opinion, he made up the wrong credentials. The claimed degrees aren't any more relevant to document analysis than my J.D., and the claimed experience is frankly rather generic. He's worked with computers, scanners, and printers. Well, so have I. Doesn't make me much of an expert in them though, any more than my frequent use of a microwave makes me an expert in radiology.

I can even conceive of a reason why he wouldn't have mentioned any legitimate credentials earlier. Legitimate credentials are real information, and Polarik has always been very, very careful not to give any personal information about himself. Enough personal information could allow someone to figure out who he really is. Although he's claimed a lot of degrees, he hasn't actually named them often. But I'm skeptical of there being two other Masters and another Doctorate, especially when they DON'T appear in the declaration, so I still find his overall resume untrustworthy.

Frankly, I don't think it costs much to concede he may actually have a single Ph.D., particularly when it's not in the field he's trying to claim expertise. After all, so does Alan Keyes. Orly Taitz has a J.D., and so does Phil Berg. Suffixes may be a sign of simple intelligence (except in Orly's case), but they're not a guarantee of credibility.

So we know that Polarik is willing to lie on a fairly wide range of matters, even on petty matters. We know that he doesn't actually claim any specific expert credentials with regard to digital imagery, image analysis, or forensic studies (even as he chides his critics for not having the technical expertise that he lacks himself). And we know he's adamant about not having his real identity discovered.

We know that he would appear to be partial to a wide array of conspiracy theories, particularly surrounding Obama. In a handful of FreeRepublic posts, he's expressed some anti-vaccine beliefs. He's even suggested that illegal immigrants carry bubonic plague and smallpox, despite the latter having been eradicated 30 years ago.

In the end, the question with Polarik's "evidence," as with any evidence, is whether the source is credible. And Polarik isn't.

Polarik Miscellania

2009-07-20T20:54:00.006-04:00

In the course of drudging through old posts, I've come across a few more noteworthy comments from the good "Doctor." I'll be editing my previous posts to add them in, but I wanted to draw some attention to them here first:

Polarik, on his experience:

July 25, 2008 - "I have almost 40 years of computer experience and 20 years of computer graphics experience. That trumps his experience.I was a professor of Research for 15 years,"

I'll cut the guy a break for claiming he's a "professor of research" without specifying any field of research. Still, I'm not aware of any other occasions when "Polarik" claimed professorial experience. For what it's worth, it wasn't until over a month later that he gave himself his first higher education degree. Also note that by this point in late July he had already upped his computer experience to "40 years" from his initial claim of 20 years just five weeks earlier.

You can also add to Polarik's list of skills the capacity to do voice comparison analysis, which he claimed in his posts in the FreeRepublic thread "Is Obama the secret son of Malcolm X?"

Polarik, on TechDude:

July 15, 2008 - "FYI: TechDude and I are collaborating on a full report, along with TD."

& - "TechDude's got the technical details nailed down."

Nothing terribly different here, but these rather strong pro-TechDude posts are from five days earlier than the earliest pro-TechDude comments I previously shared. "Polarik" was firmly in TechDude's camp for a full month before he retconned himself into having always known the guy was a fraud.

There's a hint of '1984'-style history there: "Polarik has always been at war with TechDude."

Polarik, on what he thinks Obama's hiding:

July 24, 2008 - "Here's another thought. I've seen many people spelling Obama as "Obamah." If that is a legitimate variant of his name, the number of letters in each of his three names would be 666!"

July 24, 2008 - "There is more than a distinct possibility that Obama Sr. is an Arab and not an African...How much support would he have if he were Arab-American? Now, that wouyld be a good reason to post a forgery."

August 12, 2008 - "Yes, it is in Obama's case b/c his current COLB bears the name of "Barry Soetoro."

Sep. 17, 2008 - "I swear I think the guy's an operative for Al-Qaeda."

April 14, 2009 - (Do you think Stanley Ann Dunham is not his mother then?) "Stanley, Yes. Obama Sr, No."

June 28, 2009 - "[Obama's Hawaiian grandmother] was cremated like his mother, and scattered, like his mother, and both may be living just fine some place out of sight."

I like putting lots of conspiracy theories back-to-back. I think it helps to see the full picture of someone like Polarik, who apparently believes that Barack Obama is the faux-black/Arab, Indonesian-adopted-and-renamed, al-Qaeda sleeper agent, illegitimate son of Malcolm X, whose mother and grandmother faked their deaths, and who could bear a sign of the antichrist (if only you added extra letters to his name).

Polarik, on moving:

August 12, 2008 - "Fortunately, no, because I've moved twice in the past two months, and I'm going to have my number disconnected, and use my cell in the meantime."

I just thought this was interesting. Especially when taken in connection with his later comments about struggling to make rent.

Polarik, on his name:

August 12, 2008 9:08:08 AM - "Which is why I use my last name and why I'm still here. When you have irrefutable evidence, you let it speak for itself."

So "Polarik" is his own personal real last name. Noted.

And if you're wondering why I included the time of that disclosure, it's because when "Polarik" posted at August 12, 2008 12:57:44 AM in the same thread (a post I previously shared), he claimed his screen name was a pseudonym.

Yes, "Polarik" actually changed his story about his screen name in the 8 hours and 10 minutes between these two posts. When he went to bed in the early hours of August 12, "Polarik" was a pseudonym. When he woke up, "Polarik" was his real last name. He also went to bed defending TechDude, but didn't have much to say the next day. What could have happened on August 12 to cause these 180 degree turnarounds?

Oh...right.

On Rebutting Polarik's "Research"

2009-07-20T17:07:00.004-04:00

I'm sure it's escaped no one's attention that while I've been dissecting the "Doctor" for a little while now, I haven't had much to say about his "research." I've had a reason for this.

First and foremost, it's a chump's game. Polarik may claim that "Frauds do not produce 160-page reports with 140 images," but he's dead wrong. Conspiracy advocates regularly produce reams of paperwork and tomes of supposed documentation to back up their claims. To cite an extreme example, you may have heard that James von Brunn, the Holocaust museum shooter (and part-time Birther) had written an entire book that was supposed to document the Jewish conspiracy. 9/11 Truthers have also created websites, written tons of papers, and conducted whole conferences in support of their pet conspiracy theory. The mere fact that effort was expended and cherry-picked "evidence" was presented is not, in itself, a sign of legitimate research.

