Thriller Obama

Voici un exemple des documentaires qui cherchent à semer le doute quant aux origines du président Obama. Regardez-le car il résume bien une affaire dont les grands médias ne veulent pas parler.

Birther de vive voix

Pour ceux qui aiment les feuilletons télévisés américains en VO, voici le dernier épisode de Birthers.




Pour ceux qui préfèrent lire, voici un excellent article de Jonathan Valania publié à Philadelphie par le Philadelphia weekly.

The Birther Theory Local lawyer Phil Berg is convinced the president is an illegal alien.

In the soft twilight of the first Saturday of August, a gray-bearded man in a dark suit stood on the grassy knoll in front of Independence Hall and declared for the benefit of a film crew on hand that we are, as a nation, through the looking glass, people. Black is white, up is down, cats are dogs and the President of the United States is a fraud and a liar, a “usurper,” a foreign-born alien unqualified to hold office and the fact that he currently resides in the White House represents a constitutional crisis on a scale not seen since the darkest hours of Watergate.
The man who said these things was one Philip Berg, Esq., a private practice lawyer based in the Philadelphia suburb of Lafayette Hill, a lifelong Democrat and a former deputy attorney general of Pennsylvania. The film crew was shooting a sky-is-falling exposé with the working title Fall Of The Republic: The Presidency Of Barack Obama , produced by Austin, Texas-based talk-radio host Alex Jones, whose previous work includes The Obama Deception, which alleges darkly that the president is a puppet of a multinational cabal of corporate oligarchs, and Loose Change, which claims that 9/11 was an inside job.
“Our nation is in jeopardy,” Berg gravely intoned, as clusters of tourists filed past, some doing a double-take when they noticed the cameras, briefly studying Berg’s face for the earmarks of someone recognizably famous and then moving on when he failed to register.
“There are three constitutional requirements to be president: first, you must be 35 years old. Second, you must reside in the U.S. for 14 straight years and lastly you must be a natural-born citizen. And on this last point, Obama fails ... ” As Berg spoke, a warm breeze gusted behind him, wreaking havoc on his back-to-front combover. Long strands of hair flapped wildly in the breeze, peaking out behind his ears only to disappear and then reappear on the crown of his skull, creating the disturbing impression on camera that white tentacles were sprouting out of the back of his head.
This simply would not do.
The cameras stopped rolling and the film crew asked Berg to fix his hair. He gamely tamped down the stray hairs, but this would prove to be a fight with the summer wind that Berg wouldn’t win.
“I wish I would have brought some hairspray,” he said, wetting his fingers and plastering down the stray hairs before turning and asking a passing woman if she happened to have some hairspray he could borrow. She didn’t.
“I am doing this for the 1.5 million Americans that have died defending the Constitution,” he said righteously when the cameras started rolling again, only to stop yet again when the tentacles reappeared.
This time the camera crew asked Berg to turn slightly, hoping to angle the tentacles out of the shot.
“I believe Obama is setting himself up to be blackmailed by other countries, and that may explain the reason he has relaxed travel restrictions on Cuba—because they are blackmailing him,” said Berg before the hair-raising breeze returned and the tentacles were back.
Welcome to the bizarro nation, where everything we hold true is in fact a lie, magical thinking trumps scientific analysis, hysterical partisan operatics drown out the low hum of objective connect-the-facts narrative, and a recent survey indicates that nearly 60 percent of registered Republicans openly question whether or not the President of the United States is a natural born citizen. The one prominent Republican naysayer is, shockingly enough, Anne Coulter who publicly called people who question the president’s citizenship “cranks.” Truly, when Ann Coulter is the voice of reason, we are through the looking glass, people.
Almost exactly one year ago, just days before Barack Obama received his party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Berg made headlines when he filed a lawsuit alleging that the candidate was not a natural born citizen of the United States and therefore not qualified to hold the office of president. In the time since Berg first filed suit, people who openly question President Obama’s place of birth have been dubbed “Birthers” by the media—a play on the nickname the media afforded believers in the so-called 9/11 Truth movement, aka Truthers. Because Berg has the dubious distinction of filing the first legal salvo in The Battle For Obama’s Birth Certificate, he is in essence the Alpha Birther, a status he both relishes and cultivates.
When the right wing fringes of the Internet began buzzing with questions of Obama’s eligibility early last summer, the Obama campaign posted a lo-res JPEG of his Certification Of Live Birth (COLB), the short form proof of birth currently used by the state of Hawaii. The poor quality of the JPEG provided an opening for self-styled forensic experts—emboldened by their triumphant debunking of the documents used for Dan Rather’s 2004 ill-fated 60 Minutes broadcast questioning George W. Bush’s National Guard service—to question the authenticity of Obama’s COLB. FactCheck.org, a respected non-partisan online outfit that truth squads various political claims, was able to examine Obama’s COLB and vouched for its authenticity (and posted a hi-res version of it online), as have Hawaiian state officials.
Still, the Birthers insist, the COLB is short on details such as the presiding physician and the name of the hospital where Obama was born. Those records are sealed, as per the federal Health Information Privacy Act of 1999 and Hawaiian state law, and will remain that way unless Obama greenlights their release, which to date he has not.
The Birthers take this as proof Obama is hiding something, while most others just assume he has more pressing concerns: two wars, a cratering economy and a health care reform effort that has triggered a right wing jihad.
most others just assume he has more pressing concerns: two wars, a cratering economy and a health care reform effort that has triggered a right wing jihad.
Although Berg’s lawsuit was quickly dismissed, he doubled down and took it directly to the Supreme Court, demanding an injunction to stop the November 4 election, then to stop the counting of the votes, then to stop the swearing in of Obama. In the end, the Supreme Court refused to take the case and turned down all his requests for injunctions. Not to be dissuaded, Berg filed the case again with the Federal Court of Appeals. And just to hedge his bets, Berg has filed two more suits in federal court using separate legal arguments: the first is a Qui Tam or false claims suit, usually used for recovering payments for bogus Medicare claims, alleging that because Barack Obama is in fact an illegal alien, he could not legally serve as a U.S. Senator and therefore his salary and benefits—totaling nearly $1 million—should be returned to the U.S. Treasury. This case was dismissed in June, but, as ever, Berg was not to be discouraged and filed a motion for reconsideration.

