Arizona birther Secretary of State Ken Bennett apologized for "embarrassment" he "might have" caused the State by demanding verification of the President's birth certificate. After three months of argument between the states, Hawaii sent "verification."
Despite having received the verification he requested, Bennett still insists the President was born in Kenya and is, therefore, ineligible to run for the office. Quixotically, he also insists he is not a member of the birther movement. That's probably true, since that movement has no formal membership, but to keep insisting the President is a Kenyan in the face of the verification he requested and received marks him as a birther nonetheless.
Hawaii demanded proof that he was a State official as he claimed (Hawaiian law provides for verifying State documents to proper officials from other states). Despite information sent, Hawaii kept requesting more proof... for three months. The state has been inundated by such requests since Obama became a candidate. Since Sheriff Joe Arpaio began his investigation, people he has made members of his "Threats Management Unit" have used their appointments to claim rights as government officials. Hawaiian officials aren't buying it. They've grown tired of it, and just a wee bit cynical.
Why, if he is not in fact a birther, would Arizona's Secretary of State, an elected position that should surely be impartial, not only demand proof (despite proofs already provided, including an official copy of the President's long form birth certificate posted on the President's website), but publicly insist after he has received what he requested, that the question is still valid (but he IS going to put the President's name on the November ballot). Why keep the question alive in political discourse after he has apologized for embarrassing Arizona by asking it? Could he have a political axe to grind? Turns out... the answer is a resounding "Yes."
It seems Arizona birther Secretary of State Ken Bennett has done more than sideline his impartiality. Kenny-the-birther has made himself co-chair of Romney's Arizona election committee! He's going to keep this nonsense alive in Arizona for all the campaign if he can.
Secretary of State Bennett wasn't the first State official to embarrass the State of Arizona, and he likely won't be the last. What is wrong with this State? It allows a State Legislator who has well-publicized ties to American Nazis to write an immigration law that federal courts have declared racist and unconstitutional.
The Sheriff of its Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, makes non-forensic copies of an internet posted document (the aforementioned birth certificate on the President's website), and declares it a fake because it's obviously a copy of a scanned copy. Duh! How does he suppose it got on the website in the first place?
And now comes the Arizona birther Ken Bennett, Secretary of State, challenging the birth certificate, and continuing to challenge it even after he's been given all the information he requested from Hawaii... to help his candidate in the presidential election trash his opponent with nonsense and lies.
Democrats have accused him of using the issue to score cheap political points. Seriously? How could they say such a thing about an obviously politically biased State official?
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Comments: 147
I gave my children a two apology limit. I do not accept insincere apologies. Since a sincere apology requires that the person offering it be willing to modify the offensive behavior, I do not accept third apologies. I apply the same rule to the Republican Party. I will not accept insincere apologies or apologies for things that people within the party have already offered multiple insincere apologies.
Saying "He must be Kenyan!" cuts no ice with me. I believe it was Carl Sagan who said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Explain to me how a foreigner could have gotten what was probably a meticulous vetting process. Otherwise, shut up and quit wasting people's time with this nonsense.
The office of President is a nationwide office. The Federal Election Commission should be the only arbitor of eligibility, not every politically ambitious state official.
Nobody disputes that Obama's mother was American. That makes him American. The only dispute is over where he was born. Republican George Romney ran for pres even though he was born in Mexico; Republican John McCain ran for pres even though he was born in Panama. Only black Democrat Barak Obama has ever had his eligibility questioned on the basis of where he was born. The Constitution (that document that every birther claims to revere) only says the president must be a "natural born [not "naturalized"] citizen" and at least 35 years old.
There are only two states of citizenship mentioned in the constitution... "natural born" and "naturalized." There is no third, "not quite a" citizen, or "just about a" citizen, or "not a naturalized but not a natural born" citizen, either. If he's not one of the two, he HAS to be the other, and we KNOW he wasn't naturalized.
I know your position depends on parsing grammar, but that grammar can be read to mean "all American" citizens or "any American" citizens. That's the trouble with parsing the language in any bill, law or constitutional amendment... lawyers, who hold little allegiance to grammar or punctuation usually write the damned things. Judges won't accept errors or uncertainties in grammar as revisions to the plain intent of the law, and requiring both parents to be citizens was NEVER the "plain meaning" of that law... NEVER. If you want to enforce that, in today's America there must be millions of citizens who ain't "natcheral born"... and that's just not the case. I dunno whether you came up with this bit of silliness yourself (I imagine not, frankly), but it doesn't pass the laugh test.
http://abcnews.go.com/politics/t/blogEntry?id=15460316
But I did notice you make no mention of ever studying Constitutional law.