Now Polarik likes to brag that nobody's gone through and defeated all of his arguments. That's essentially true. And it's true for the same reason that nobody has gone through and dissected every Truther argument or every claim in von Brunn's book; it's a waste of time. Normal people already don't need a rebuttal because they already dismiss the conspiracy, and people who already subscribe to the conspiracy will simply reject any rebuttal as biased or faked or incomplete. Limited rebuttals are common (like the Popular Mechanics rejoinder of 9/11 myths), but full-length counter-arguments require a level of obsessiveness that's more likely to be found among the conspiracy advocates than the opponents.

One particular reason why thorough rebuttals are a waste of time is that conspiracy theories tend to adapt themselves around strong counter-arguments. For instance, last week, after seeing photos of a letter the White House sent to Obama's birth hospital, Polarik wrote of a White House letter: "This letter is a f**king joke! totally bogus!!...Ya gotta be kidding me! Who did this? A third grader?" He followed this up with a lengthy list of supposed signs of phoniness, alleged features that distinguished this letter from real White House letters. I rebutted him on all these aspects, and while rationalizing away his earlier position, he revised his stance to "I don't have to get everything right. All I need is for one thing to be right." He went from claiming it was a horrible and obvious fake to claiming it was a shrewd fake, but remains unswayed as to his belief that it's fake. Imagine that approach translated to a 160-page document.

And let me say a little more about that document. Here's what else Polarik's had to say about his "Final Report":

"Anyone who reads this report thoroughly will know that it was written by a genuine researcher using sound, scientific methods to explore these forgeries in depth. Frauds do not produce 160-page reports with 140 images that fully document the steps taken, that clearly explain the phenomena under investigation, and more importantly, provide sufficient information to allow other researchers to validate the findings."

Based on this description, you'd think he'd written a professional-looking paper. But it's not. He starts off with a 6-page "Forward" that's terribly overlong and padded with unnecessary information. When he finally reaches a section he entitles his "Executive Summary" around page 7, he never quite sets out a clear thesis for the "research" that follows. Then the ~160 pages of "research" aren't organized into any discernable format; there's the occasional subheading, but for the most part it's just a hundred pages of rambling argument, with one point bleeding into the next. There's no table of contents, no itemized listing of discrete arguments, no clear organizational scheme at all. And when he reaches the end, there's no clear conclusion or final summary. It just kind of...stops.

In short, it sure doesn't read like a true "research" paper. It's overly long, overly padded, and utterly disorganized. It's nigh-impossible to rebut his arguments because without reading the entire darn thing, I can't even discern what his specific arguments are. It's like reading a legal brief written by a non-lawyer who's representing himself pro se in court. It sure doesn't read like the "final report" of someone with two doctorates.

Also, despite Polarik's claims that he fully documents his work, I'm inclined to disagree. He avoids specifically identifying the hardware or software that he's working with, which would seem to be highly relevant in this context. And he often doesn't fully document the steps he's taken.

I happen to think this type of presentation reflects on Polarik's credility with regards to his alleged "expertise," but I'll leave it up to the reader to decide how to weight that for himself.

Still, despite all this, I feel like I should make some effort to take on Polarik's "research." Mainly because of the hypocritical and inconsistent response that Polarik and his defenders have towards critics.

On the one hand, should you attempt to discredit Polarik by attacking his credibility, through examples of his lying and history of making inconsistent statements, and by disputing his alleged "credentials," and you're making ad hominem attacks on Polarik by focusing on him instead of his written work.

On the other hand, if you choose to focus on discrediting Polarik's report and the arguments he makes, then he responds by claiming that you're not qualified to argue with someone who has his credentials. Even if you're someone like Neal Krawetz, who is a documented expert in digital image manipulation.

So argue credentials, and he falls back on the research. Argue the research, and he falls back on the credentials. It's a no-win situation.

But as long as I'm puncturing Polarik, I might as well try to find something in his "research" to poke a big hole in, just for the sake of thoroughness. This, unfortunately, has proven surprisingly difficult.

Not because Polarik's work is airtight. Hardly. The vast majority of Polarik's "research" is to single out some feature of Obama's birth certificate, and throw suspicion on it. It's not unlike the 9/11 Truthers who would point to photographs of the Pentagon crash that didn't obviously display plane wreckage and say "Look! Isn't that suspicious?" Their photos weren't manipulated, but their jump-to-conclusions reasoning was faulty. So if you wanted to rebut them, you had to counter their conclusions. And their conclusions, like Polarik's, violated the heck out of Occam's Razor.

The problem with Polarik is that even after reading a lot more of his "research" than I wish I had, I'm honestly still not sure exactly what his conclusions are. He'll appear to make a strong determination ("This letter is a total joke and looks like it was made by a kid"), and then will retreat back into a more ambiguous position when challenged ("Maybe it's not that unusual, but it could still be fake"), while pretending that he hasn't actually moved at all. His research will lead him to an absolute finding of fact, and then later he'll reach a different absolute finding of fact. It's impossible to pin down a conclusion to attack him on, because he's reached so many incompatible conclusions. If I shoot down one, he simply needs to fall back on another, or act like he never made the original one to begin with.

For instance, in one post he stated his conclusion (rather clearly) to be:

"I can prove that the KOS image, and all of its offspring, are originals that were altered. What I cannot prove is what, exactly, was changed in them to make them different from the paper document in the possession of someone authorized to receive it.">

Which is true enough (the black box over the Certificate number was obviously and admittedly added digitally), but this runs totally against every other claim he's made about alleged specific changes in the image. It's a claim so generic and pointless that it's not even worth rebutting. It's just "I can't say how the document might've been altered, but I can say Photoshop was involved somehow, and isn't that suspicious?"

I thought I'd finally stumbled across a good, firm rebuttable conclusion that Polarik shared on August 12: "the forgery is a drop-dead clone of DeCosta's COLB." And on August 10: To put it another way, the Kos COLB is a CLONE of the PD COLB. It is such a dead-ringer for it..."

That's a pretty strong position to take. "Drop-dead clone" isn't very ambiguous. So let me compare the DeCosta COLB to the...oh wait, Polarik was less decisive in other posts.