The third lawsuit was filed on behalf of Gregory Hollister, a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel. Because Hollister is on lifetime recall, he could, theoretically, be pressed back into active duty and sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Therefore, he has a right to know incontrovertibly whether or not Barack Obama is the legitimate commander in chief.

In March, the presiding judge threw the Hollister suit out, calling it “frivolous,” and threatened to financially sanction Berg’s co-counsel John Hemingway. No matter, says Berg, he has already filed an appeal. By his own estimation, all three cases will be tied up in the courts for years. The ultimate goal of all these lawsuits is to get just one judge to let the case proceed to the discovery stage which would grant Berg the power to subpoena Obama’s complete birth records, which, he is fairly certain, would prove his theory that the 44th president of the United States was born in Kenya, not Hawaii.

“I would like to see him removed from office, thrown in jail and then deported,” says Berg when asked what would happen if he were able to prove in a court of law that Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States.

Berg may have been the first Birther to file a lawsuit against the president, but he’s no longer the only one.

If Berg is the Alpha Birther, Orly Taitz—an Orange County dentist-
turned-lawyer who you may have seen melting down on a cable news outlet near you, decked out in her trademark platinum blond hair, thick black eyeliner and lowcut blouses—is the Acid Queen of the Birthers. But given Taitz’s demonstrable propensity to sue, intimidate and threaten anyone that gets in her way—she has a habit of calling those who question her “brownshirts” and routinely calls for Obama and all other enemies to be “purged”—perhaps She Wolf of the Birthers is more accurate.

Berg certainly thinks so. For the last six months Berg and Taitz have been trading insults on their respective websites. Berg thinks the combination of Taitz’s stalker-like aggressiveness (she has been known to show up at public appearances of various Supreme Court Justices and loudly demand that they hear her case), and combative incoherence during TV interviews, along with her dubious credentials (she got her law degree online) and self-sabotaging recklessness (two weeks ago Taitz caused quite a stir when she released what she claimed was Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate, but was in fact a deliberately doctored document created by an Obama supporter to punk the Birthers) only serves to hurt the cause. Although Berg is hardly blameless in this regard. His initial lawsuit included a Canadian Obama birth certificate that Berg was forced to withdraw and disavow after the anti-birthers pointed out that it was signed by DUDLEY DORIGHT.

Lisa Liberi, Berg’s paralegal, personally incurred the wrath of Taitz over perceived snubs. Taitz publicly accused Liberi of having a long criminal record (which Liberi says is ludicrous) and called for her to be “purged” and went as far as publishing Liberi’s social security number and home address online, presumably for the benefit of any of her rabid followers who might make good on her threat. Berg was in court last week asking a judge for a restraining order against Taitz.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was put up to this by the Obama people to make us all look foolish,” says Berg. Liberi wonders aloud if she is working for German or Russian intelligence, noting that Taitz’s blog gets flagged by most web browsers as an “attack site.”

“I’ve been told that it installs malware on your computer and sends all your files to Russia,” says Liberi.

What makes Berg notable, beyond the Alpha Birther status, is that he doesn’t fit the profile of the typical Obama hater. At 65, he’s a lifelong Democrat, having spent 31 years as a Democratic Committeeman in Philadelphia and Montgomery County, as well as serving as chairman of the Montgomery County Democratic Party back in the late ’80s. He’s a lifetime member of the NAACP. He served as a deputy attorney general during both of Milton Shapp’s two terms as governor back in the ’70s. He ran as the pro-choice candidate for governor against Bob Casey Sr. during the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1990, and although he lost the nomination Berg did net a respectable 23 percent of the vote against a sitting governor.

During the 2000 Presidential election’s contentious Florida recount, Berg flew down to the panhandle to serve as one of Al Gore’s watchdogs, eventually filing a petition demanding the disbarment of U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sandra
Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas for not recusing themselves from Bush v. Gore.

But some time after 9/11 Phil Berg went off the reservation. “I just felt that we were lied to and I still feel that way,” says Berg. “There is no way that 9/11 could’ve happened without government help.”

In October 2004, Berg filed Rodriguez v. Bush, a civil lawsuit in federal court that named 156
defendants—including the United States Of America, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, George Herbert Walker Bush, George Walker Bush, Richard Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld. The 237-page suit was an epic medley of jaw-dropping allegations, including: The Twin Towers were brought down via “controlled demolitions;” FEMA is creating an “American Gulag,” a network of concentration camps which it will run after martial law is declared; some or all of the 156 defendants named in the suit engaged in treason, murder, conspiracy, kidnapping, arson, trafficking in narcotics, blackmail, embezzlement, insider trading, securities fraud, identity and credit card theft, trafficking in humans, and the abduction and sale of women and children for sex.

In the end, the case went nowhere but it did get Berg a lot of media attention. Speaking engagement offers poured in from around the country. A wealthy sympathetic benefactor even bankrolled a press junket across Europe that lasted more than three weeks. All of which was great cloak-and-
dagger fun for Berg, who loved the attention and the VIP status the case conferred on him in the more paranoid sectors of the public.

“I remember we had a police escort the whole time we were in Kansas,” he says with pride. But Berg spent so much time on the 9/11 suit that he neglected his once-thriving multi-lawyer practice, which shriveled and eventually died, forcing Berg to declare bankruptcy in 2005. Berg pretty much lost everything, including ownership of the spacious, 9,000 square foot, 200-year-old farmhouse that once housed his lucrative practice. Today he works out of a cramped, one-room office on the ground floor of a Lafayette Hill apartment complex. The space is crammed with boxes full of files and lawbooks stacked floor to ceiling, leaving just a narrow pathway around the perimeter of his cluttered desk. And though he was once, by his friends’ estimates, a millionaire several times over, Berg remains unrepentant. “Even my family has questioned what I have done,” he says, adding that the bankruptcy proceedings are still ongoing some four years later. “But I feel I was put on this earth to fight the good fight.”

Besides, he’s too excited about his impending guest appearance on
paleo-conservative talk show host Michael Savage’s radio show. “He’s got 10 million weekly listeners!” Berg enthuses, certain this appearance will trigger a healthy uptick of contributions on his website ObamaCrimes.com. Turns out filing multiple lawsuits questioning the eligibility of the president of the United States is expensive—it cost $6,000 just to make the requisite copies of his lawsuit for the Supreme Court’s consideration—and the pay stinks. He refuses to disclose exactly how much he has collected in web donations, but you get the distinct impression that they barely keep up with his costs, and that’s not even factoring in a year’s worth of 24/7 billable hours he and others have put into the case, pro bono.
Hello to everyone in the Savage Nation,” says Berg when the show’s producer calls and puts him on the air. Despite his long track record with the Democratic party, he is, not surprisingly, persona non-grata in blue state circles these days. The person who answered the phone at the Montgomery County Democratic Party headquarters—where Berg served as chairman back in the late ’80s—declined to comment for this story and refused even to give his name. “They pretty much all hate me,” says Berg with a shrug.
Fortunately, Berg has a whole new bunch of friends in the talk radio/Internet echo chamber of the far-right, which, again not surprisingly, applauds the courage it takes for a lifelong Dem to file eligibility lawsuits against a sitting Democratic president, and takes great pleasure in parading Berg around like some special prize in a partisan hostage swap.
“I think that by pushing on, terrible things are going to happen,” Savage warns gravely. “We are dealing with the most dangerous people on earth. Wait until the Smear Machine fires up after we get off the air. Look out, because the loony left is coming after you.”
Berg shrugs off the warning. “People ask me if I fear for my safety, but if anything happened to me it would be front page news,” he responds. “I believe we can get him to resign by the end of the year, even if the legal process takes longer.”
Although all three of Berg’s cases have been thrown out of court, and the Birther controversy has been dismissed as a groundless partisan witchhunt by every major media outlet and debunked by every credible non-partisan truth squad—Factcheck.org, Politifact, Snopes and McClatchy News have all looked into the Birther controversy and determined it to be nothing more than a far-right fantasia—don’t expect Berg or the Birther movement to go away any time soon. Not even if Obama were to release his complete birth records, as the Birthers and, as of late, even some on the left, including The Atlantic ’s Andrew Sullivan, have demanded.