Elsewhere he wrote: "Except for the bogus Kos border. I never said that the Kos cOLB copied everything from the PD COLB." Or "So, the presence of a seal, "hidden" or otherwise, that was not the same size and not in the same position as the DeCosta image turned out to be the conssequence of copying the background from a second COLB."

So it's a "drop-dead copy" except for the background. And the border. And the seal. And the date stamp. And the Obama-specific text. And at least some of the boilerplate text (PD's says "Date Accepted by State Registrar" where Obama's says "Date Filed by State Registrar").

Which leaves us with some of the words printed on the background, and the big black Hawaiian seal at the top. Is Polarik's argument, then, that Obama's people cut-and-pasted the boilerplate text from the PD Certification onto a second background? Or that they used the PD Certification merely as a guide for text-placement? Neither seems to justify "drop-dead clone."

One of Polarik's arguments in support of a PD forgery was that it was the only Hawaiian COLB available online, and thus the only one they had to work from. So where'd they get the second background? If it was a blank background, where'd the seal and date stamp come from? If it was a full COLB with text, why replace the boilerplate text at all? What use is the PD COLB then? Did they supposedly cover up the boilerplate text and then replace it with identical boilerplate text based on the DeCosta document?

See, I can rebut "The Obama COLB is a drop-dead clone of the PD COLB." I can't rebut whatever Polarik finally ended up arguing, because it seems to have eventually degenerated down to a similarity in word placement. Which, of course, isn't really unusual with government documents. Like with the 9/11 photos, it boils down to "Look at this! Isn't that suspicious?"

So is there anything in Polarik's "research" that's worth attacking? There is one thing. And given the length that this post has reached, it'll be getting its own post.

The Freeware Expertise of "Dr. Ron Polarik"

2009-07-16T12:29:00.005-04:00

In his expert declaration back in December, "Polarik" described his technological expertise thusly:

"I have worked with document image scanners since 1982 and with digital images and digital editing software since 1987. I have received professional training in the use of Adobe Photoshop and Image Ready software with a particular focus on creating web graphics."

While "Polarik" has been steadfastly silent on the specific origins of his alleged academic expertise, he has occasionally provided specific mention of the software and technologies that he uses in his "research."

First, on June 30, 2008:

"[P]rops to the GIMP development team (http://www.gimp.org/) for providing the software used to examine these images."

GIMP is a downloadable freeware program, a no-cost alternative to Adobe Photoshop. It's a little strange that an expert in digital software and web graphics wouldn't own Adobe Photoshop.

Then on August 15, 2008:

"One of the Kos COLB image clones that I created was done with Microsoft Paint -- a very basic image editor"

Microsoft Paint, of course, is a free program that is bundled with Windows.

And now on July 14, 2009:

"Since November of last year, I have conducted a number of sophisticated image analyses using new software that was not available to me last year. One is called, JPEGSnoop,"

"I also re-examined the photos with a software program called JMicrovision"

JPEGsnoop is a downloadable freeware program.

JMicrovision is, also, a downloadable freeware program.

Yes, for all his alleged work and professional training with digital editing software, "Polarik" only seems to use free software in his research. Make of that what you will.

"Ron Polarik" Continues to Rewrite History

2009-07-15T23:38:00.007-04:00

After being all but silent on the Townhall blog for the better part of a year, "Polarik" yesterday offered up a huge revelation:

It's Official! Hawaii never issued Obama's 2007 Certification of Live Birth

Last year, while working on my final report, Obama's Born Conspiracy, I called Hawaii's DOH and asked to speak directly to Dr. Alvin Onaka, the Hawaii State Registrar and Head of the Office of Health Status Monitoring (OSHM), of which Vital Records is a part. I posed as a writer doing geneology research, knowing that if I portrayed myself as yet another investigator seeking information on Obama's birth records, that I would be immediately shot down. Strictly speaking, I was collecting vital record information on Obama's heritage, after all...

Then, I slipped in the the following question. I asked him if Janice Okubo had confirmed that his office produced a 2007 Certification of Live Birth, date-stamped June 6, 2007, with Obama's birth information on it, and he quickly replied:

"Absolutely not. No one in our office confirmed it."

That promptly ended the conversation as Dr. Onaka was not going to respond to any more questions from me. Since then, Hawaii has not answered anymore questions about Obama's birth record from anyone.

First off, it's important to point out that "Polarik"s story doesn't match up with "Polarik"s headline. If we take the story at face value and as fully true, he still fails to claim that anyone in Hawaii admitted they didn't issue it. He claims Onaka denied that anyone had previously confirmed it, and he specifically bolds the portion that he apparently finds significant, but he does NOT claim that Onaka actually disputed issuing it.

So "Polarik" can't even write a headline without getting something wrong. But that's not what I want to focus on.

No, I want to draw attention to a parenthetical of "Polarik":

(BTW, I noted this conversation in an earlier comment, on FreeRepublic.com).

Clearly, an attempt by "Polarik" to head off the obvious question of "Why hasn't he ever mentioned this conversation from last fall before now?" So in anticipation, he cites the best evidence he has, a post he made...on June 16. Last month. Not exactly "last year," when he claims the conversation took place.

However, the fact that "Polarik" has suddenly claimed that this event happened nine months ago allows us yet another opportunity to demonstrate how malleable history is for Mr. "Polarik." First off, let's consider all the times that "Polarik" has actually shared this conversation:

June 16, 2009 - "Last October, I spoke directly with Hawaii's State Registrar and head of Vital Records, Dr. Alvin Onaka, about an image showing what is called a, "Certification of Live Birth," or COLB and he confirmed what my research proved: that Obama's COLB, dated June 6,2007, was never released to anyone by the State of Hawaii."

July 8, 2009 - "Last year, I spoke with the Hawaii State Registrar, himself, Dr. Alvin T. Onaka, who provided me with the following bit of information. When I asked him if Janice Okubo had confirmed that his office produced a 2007 COLB, date-stamped June 6, 2007, with Obama's birth information on it. He said, 'Absolutely not. No one in our office confirmed it.'"

July 14, 2009 - "Last year, while working on my final report, Obama's Born Conspiracy, I called Hawaii's DOH and asked to speak directly to Dr. Alvin Onaka, the Hawaii State Registrar and Head of the Office of Health Status Monitoring (OSHM), of which Vital Records is a part. I posed as a writer doing geneology research, knowing that if I portrayed myself as yet another investigator seeking information on Obama's birth records, that I would be immediately shot down..." He goes on to describe an extended conversation where Onaka allegedly answered several pedantic questions about Hawaiian vital records before allegedly answering the Obama question and THEN hanging up.