“Paranoia is the most political of mental illnesses in that it requires enemies,” says Dr. Jerrold Post, Director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington University and the author of 11 books, including Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred .
The paranoid’s position is that it is better to be the center of a plot against you than to be totally ignored and insignificant. A sense of powerlessness leads to compensatory delusions of grandiosity which sends people into a blind pursuit of confirming data. It is very hard to get people out of paranoid belief system because it is very comforting to them,” says Post.
n other words, the long national nightmare that keeps Birthers up at night—Googling furiously through the shadow of a doubt, fingers crossed, literally hoping against hope—has only just begun. And the rest of us should probably get some sleep. ■

Jonathan Valania is the editor-in-chief of phawker.com.

Les lacunes d'Obama

Une copie d'un acte de naissance établi en 1961.

Non seulement le débat sur la couverture sociale des Américains tourne au vinaigre, mais les questions soulevées par les origines de Barack Hussein Omaba (BHO) ne disparaissent pas, bien au contraire.

On se souvient que le certificat de naissance complet de BHO n'a jamais été rendu public. l'explication officielle est qu'il a été détruit lors de l'informatisation du système. Cette explication ne tient pas parce qu'il est inimaginable qu'un service d'état civil détruise des originaux sans au moins conserver l'information qu'ils contiennent.

Or, non seulement un haut fonctionnaire de l'Etat de Hawaï a affirmé le 31 octobre 2008 avoir vu les originaux de l'acte de naissance de BHO, mais l'administration a démenti avoir détruit ces originaux.

En outre, une mère de famille de Hawaï a montré les reproduction de deux actes de naissances de ses filles jumelles nées elles aussi comme BHO en 1961.

Donc l'absence d'acte de naissance pour BHO ne peut pour le moment pas s'expliquer autrement que par un refus de BHO de le rendre public.

La chose se complique quand on fait la liste des autres archives concernant BHO qui sont manquantes.

Chelsea Schilling, sur le site World Net Exclusive en a dressé une liste non exhaustive :

Obama: Where have all his records gone?
Footprints of president's own history either vanish or remain covered up

While nearly 400,000 concerned citizens demand President Obama present his elusive "long-form" birth certificate, more than a dozen other documents remain unreleased or otherwise blocked from the public eye.
Numerous documents which have yet to be surrendered include the following.
Obama kindergarten records
The Maui News reported that Obama attended kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School on Oahu during the school year 1966-67. It released a photo of two teachers, Katherine Nakamoto and Aimee Yatsushiro, with five students. The teachers claim one of the children is Barack Obama.
According to the Hawaii Department of Education, students must submit a birth certificate to register. Parents may bring a passport or student visa if the child is from a foreign country.
So far, no records have been released by the school. Noelani Elementary School officials have not responded to WND's request for comment.




Though from a modest background, Obama began attending the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu, one of Hawaii's top private institutions. He reportedly received a scholarship and attended the school from the fifth grade until he finished high school, though no financial records have been released.
The Boston Globe reported, "In 1979, the year Obama graduated, tuition for high school students at Punahou was $1,990, a sizable expense compared with Hawaii's median family income of $22,750 that year.
Obama, reportedly a "B" student, studied among the island's richest and most accomplished students. According to the school's website, he also played forward on Punahou's 1979 state championship basketball team.
Occidental College records
Obama arrived at Occidental College, a small liberal arts school in Los Angeles, Calif., in the fall of 1979. He only briefly mentions the school in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."
Obama attended the school on a scholarship. Some question whether the financial aid he received was reserved for foreign students. Financial records have not been released.
In a legal action, handled largely by Gary Kreep of the U.S. Justice Foundation, officials at Occidental College were served with a demand to produce records concerning Barack Obama's attendance there during the 1980s because they could document whether he was attending as a foreign national.
Kreep petitioned the college with a demand for its records concerning Obama.

"The gravamen of the petition is the question as to whether United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama, of Illinois, is eligible to serve as president of the United States pursuant to the requirements for that office in the United States Constitution," he wrote. "The records sought may provide documentary evidence, and/or admissions by said defendant, as to said eligibility or lack thereof."
College officials then contacted Obama's lawyers, who argued to the court that the election was over and that future concerns should be addressed to Congress.
The motion stated that the records, which could reveal on what name Obama attended classes at Occidental and whether he attended on scholarship money intended for foreign students, "are of no relevance to this moot litigation."
The motion also claimed the petitioners failed to serve the subpoena properly.
Get your "Where's the birth certificate?" bumper sticker here.
"The subpoena directed to Occidental College should therefore be quashed. Alternatively, this court should issue an order directing that the deposition of the custodian of records of Occidental College not take place," the firm working on Obama's behalf stated.
"The central issue in this lawsuit … is whether any Respondent had a legal duty to demand proof of natural born citizenship from Democratic Party's nominee," the motion said. "None of the documents sought by petitioners could possibly assist in answering this question."
A judge granted a motion to quash the subpoena.
"Obama's attorneys bent over backward to block us," Kreep told WND. "Obama doesn't want anyone to see those records. He's trying to hide them."


His efforts resulted in a threat from Obama's attorneys to seek financial sanctions against the plaintiff's lawyers.
Kreep said a notice of appeal will be filed next week.
A notice posted on the Occidental College website states, "Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations protect the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students' classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information."
Columbia University records
Obama transferred from Occidental College to Columbia University in 1981, at the age of 20.
According to the New York Times, Obama "suggests in his book that his years in New York were a pivotal period: He ran three miles a day, buckled down to work and 'stopped getting high,' which he says he had started doing in high school. Yet he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the newspaper in October 2007, "He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life."
In a 2005 profile in a Columbia alumni magazine, Obama called his time at the school "an intense period of study."
"I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn't socialize that much. I was like a monk," he said.



Obama claimed to be a part of the Black Student Organization and anti-apartheid activities. But according to the New York Times, several well-known student leaders did not recall his involvement.
Fox News made contact with 400 of Obama's classmates. No one remembered him.
The Columbia University chapter in Obama's life remains blank, according to the New York Sun.
"The Obama campaign has refused to release his college transcript, despite an academic career that led him to Harvard Law School and, later, to a lecturing position at the University of Chicago," the Sun reported in September 2008. "The shroud surrounding his experience at Columbia contrasts with that of other major party nominees since 2000, all whom have eventually released information about their college performance or seen it leaked to the public."
When the newspaper inquired, the Obama campaign did not offer an explanation for why the transcript had not been released.
According to the New York Sun, a program from Columbia's 1983 commencement ceremony lists Obama as a graduate. University spokesman Brian Connolly confirmed that Obama graduated with a major in political science but without honors. Nonetheless, he was later admitted to Harvard Law School.
Columbia thesis "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament"
Before applying to Harvard, Obama is said to have written a major thesis in his senior year. It has not been released.


An Oct 30, 2007, a New York Times article stated, "[Obama] barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament."
Former Columbia professor, Michael Baron, told NBC News Obama excelled in his year-long honors seminar called American Foreign Policy.
He also said Obama spent a whole year writing a "thesis" or "senior thesis" on the topic of nuclear negotiations with the former Soviet Union.
"My recollection is that the paper was an analysis of the evolution of the arms reduction negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States," Baron told reporters in an e-mail. "At that time, a hot topic in foreign policy circles was finding a way in which each country could safely reduce the large arsenal of nuclear weapons pointed at the other … For U.S. policy makers in both political parties, the aim was not disarmament, but achieving deep reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and keeping a substantial and permanent American advantage. As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A."
Baron said he saved Obama's paper and recently searched through boxes hoping to find it, but he told reporters he may have thrown it away during a move several years ago.
Baron wrote a letter of recommendation when Obama applied to Harvard Law School. According to Federal Election Commission records, he also donated at least $1,250 to Obama's presidential campaign.
On July 24, 2008, the Obama administration told NBC News Obama was unable to release copies of his thesis paper.
"We do not have a copy of the course paper you requested and neither does Columbia University," Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
According to MSNBC, Columbia University officials claim they do not have a copy available in the college's archives.
Harvard Law School records