Notice that in just the last month, the story of the conversation has gotten longer and more dramatic.

More curiously, for a conversation that "Polarik" now considers to be so groundbreaking and revelatory, it's strange that he never mentioned it prior to June. Maybe it's just that the opportunity to talk about Mr. Onaka never presented itself.

If only that were true:

November 22, 2008 - "In fact, if the name matches one on file, all you will get back is about the same as what Directors Fukino and Onaka said about Obama -- that a birth record exists."

AND

"[IMPORTANT NOTICE] On Oct 31, 2008, the Directors of Health (Fukino) and Vital Statistics (Onaka) in Hawaii confirmed that there is a "birth record" for Obama in this database."

*No mention of the alleged October conversation with Mr. Onaka.*

December 18, 2008 - "Quote: Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said today she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama's original birth certificate. (True, but Lie#5 based on how [Krawetz] used it)"

*No mention of the alleged October conversation with Mr. Onaka.*

December 29, 2008 - "The following points come from my conversations with Vital Records staff and the State registrar, Alvin Onaka..."

*No mention of the alleged October conversation with Mr. Onaka.*

January 26, 2009 - "I spoke with the State Registrar, Alvin Onaka, back in July, and one of the things I asked him was if Hawaii followed the Census guidelines for race classifications. Call him yourself if you want to know what he told me."

*No mention of the alleged October conversation with Mr. Onaka.*

Yes, apparently "Polarik" wants us to believe that he had some kind of astonishing conversation with Mr. Onaka a whole nine months ago that completely validates his argument, and he simply completely failed to mention it until now, even when he wrote his 'Final Report,' even when he was talking about Mr. Onaka, and even when he was talking about other conversations he supposedly had with Mr. Onaka.

Frankly, after so many alleged calls to Mr. Onaka during the middle of 2008, I'm half-surprised that Onaka wouldn't start to recognize the voice on the other end of the phone. I'm sure he gets a lot of calls, but how many can he get from mainland folks wanting details on things like COLB borders and seal placement?

Who knows, maybe "Polarik" really did call Onaka in October. But if he did, you can rest assured that Onaka didn't say anything to validate "Polarik"s work. Because if he had, you would've heard about it long before now. And if you trust "Polarik" to accurately recall a conversation from nine months ago, remember that he couldn't accurately recall his own comments about TechDude, his own academic credentials, or even his own father's name over much shorter timespans.

The Secret Meaning of "Polarik"

2009-07-12T09:00:00.002-04:00

As we've seen, "Ron Polarik" has inordinate difficulty keeping his educational resume straight, and he was very much 'for' TechDude and his research before he was strongly against him. Factual consistency is, sadly, not his strong suit.

So let's cut him a break and focus on what should be the absolute simplest aspect of "Ron Polarik": his name.

First off, "Polarik" did not exist before June 2008. On June 13, 2008, his first post was made to the Townhall blog he set up, The Greater Evil.

He has a one-sentence biography at Townhall: "I have studied the Arab-Israeli conflict for 30 years." Strangely, I've never seen "Polarik" mention this bit of alleged expertise anywhere else.

"Polarik" created a Yahoo account on June 16, 2008.

"Polarik" then created a FreeRepublic account on June 22, 2008. His 'About' page states "The first (and only) authority on the Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth."

There was also a "Polarik" who posted a blog comment on June 9, 2008, on the subject of gun control. Interestingly, the post takes a pro-gun control position.

During those first several weeks, he was only "Polarik." Not "Ron Polarik". Not "Dr. Polarik." Not "Dr. Ron Polarik, PhD." Just one name, like Bjork, or Liberace.

Then, on August 10, 2008, he signed a TechDude-related apology as "Ron Polarik." I believe that's the first time he gained a first name.

Two days later, the newly christened "Ron Polarik" had a few words about the nature of his name:

"Take it from someone who has also been harassed by Obama supporters, that writing under a screen name may be the only thing that saves your ass from these insane Obamanites.

Those who criticize other people for using a screen nickname instead of their actual name need to crawl back under the rock that's been on their heads since the Internet first became a social network.

Good gosh, without pseudonyms, people would have online handles like johnsmith2004387, and who has to spend all day deleting his SPAM mailbox of emails for the other two million John Smiths in the world.

My take on some of these bloggers that I know who use their real names is that they are such egotistical narcissists that they get off anytime others write to them, using their real names.

Having THEIR blog referenced by another, more well-known blogger is simply nirvana to them."

If we hadn't known already, here we essentially have a confession that he uses a pseudonym.

September 6, 2008 was, of course, the first time he declared that he had a previously-unmentioned doctorate. After this, the "Dr." and "PhD" started appearing alongside his name often. Especially after he shared that he had a second previously-unmentioned doctorate. For instance, his Final Report has "Ron Polarik, PhD" prominently displayed at the top.

October 25, 2008:

"She still does not get it that Ron Polarik is a real name, NOT a screen name,"

So it's not a pseudonym. That is, until it was again when he offered up an origin for his internet handle on October 30, 2008:

"My first name is Ronald. Polarik is my father's last name and also is my 'screen name.'"

Yet, higher up in the same post:

"She still doesn't get that Polarik is a real name, not a screen name."

So "Polarik" manages to simultaneously claim that "Polarik" is a screen name and NOT a screen name. Let's not even bother with the inconsistency of his claim from five days earlier that "Ron Polarik" was a real name.

As I pointed out in my post on "Polarik"s credentials, his own claimed resume necessarily puts his age in the mid-sixties or early-seventies, at the least. This would put his father upwards of 80. The Social Security Death Index reports a grand total of ZERO persons with the surname "Polarik." RootsWeb WorldConnect, a user-submitted genealogy database, also has zero "Polarik"s.

In his pixel-faced YouTube video on November 25, 2008, he shared why he was concealing his identity:

"I’m concealing my identity because I have received threats from people who are loyal to Obama and who don’t want the truth to be known"

Contrast that explanation with the explanation given in his anonymous Declaration in December:

"I am submitting this opinion anonymously because I work for a government contractor and need to remain anonymous in order to keep my employer free from any ramifications due to presenting this opinion. In addition, my family needs the opinion to be anonymous due to the nature of my work."