With less than steller marks upon his graduation from Columbia, Obama was accepted into Harvard Law School.
WND columnist Jack Cashill wrote, "If Obama's LSAT scores merited admission (to Harvard), we would know about them. We don't. The Obama camp guards those scores, like his SAT scores, more tightly that Iran does its nuclear secrets."
He continued, "We know enough about Obama's Columbia grades to know how far they fall below the Harvard norm, likely even below the affirmative action-adjusted black norm at Harvard."
Cashill wrote, Khalid al-Mansour, principle adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, lobbied friends like Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton to intervene at Harvard on Obama's behalf. Al-Mansour reportedly mentored founders of the Black Panther party in the early 1960s.
Cashill suggests Obama's "shyness" about his Harvard experience may stem from his reluctance to broadcast his connections.
According to Politico, Obama's name does not appear on any legal scholarships during his time at Harvard. His campaign reportedly said his Harvard education was a product of hard work and student loans. Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.
Harvard Law Review articles
In 1990, Obama beat out 18 other contenders to become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, where he spent at least 50 hours a week editing submissions from judges, scholars and authors.
According to Politico, there were "eight dense volumes produced during his time in charge there – 2,083 pages in all."
Campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Politico Obama didn't write any articles for the Review, but he did leave behind numerous case analyses and unsigned "notes" from Harvard students.
As Matthew Franck noted in National Review Online, "A search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time."
Susan Estrich, the first female president of the Review who served 14 years earlier, said Obama must have had something published that year, even if his campaign denied it.
"They probably don't want [to] have you [reporters] going back" to examine the Review, she said.

However, Politico later reported it had unearthed a 1990 article that "offers a glimpse at Obama's views on abortion policy and the law during his student days."
His six-page summary answers a legal question about whether fetuses should be allowed to file lawsuits against their mothers.
"Obama's answer, like most courts': No," Politico reported. "He wrote approvingly of an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that the unborn cannot sue their mothers for negligence, and he suggested that allowing fetuses to sue would violate the mother's rights and could, perversely, cause her to take more risks with her pregnancy."
The report continued, "His article acknowledged a public interest in the health of the fetus, but also seemed to demonstrate his continuing commitment to abortion rights, and suggested that the government may have more important concerns than 'ensuring that any particular fetus is born.'"
Despite its earlier statement, the Obama campaign later confirmed Obama's authorship of the article and claimed it was the only piece he had written for the Review.



Obama lectured at the University of Chicago Law School, a top school where the faculty is known for voluminous scholarly publishing, from 1992 until 2004.
The university offered Obama a full-time tenure-track position, an honor typically reserved for published instructors. However, reporters have been unable to find scholarly articles authored by him. The university reports that Obama declined the tenure offer.
Sarah Galer, news editor at the Law School and Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, told WND, "President Obama wrote 'Dreams from My Father' while at the law school but did not produce any scholarly articles as far as I know."
Passport
According to March 2008 reports, State Department employees conducted an unauthorized search of Obama's passport files during the recent presidential campaign. CNN reported that three different contract workers accessed his information on separate occasions – Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14 – without authorization. Two workers were fired and another faced discipline.
Obama's files reportedly contained copies of passport applications, birth date, basic biographical information, records of passport renewal and possibly citizenship information.
The Obama campaign demanded a thorough investigation to determine which employees looked at the file and why.
"This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years," Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton told CNN in a statement. "Our government's duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes."
Meanwhile, a key witness who had been cooperating with federal investigators was later found fatally shot in front of a Washington, D.C., church. A police officer found the body of Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, slumped dead inside his car.
At the time, investigators said they didn't have any information connecting the murder to the passport case. After one year of investigation of the homicide, there have been no arrests.
The passport has not been released.
Medical records
During his first presidential campaign in 1999, Sen. John McCain released 1,500 pages of medical and psychiatric records collected by the Navy. In 2008, McCain allowed reporters to spend three hours sifting through 1,200 pages of health records.


In 1999, former Vice President Al Gore released medical records revealing "mildly elevated" cholesterol levels and removal of a common form of skin cancer from his forehead in 1997. The documents disclosed his weight, resting heart rate, resting blood pressure, cardiovascular fitness and a variety of other health details. Gore's records were compiled after a complete physical examination by several military physicians.
Likewise, President George W. Bush allowed the media to view about 400 pages of personal medical information in 2000 and 2004.
After initial reluctance, Sen. John Kerry allowed the Navy to release his full medical records in 2004.
While not all have done so, it has been common practice for presidential candidates to release medical records.
However, Barack Obama, a relatively young candidate who was said to have been in "excellent health," refused to release medical records. Instead, he simply provided a six-paragraph note from his physician briefly summarizing 21 years of doctor visits and health information.
The letter contained no supporting documentation.
Other documents

According to additional records listed at the The Obama File, other documents that remain unreleased include:
• Complete files and schedules of his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004
• Obama's client list from during his time in private practice with the Chicago law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Gallard
• Illinois State Bar Association records
• Baptism records
• Obama/Dunham marriage license
• Obama/Dunham divorce documents
• Soetoro/Dunham marriage license
• Adoption records
Birth certificate

WND has been reporting since before the election on questions – and lawsuits – raised over Obama's birth and eligibility. He reported in his book he was born in Hawaii and his half-sister agrees. But the woman the president says is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, claimed to have been present at her grandson's birth in Mombasa, Kenya.
The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 380,000 others and sign up now!