On November 29:

"Ron is my real first name, and Polarik is what I got from my Father's real last name. I don't sign sworn and witnessed TWO Affidavits if I am a fraud or don't exist."

This could just be a matter of phrasing, but whereas "Polarik" was previously "my father's last name," now it's "what I got from my Father's real last name." That's not quite the same thing. One implies that "Polarik" is his father's actual surname, the other suggests that it's only a derivative of the actual surname. The second is the more plausible, if only because actual people named "Polarik" seem to be in short supply.

Also, despite his claim of having signed two sworn and witnessed Affidavits, a grand total of ZERO signed and witnessed Affidavits have actually been produced for anyone to see.

"I don't sign two affidavits if I'm a fraud."
"What affidavits are you talking about? Where are these affidavits?"
"Sorry. Can't say."

By December 18, 2008, he had taken to signing his posts "Ron Polarik, PhD, MS." He also included this:

""Anonymous pseudonym" is an oxymoron, and given that my name, Dr. Ron Polarik, is known around the world, I am hardly "anonymous." Krawetz uses the term, pseudonym, as a pejorative to imply that I am a "fraud." The truth is that "Dr. Ron Polarik" is the first person to blow the whistle on Obama and Factcheck"

For someone who had previously called bloggers who use their real names "egotistical narcissists" who experience nirvana when their name gets cited on the web, "Polarik" seems awfully proud of his name-recognition here.

Nothing much happens for a few months, and then "Polarik" goes and does a complete 180 on the story behind his name on April 4, 2009 (bolding mine):

"I never said that Polarik was a pseudonym. My critics and detractors did,"

Apparently, all those times he did say that "Polarik" was a pseudonym simply don't count. Like the time he said it again, twelve days later:

"For kicks, I did a search of "Polarik" on the Daily Kos website, and the only things it turned up were two comments of about ten words each -- one, in Dec 2008, by Corvo (whom I believe is actually Jay McKinnon) noting my apparent anonymity and use of a pseudonym (which, presumably, no one else does on the Internet)"

So to recap, "Polarik" is an internet handle that first appeared online for the explicit purpose of perpetuating the Birther theories, and the name "Polarik" is, alternatively,

1) his father's real last name,
2) derived from his father's last name,
3) a pseudonym, or
4) definitely not a pseudonym and any claims that it is a pseudonym is a lie by his critics.

Barack O'Bama

2009-07-11T22:59:00.004-04:00

When Joe Biden is referred to as being "Irish Catholic", it's commonly understood that this means he comes from an Irish ethnic background. That his ancestors were Irish, not that Biden himself is from Ireland. Because that would be silly.

But let a reporter covering Barack Obama's visit to Ghana casually refer to the President as "Kenyan" when speaking with a Ghanan citizen, and WorldNetDaily's reaction is, predictably, 'MSNBC reports that Obama was born in Kenya!!!'

English must be a second language for Birthers. And I have to assume their first language is Swiss, which would explain their obsession with de Vattel.

The Ever-Changing Credentials of "Dr. Ron Polarik"

2009-07-07T23:00:00.024-04:00

If you've been exposed to Birthers for any length of time in the past several months, you've seen the name "Dr. Ron Polarik." So let's take a moment to look back on the precise credentials that "Dr." "Polarik" has claimed for himself over the past year.

When he first appeared on the scene, in his very first Townhall post, Polarik described his experience thusly:

June 13, 2008:
"I've been working with computers, printers, and typewriters for over 20 years, and given a set of printed letters, I can discern what kind of device made them."

That was Polarik's full resume for over two months. He briefly expanded it eight weeks later, in mid-August:

August 14, 2008:
"As a handwriting analyst, I can say with some certainty, that two people wrote on this record book."

A new skill, but no specific claim of higher education. That first came another two weeks after that, coincidentally a mere couple of weeks after TechDude was exposed as a fraud:

August 27, 2008:
"Little did he [Neal Krawetz] know that I have a Masters in Statistics"

OK, a Masters in Statistics. I'm not entirely sure how that's relevant at all to image analysis, but sure, why not.

In case you want to think this was a typo, he repeated it the next day. And again in an attempted comment on Krawetz's site.

However, in a comment that Polarik made a month earlier on Krawetz's site, on the exact same subject, he fails to mention any Masters in Statistics.

A little over a week later:

September 6, 2008:
"Little did he [Neal Krawetz] know that I'm also a Statistician with a Masters in Experimental Psychology and a Doctorate in Instructional Media. I don't like to flaunt it, y'know."

Now the Masters degree is in Experimental Psychology, statistics is mentioned without citing a degree, and, for the first time, he claims a doctorate in Instructional Media.

September 10, 2008:
"What was particularly irksome to me, as someone with a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology, is implying that I don't understand "basic physics," "

Now the Masters in Experimental Psychology is a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology.

September 12, 2008:
"I’ve been working with computers for 40 years. I’ve been a graphic artist for 50 years. My first “personal computer” was an S-100 I built in 1977, followed by a TRS-80, a Commodore 64, Apple I & II, IBM PC, Original Macintosh, Timex/Sinclair 1000, and lots of IBM and Unix mainframes along the way. Ive done programming in CP-M, ASP, Basic, Visual Basic, C and its variants, Java, Javascript, VBScript, Plato, DB2, HTML, SPSS, SAS, Minitab, StatPro, and everything Microsoft.

"My PhD is in Instructional Media and Experimental Psychology (dual major)."

"Well, yes, I did lie about my experience. It’s so much greater than I initially reported. I figure that credentials don’t mean squat if you cannot use your brain."

Back on August 28, Polarik criticized Neal Krawetz's credentials on this ground: "Nowhere will you find ANY specific or related experience in 'analyzing computer-generated images'". Now look at Polarik's claimed resume above. Can you taste the hypocrisy?

Also note how readily Polarik is willing to cop to lying in order to concoct a reason why it took him almost three months to mention he had multiple doctorates, as opposed to his original resume of "working with computers, printers, and typewriters."

December 18, 2008:
"I am an expert in Hawaiian Certifications of Live Birth,"

If you're willing to be generous, you could take this to mean that Polarik achieved expertise in Hawaiian COLBs between June and December. Sure, it's an obscenely narrow field to consider oneself an "expert," and I'm not sure he's claimed to have ever held more than one physical COLB (Michele's), but if the claim is that he's wasted more time obsessing over a Hawaiian COLB than anyone else, he might be right.

December 21, 2008:
"Krawetz and his crowd like to taunt me with "Krawetz is a Real PhD with a Real Name and is a Real Expert," but I got my Masters degree before Krawetz was born, and my Doctorate while he was still in grade school."

Significantly here, Polarik says "Masters degree," not "degrees." Even though between August and December he will have claimed three very different Masters degrees.

Also, Krawetz is approximately forty, so Polarik's numbers suggest that he is at least in his early-to-mid sixties. Combined with his earlier claim that he has been a graphic artist for 50 years, either he's counting back to his teenage days for that figure, or he got his "Masters degree" when he was closer to thirty, and he's now pushing seventy or more.

I welcome readers to watch Polarik's video and decide for yourself whether the pixel-faced guy in the video looks like a senior citizen.

Finally, we have the resume Polarik presented as part of his 'Declaration of XXXXXXXXXXXX' (not an Affidavit, as often claimed; it's not signed, dated, notarized, witnessed, or styled as an "Affidavit." And, of course, it's anonymous):

December 2008:
"I hold a PhD in Instructional Systems with 25+ years of
post-doctoral work experience, and a Masters Degree in Educational Research, Design, and Testing. I have worked with computers and computer printers, plotters, and optical/digital scanners, typesetting, offset printing, and automatic typewriters, for over thirty (30) years.

"In my professional career I have held positions as a Computer Programmer, Web Designer, Media Consultant, Research Director and Statistician. I have testified as a Statistical Expert in Governmental hearings over the last twenty (20) years.

"I began working with computers on or about 1969 and with graphic arts since 1965. I have worked with document image scanners since 1982 and with digital images and digital editing software since 1987. I have received professional training in the use of Adobe Photoshop and Image Ready software with a particular focus on creating web graphics. I have also worked with laser printers since 1986."

Now he adds plenty of mentions of digital imagery experience, which he apparently didn't consider important enough to mention back in September. His original claim in June of 20 years of computer work has also now doubled to 40 years.

But that's not the big reveal here. That would be the naming of Polarik's THIRD Masters Degree, this time in "Educational Research, Design, and Testing." (Fun Fact: Googling "Educational Research, Design, and Testing" produces only a handful of webpages, all of which are quoting Polarik.) Plus, his doctorate in "Instructional Media" is now a doctorate in "Instructional Systems."

Finally, I can't put a specific date on it, but Polarik's Townhall blog, The Greater Evil, has a one-sentence biography stating: "I have studied the Arab-Israeli conflict for 30 years." Strangely, I've never seen "Polarik" mention this bit of alleged expertise anywhere else. It seems likely that this was written when the blog was created in June 2008. It also provides an explanation for why the blog is titled "The Greater Evil," as that would fit a blog intended to be about the Arab-Israeli conflict more than about Obama's birth certificate.

So to recap JUST the specific claims regarding degrees from educational institutions, from June 2008 through December 2008:

Jun. 13, 2008 - Aug. 26, 2008: None.
Aug. 27, 2008: Masters in Statistics
Sep. 6, 2008: Masters in Experimental Psychology, Doctorate in Instructional Media
Sep. 10, 2008: Doctorate in Experimental Psychology
Sep. 12, 2008: PhD in Instructional Media and Experimental Psychology (dual major)
Dec. ??, 2008: PhD in Instructional Systems, Masters Degree in Educational Research, Design, and Testing.

Two different doctorates (or possibly three, depending on how accurately Polarik can name his own doctoral programs). Three different Masters degrees. And zero schools. Polarik learned his lesson well from TechDude's crash-and-burn: if you're too specific in your made-up credentials, you open the door to having those specifics discovered to be false. Better to be impenetrably vague, and not open the door to verification and exposure. If people will believe that a Iowa scam artist has a mysterious and elusive Kenyan birth certificate, then they certainly won't have any problem accepting a mere doctorate from an unnamed school.

However, when creating a false resume, it helps to be more consistent than Polarik. People may notice when new degrees appear out of thin air, or when previously claimed degrees disappear, or when a Masters suddenly becomes a Doctorate (which, in turn, then disappears entirely). People may notice when a three-times-over doctor admits to having trouble making his rent. And if you're going to initially claim that the reason for your early secrecy was a reluctance to flaunt your credentials, perhaps you shouldn't then suddenly start putting "PhD" after your name and calling yourself "Dr." at every opportunity. Consistency isn't hard when you're telling the truth, but it's the key to being an expert liar. The irony is that while Polarik insists that he is an expert but not a liar, it's the opposite that's true.

I'll give Polarik this: in his pixelated video statement, he cites his among his credentials that he's "done a lot of work with reading web pages." And I have no bones with his assertion that he's read a lot of web pages. Granted, "reading web pages" is not the kind of credential you'd normally expect to hear cited by someone with three doctorates, but it does sound like the kind of credential someone with no doctorates might make up.

A Special Message from Polarik, on TechDude

2009-07-06T19:30:00.010-04:00

"Ron Polarik" wants you to know that he NEVER trusted TechDude, a/k/a 'the other guy who claimed a whole bunch of phony credentials to bolster his claims about Obama's birth certificate':

August 24, 2008:

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but TechDude is a liar and a fraud who fabricated evidence, and outright stole the ideas of others.

"I've known that he was a fraud for a long time now, but kept it silent because my friend,TexasDarling, had bought into deception, as you did, Pamela...

"BTW, I stand behind my work, and have never made up suspicious alibis like TechDude did with his, "I've received death threats" which he used when his cover was blown."

August 25, 2008:

"PS: I'm sorry that you were taken in by TechDude. I feel badly moreso for you and TexasDarlin than I do for myself. It's tough to see someone plagiarize your ideas, and then get lionized by the blogsphere, while knowing, all along, that he was a con artist."

August 27, 2008:

I never trusted TechDude from the start and was suspicious of some of his claims, including the Hollywood-like "dead rabbit" in the mailbox trick, but I kept my thoughts to myself because Texas Darling and I are friends, and I did not wish to embarrass a friend who had trusted TechDude...