Complicating the issue are Obama's move to Indonesia as a child, where he reportedly attended that nation's public schools, and his later travels to Pakistan, raising questions about on what nation's passport was that travel accomplished. Then there are the multiple law firms hired to make certain Obama's long-form birth certificate information, and other documentation such as college records, remain sealed from public view.
Obama's presidential campaign released to select news organizations only what is known as a "certification of live birth," a document obtainable in Hawaii in 1961 by Americans actually born outside the country. However, Joseph Farah, WND editor and chief executive officer, has been calling for the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate showing the hospital of his birth, attending physician and other details to confirm his citizenship status.
Farah launched a national billboard campaign last month in an effort to keep the issue before the American people. The billboards, being leased around the country, ask the simple question, "Where's the birth certificate?" Farah is asking the public to support his campaign with donations. So far, more than $75,000 has been collected.
The billboard campaign followed one launched months earlier to collect the names on an electronic petition demanding accountability and transparency on the issue. So far, that petition has gathered nearly 400,000 names.
The campaign got a boost recently when WND White House correspondent Les Kinsolving asked Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, why the president wouldn't release his birth certificate. Gibbs' response was covered live on C-SPAN and by Fox News Channel and others – excluding CBS.

It was the first time any member of the press corps has publicly asked a member of the administration a question directly related to Obama's constitutional eligibility for office as a "natural born citizen."
Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," but no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
Both the petition and the billboard campaign are part of what Farah calls an independent "truth and transparency campaign."
The first sign to be posted under the campaign, a digital, electronic one, is up and online on Highway 165 in Ball, La.. In addition, based on the heavy volume of financial donations in the first days of the campaign, WND was able to commit to leasing three more standard billboards – one in Los Angeles, another in Orange County, Calif. and a third in Pennsylvania.

Farah said the campaign was born of frustration with timid elected officials in Washington, corrupt judges around the country and a news media that show a stunning lack of curiosity about the most basic facts of Obama's background – especially how it relates to constitutional eligibility for the highest office in the land.
"As Obama transforms this country from self-governing constitutional republic to one governed by a central ruling elite, the simple fact remains that no controlling legal authority has established that he is indeed a 'natural born citizen' as the Constitution requires," Farah said. "Obama's promises of transparency have become a bad joke as he continues to hide simple, innocuous documents like his birth certificate and his student records."

Le Figaro, toujours pas au mieux de sa forme

BHO avec son grand-père à Hawaï.

Voici l'article que consacre aujourd'hui Nathalie Mattheiem dans le Figaro à l'affaire des origines de BHO.

Comme vous pouvez le constater en comparant cet article avec les nôtres, et même celui du Guardian, Nathalie Mattheiem en a fait le minimum. Soit qu'elle n'a pas réellement compris la question soit qu'elle avait peu de temps à consacrer à ce papier, soit enfin qu'elle ne lit que la « bonne presse » comme souvent les correspondants à l'étranger du Figaro (par exemple celle de Madrid).




La nationalité américaine d'Obama contestée


On les appelle les «birthers», dérivé du «birth certificate», le certificat de naissance par lequel les Américains prouvent leur nationalité et se distinguent de leurs compatriotes qui ont acquis la citoyenneté par naturalisation. La différence est importante en droit constitutionnel : être «né Américain» est une condition d'éligibilité à la présidence. La théorie des «birthers» est que Barack Obama est de nationalité kényane comme son père et que, de ce fait, son élection n'est pas légale.

Pas du tout. le débat ne porte pas sur la nationalité américaine de BHO. Mais sur sa qualité de « natural born citizen » nécessaire pour devenir président. Au piquet Nathalie !

Celui qui allait devenir le 44e président des États-Unis a tenté de mettre fin à de telles assertions dès l'automne dernier durant la campagne électorale en publiant le certificat qui confirme sa naissance, le 4 août 1961 à Honolulu. Peine perdue : les adeptes de la théorie du complot récusent l'authenticité du document, pourtant confirmée par le gouverneur (républicain) d'Hawaï, devenu le 50e et dernier État de l'Union en 1959. Mardi encore, le Dr Chiyome Fukino, directeur de la santé à Hawaï, est à nouveau intervenu pour confirmer la naissance du jeune Barack Obama en territoire américain.

Nathalie n'explique pas la différence essentielle entre le certificat résumé produit par BHO et le certificat original réclamé par les birthers. Peux mieux faire Nathalie.

«Pour ce que j'en sais…»
Rien n'y fait, des animateurs de radio et de télévision refusent de l'admettre, d'autres, tels Michael Reagan, le fils de l'ancien président, ou Lou Dobbs, sur CNN, font état d'une «incertitude» qu'ils contribuent à entretenir.