It sucked to sit on the sidelines while TechDude was sgetting all the accolades, and it also sucks now, because since the arguments raised against his research are now validated, it casts a pall on mine -- even though I stand behind everything I've done, and have never resorted to any tomfoolery to prove a point.

April 15, 2009:

"Now, I was the one who first discovered that Techdude was a fraud and I warned TexasDarlin, early on, not to trust him. My warnings about TechDude were ignored and she published his work anyway. She would, eventually, stop publishing his work, but not because he was a fraud -- she said that it was in response to TechDude's worries about his safety and the safety of his family. THAT story was bogus, the tale about the dead rabbit was bogus, and we now know that TechDude had stolen the identity of a real forensic document examiner, but when he couldn't do what he promised to do, he dropped out of sight using the excuses listed above.

"I knew that TechDude was way off the mark when I saw his preliminary work, and that a real forensic document examiner (which he had claimed to be) would never make such dubious claims)."

So there you have it: Polarik always knew TechDude was a phony. End of story. Just thought I'd share.

----------

Oh, wait. The internet has a memory, doesn't it? Man, that's unfortunate:

July 20, 2008:

"Very nice work, TechDude, but it would have been better if you gave a little credit to others where that credit is due.

"It would also solidify your claims by adding the information from others that support it."

July 23, 2008:

"How can an article, posted on July 20, or a full month after my original proclamation that Obama's COLB image was graphically altered, be labeled as exclusive? I will admit that the techniques used by the author, TechDude, were not the ones I used to discover the forgery, and that he was the only one, to my knowledge, to have used them.

"For that, I'd like to offer a pat on the back to TechDude for the work that he did, but also a slap on the wrist, to both Techdude and Pam Geller for misleading the public by implying that they were the first ones to present evidence of a graphic forgery…

"Now, this is not to take away any of the work that TechDude has done, which is notable in its own right, and if you read my blog, you will see proper attributions made to him and his work...

"Also egregious is the fact that TechDude, myself, and TexasDarlin had agreed to publish a joint document, and, as you have now seen, one of us renegged on that agreement and stole the spotlight...

"I also confirmed that my critics and detractors, coincidentally, are also the same to TechDude and his research. It is safe to say that there will always be people who are antagonistic to others who reveal unpleasant truths...

"Hopefully, the critics and detractors will come up with their own clones made in the ways that they claimed. In the meantime, the evidence provided in my posts and in TechDude's posts far outweigh any evidence that the images are are genuine, accurate reproductions of a paper COLB document."

August 12, 2008

Why is Techdude unheard from now?

"Because this dumb-ass blogger blew his cover, and slandered both him and TexasDarlin in the process. I can tell you that I know who is TechDude, and that he is who he says he is, I can also tell you that he is temporarily laying low because of what these nutty Obama supporters will do."

I suppose I should acknowledge that in the course of his talking smack about TechDude, Polarik gave himself an 'out' for all his previous comments: he always knew TechDude was a fraud, but he "kept it silent."

Granted, it's a little surprising that in Polarik's August 10 rant about TechDude's research that while he was willing to complain about TechDude's conclusions, he didn't come close to calling him a fraud. And it's a little curious why, if Polarik knew TechDude was a fraud, he apologized for that post a couple of hours later. And it's very significant that Polarik didn't simply sit quietly on the sidelines while people fell for TechDude's act; no, Polarik was in there himself, actively praising and defending TechDude. In fact, IsraelInsider declared TechDude to be "so much hot air" on August 12, and Polarik was still actively defending him just two days earlier. The whole "kept it silent" excuse doesn't hold much water.

So it wasn't that he was keeping silent, but rather that he was simply lying the whole time. Y'know, to spare his friends' feelings. That's why he wrote praiseworthy comments in threads about TechDude's 'work.' That's why he said he was planning a joint document with TechDude. That's why he said that criticism of TechDude's verisimilitude was tantamount to slander. It was all part of his big ball of lies.

You can choose to believe that Polarik was lying during all those early weeks. You can choose to believe that Polarik has been lying since then, and never had a clue that TechDude was a fraud. Either way, he's firmly established himself as not only willing to lie to his audience, but willing to lie consistently and for extended periods of time.

So was he lying before, or lying since? Take your pick. The important thing to remember is that you don't have to choose just one.

There's a Birther Suckered Every Minute

2009-07-06T10:16:00.004-04:00

So after having his previous five auctions pulled, Lucas Smith of Cedar Rapids, Iowa posted a sixth eBay auction on the evening of July 2. I don't know if he'd seen this blog, but he'd definitely seen the fallout on FreeRepublic:

So now eBay removes my listing for selling a picture? That doesn't sound bizarre to anyone? And I read that people are finding information about Smith posted on the internet which supposedly discredits him? Smith is a scammer? Give me a break.

And now when we go to log into InspectorSmith's Youtube account our password is not recognized. All this for a scam, huh, a good laugh?

Just the other day I noted that I was thankful for freerepublic dot com. Reminds me of a bunch off lukewarm turncoats. Change your opinion every time that the wind blows in a different direction. Here's another quote, “Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.” - Alexander Hamilton. And what, what will be your opinion tomorrow? "O" was born in the USA? Make up your minds, have a little backbone.

I happened to stumble across the auction less than ten minutes after it was posted, and although I promptly reported it to eBay (with a link to my last post attached for good measure). Yet it's still there, four days later. And no, I'm not going to link to it.

At first, I wondered why eBay wasn't acting this time. Then I realized why: Lucas isn't breaking the rules this time. In fact, while I rather doubt this was his plan from the start, he's ended up engineering quite the ingenious little scam here.

Here's the relevant parts of the auction listing, stating exactly what the auction is for:

Autographed photo of Smith and Andylenny, abroad. In airport.

There won't be anymore eBay auctions for documents, stories or dissertations.

The photo in this listing is up for auction. On the left is Smith and on the right is Andylenny. This photo will be signed by Smith, as Smith. This will be the only autographed photo put up for auction. One auction, one winning bidder, one photo. No more. There wont be duplicate photos or other photos for auction later. (Though I might try a relist if eBay kicks this auction off before enough people have had the chance to see this photo.)

You are welcome to copy and paste, or save, the digital photo in this listing. This auction is not so much for $$$ gain. It's meant to give a face or two to the O proof story. If anyone comes forward with our O proof other than one of the two faces that you see in this auction then you'll know that it wasn't the proof offered in our five previous auctions. Also this picture will vouch for the credibility of the soon coming Youtube video. If you don't see one of the two faces that you see in this auction then you'll know that it's not our Youtube video.

For the record I want to state that this auction is for an autographed photo of Smith and Andylenny. Signed by Smith, as Smith. You are not bidding on anything other than that, there will be no accompanying documents. There will be no meeting at the Iowa Capitol Building. This is not an attempt to circumvent eBay policies.

This photo will be shipped USPS Priority Mail. It will be shipped free of charge (domestic addresses) to the winning bidder.

For this, Lucas's auction has so far received a total of 21 competitive bids, for a current high bid of $2,850.00. The starting bid was $100. And there are still over three days left.

He makes it abundantly, and repeatedly, clear that the auction is ONLY for the photo, and nothing else. He continues to talk the Birther talk, but still offers up nothing that actually backs up his previous claims. He doesn't even explicitly claim the photo is from his alleged trip to Kenya; it's just a photo of himself "abroad. In airport." Given what we know about Lucas Smith's history, and given the look of this photo and the other photos he previously posted, it's incredibly likely that this photo was taken in the Dominican Republic.

Yes, some gullible Birther is about to be the proud owner of a three thousand dollar Caribbean travel photo. Signed by some dude from Cedar Rapids.

The ingenious part of this is that after that transaction takes place, I'm not sure that Lucas Smith will have done anything actionable. He clearly states that he's auctioning a signed print of that photo. He, presumably, will deliver a signed print of that photo. This auction listing is not misleading or even ambiguous as to what's being offered for sale. The winning bidder simply isn't going to have anything to stand on if they complain to eBay; they bid for a photo, they won a photo. It's not eBay's fault or Lucas's fault that they were stupid enough to pay three grand for it.

I'm not even sure it's WorldNetDaily's fault, but they're definitely guilty of some willful journalistic ignorance on this. They've posted multiple stories on Lucas's auction, often burying mention of his failure to evidence his claims. And although they ran a front-page story on the appearance of this auction, they have run no stories about all the revelations that have come to light about Mr. Lucas Smith of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The most positive explanation for this failure is that WND has just somehow failed to see those reports; the negative explanation, on the other hand, is that while WND led its readers down the rabbit hole of believing this guy's fiction, they're afraid to admit their mistake now. And so rather than cop to it and look foolish, they're playing silent and allowing readers to continue believing in this guy enough to pay him thousands.

Of course, this doesn't tell us anything new about WND's journalistic integrity. But I think it does show us just how much contempt WND truly has for its own trusting readers. It could save some gullible reader a lot of financial pain by running a simple correction and apology; but while Joseph Farah is willing to pay ten grand for Obama birth witnesses, it seems that eating a little crow is more than he can afford.

Now of course, maybe the bidders aren't being serious either, and have no intention of paying. I'm not sure if we'll ever know the answer to that. But even then the great irony will be that they will be the ones violating eBay policy in this particular auction, not Lucas. He may be a crook and a liar, but doggone it if at the end of the day he hasn't managed to con the Birthers without actually promising anything he can't deliver. If it wasn't for the fact that he made it so easy to track down his real identity, I'd almost suspect he was a decent conman.

colmado_naranja Revealed

2009-07-02T10:58:00.008-04:00

As previously reported, WorldNetDaily has been feverishly covering the eBay seller colmado_naranja, and his auctions for the alleged Obama Kenyan Birth Certificate that he claims to have in his possession. There have been plenty of twists in this story, almost entirely on the part of colmado_naranja's own representations, but there's one 'twist' that I'm compelled to cover, and cover immediately.

Here is the latest auction, now reduced to simply auctioning off signed photographs. In it, colmado_naranja ndicates that he intends to upload a video to his YouTube account, InspectorSmith, and posts several photos of himself:

One enterprising Free Republic poster put that name and photo together with the seller's apparent home of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and stumbled across this photo:

That's a CBS Photo of the Day, from a year ago. The caption reads "Lucas Smith rides his bike through the water after checking up on his flooded house in the southwestern area of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Friday June 13, 2008." It looks an awful lot like colmado_naranja, doesn't it? And it's not an understatement that he has an interesting Wikipedia page. References to "Colmado Scarlette" and a Smith-penned book about the Bush Administration?

So "colmado_naranja" is apparently Lucas Smith, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Another quick round of Googling promptly turns up thisstory from the Syracuse Post Standard:

Jim Jr. was born with one kidney. It kept him going for the first 18 years of his life. He rarely missed school, and even felt fine the day a school nurse took his blood pressure and realized something was wrong. Go see a doctor, she told him. Right away...

Jim Jr. was put on the national kidney transplant list in November 2001, five months after doctors diagnosed him with end stage renal disease...

In late 2002, a man from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, sent an e-mail to the family. The man, who called himself Lucas Smith, said he was 23 years old and had emigrated from Russia five years earlier. He had seen the Web site and, Smith said, he wanted to help.

The Wilsons stopped searching for a donor. Smith passed all of the medical, physical and psychological tests. They thought he was going to save their son's life.

Then, on May 3, 2003, Smith sent Jim Wilson Sr. an e-mail saying he wanted to be compensated for donating his kidney.

Wilson said they would pay his airfare, but because it was illegal to receive money for an organ donation, they wouldn't give him any other cash.

Five months after holding out a lifeline, Lucas Smith disappeared.

Jim Wilson Sr. called the Cedar Rapids police.

Yes, at least one Lucas Smith of Cedar Rapids, Iowa has previously attempted to extort money for a valuable commodity in his possession, only to never deliver on it. Maybe it's the same Lucas Smith of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Maybe not.

Bravo, Joseph Farah, for putting this story and this attempt at con-artistry in the limelight. Bravo.

Update (7/3): Another FreeRepublic poster ran Mr. Smith's name through the archives of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, and unsurprisingly, Lucas Smith has a criminal history. Most notably, in 2000 he pled guilty to passing several bad checks after opening a bank account with false information, and in 1998 he received a deferred judgment on a charge of forgery.