Une dizaine d'élus conservateurs ont choisi ce moment pour proposer une loi qui exigerait des candidats à la présidence qu'ils produisent leur certificat de naissance. À les entendre, il ne faudrait voir aucun lien entre leur initiative et la polémique savamment entretenue. Il a pourtant fallu attendre 233 ans et l'élection d'un président afro-américain pour qu'une telle proposition soit formulée.

Nathalie ne souffle mot sur la polémique entretenue au sujet du candidat McCain né à Panama. Pas très au courant du sujet, Nathalie ?

Interrogé sur la nationalité du président, l'un des signataires de cette loi, John Campbell, répond : «Pour ce que j'en sais, il est américain.» Il reprend ainsi la formulation qui avait suscité un tollé lorsque Hillary Clinton l'avait utilisée pendant les primaires en réponse à une question sur la religion de Barack Obama : «Pour ce que j'en sais, il n'est pas musulman.» Liz Cheney, la fille du vice-président, va plus loin en insinuant que les Américains se sentiraient «mal à l'aise face à ce président»qui serait «réticent à défendre le pays à l'étranger».

Objecteur de conscience
Sur ce terrain de la défense du pays, il est piquant de noter que la dernière des nombreuses plaintes (toutes rejetées) des «birthers» concernant la citoyenneté du président a été déposée par un réserviste. Stefan Frederick Cook s'était porté volontaire pour l'Afghanistan avant de se déclarer objecteur de conscience : il ne saurait servir sous les ordres d'un commandant en chef qu'il croit illégitime.

Les «birthers» surgissent aussi là où on ne les attend pas : lors d'une rencontre organisée dans son district, Mike Castle, un élu républicain du Delaware, a été hué quand il a rétorqué à une militante qui disait vouloir «reprendre son pays» : «Barack Obama est américain.»

Ce n'est certes pas la première fois qu'un homme politique américain est dépeint comme «autre» ou «différent» à cause de ses origines. Les candidats Michael Dukakis ou Mario Cuomo en ont fait les frais avant Barack Obama. Le vide politique créé par la déroute du Parti républicain a donné à cet extrémisme une place qu'il n'aurait sans doute pas dans d'autres circonstances.

Obama, la pression monte

Désolé pour l'interruption de service. Je suis à l'étranger plongé jusqu'au cou dans des archives.

Je poste quand même cet article du Guardian qui résume de manière hostile les derniers développements de la controverse aux Etats-Unis autour de la naissance du président Barack Hussein Obama (BHO).

Nous sommes un des rares médias francophones à avoir présenté à nos lecteurs les tenants et les aboutissants de cette controverse (voir les posts plus anciens, rechercher à Obama).

Pour rappeler en quelques mots le nœud de la question. Pour devenir président des Etats-Unis, il ne suffit pas d'être citoyen de ce pays. Il faut en outre être un « natural born citizen ». Voir ici un site amusant sur cette question. Cette qualité répond à une préoccupation simple des constituants : que nul autre pays puisse revendiquer le président comme son citoyen. Par exemple, un citoyen américain né à l'étranger dont un des parents serait également étranger ».

Donc, si BHO est né à Hawaï, il est citoyen de naissance. Malheureusement, le président n'a dévoilé qu'un extrait de naissance simplifié lequel ne mentionne nullement le lieu précis de sa venue au monde ni le nom du médecin accoucheur ou de la sage-femme. Certains grincheux prétendent que ce type d'extrait simplifié peut être donné sous certains conditions à des enfants nés hors de Hawaï dont un des parents est citoyen et résiderait sur l'île.

Pour le moment, il n'est pas certain que cette omission soit le résultat d'une numérisation des archives qui aurait conduit à la destruction de ce document. Les informations à ce sujet sont confuses, certain fonctionnaire local a prétendu avoir vu les originaux.

A ce jour, la preuve la plus contemporaine de la naissance à Hawaï de BHO est une annonce parue dans la presse locale quelques jours après l'heureux événement.

La famille Obama n'a rendu publiques aucune photo qui pourrait apporter de nouvelles informations, par exemple la mère de BHO dans sa chambre d'hôpital.

Enfin, même si la naissance de BHO à Hawaï est confirmée, ce qui semble pour le moment le plus probable, il reste que la nationalité de son père kenyan, son adoption ensuite par un citoyen d'Indonésie, en font pour le moins un citoyen potentiel du Royaume-Uni (puissance coloniale du Kenya au moment de la naissance de BHO), du Kenya, de l'Indonésie (par son adoption) et, bien entendu, des Etats-Unis. On est bien loin de la définition d'un « natural born citizen ».

Affaire suivre donc.