You realize that "he was given citizenship at birth" is exactly why others in this conversation say Obama is a natural-born citizen, right? That this is the point of the comments about the two ways to become an American citizen--by birth, or by naturalization?
(If you look at those four cases, they all actually involved cases where the question was whether someone was a citizen [with the right to vote] or an alien.)
I do not think they are equal, but the judges in those cases seemed to think so, but that was not what they were deciding, so I don't think they are relevant citations. I didn't make that clear here, but later to Ron, below.
Odd thing is, Romney would not be caught dead saying Birther nonsense. Well, not into a live mic, anyway. :)
Usually, though, in order for a true conflict to exist, there must be an exchange of something of value...money, a six pack of beer, a cushy job...are you suggesting Bennett is being paid to act on Romney's behalf?
What you're describing, Viki, is a bribe, not a conflict of interest. A conflict of interest is exactly that - an individual whose vested personal interest directly conflicts with the interests of the position (s)he holds.
On the other hand, the "name callers" have made up their minds on superficial so-called "evidence" as presented by the MSM ... information intended to deceive and mislead.
IMnsHO and E.
The opinion (written by Chief Justice Morrison Waite) first asked whether Minor was a citizen of the United States, and answered that she was, citing both the Fourteenth Amendment and earlier common law. Exploring the common-law origins of citizenship, the court observed that "new citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization" and that the Constitution "does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens." Under the common law, according to the court, "it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners."[12] The court observed that some authorities "include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents"—but since Minor was born in the United States and her parents were U.S. citizens, she was unquestionably a citizen herself, even under the narrowest possible definition, and the court thus noted that the subject did not need to be explored in any greater depth
Char H. is right. Barack Obama does not qualify to be president because he is not a "natural born citizen." He was not born to two citizens. He may have been born in Hawaii to a mother who was a citizen which would make him a citizen, but it would not qualify him as the requisite "Natural Born Citizen." The birth certificate is just the cherry on the cake of his deception.
I hope that Bennet comes to his senses and does not allow the pretender's name on the AZ ballot as is his duty under law.
The framers were "hinkey" about having anybody who had even the remotest attachment to other nations available to take over the Presidency.
http://www.removerinos.com/natural.html
Hey, that's quite the blog you sent me to. Anyway, those cases are inadvertently funny... rather say it is worth a chuckle that the TEA-Twit blog your link gets us to uses cases in which foreign law was used as the primary basis for an American federal case ruling... a position decried and bemoaned at astounding length by these very same folks, by the thousands. Frankly, I doubt any court today would accept those as precedents.
You need to learn to make poppy links.
Of course, not knowing your particular qualifications to call these cites untenable, I'll just "take your word for it." (Written with tongue firmly in cheek, as usual.)
nonsensical. Anyone born in the USA is a US citizen. It would be absurd to discriminate against an american citizen on the basis of where his dad was born.
"The citizens of each state constituted the citizens of the United States when the Constitution was adopted. ... [He] who was subsequently born the citizen of a State, became at the moment of his birth a citizen of the United States. Therefore every person born within the United States, its territories or districts, whether the parents are citizens or aliens, is a natural born citizen in the sense of the Constitution, and entitled to all the rights and privileges appertaining to that capacity. .... Under our Constitution the question is settled by its express language, and when we are informed that ... no person is eligible to the office of President unless he is a natural born citizen, the principle that the place of birth creates the relative quality is established as to us."
Suppose a person should be elected president who was native born, but of alien parents; could there be any reasonable doubt that he was eligible under the Constitution? I think not. The position would be decisive in his favor, that by the rule of the common law, in force when the Constitution was adopted, he is a citizen.[33]
And further:
Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen. It is surprising that there has been no judicial decision upon this question.[34]
The decision in Lynch v. Clarke was cited as persuasive or authoritative precedent in numerous subsequent cases, including In re Look Tin Sing,[35] on the issue of whether the child, born in the U.S., to two Chinese parents (who were prevented by federal law from becoming U.S. citizens) was a U.S. citizen, notwithstanding the nationality of his parents or the fact that he had traveled to China with them and not returned to the U.S. for many years. The federal court held in a decision written by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen J. Field) that he was a citizen by birth, and remained such despite his long stay in China, cited the decision in Lynch v. Clarke and described that case:
After an exhaustive examination of the law, the Vice-Chancellor said that he entertained no doubt that every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, was a natural-born citizen, and added that this was the general understanding of the legal profession, and the universal impression of the public mind.[36]
The Lynch case was also cited as a leading precedent in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)[37], which similarly held that the child born here of two Chinese parents was a birthright US citizen, and that decision also used the phrase "natural born".[38]
In 1939 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Perkins v. Elg, regarding a young woman, born in New York a year after her father became a naturalized U.S. citizen. However, when she was about four her parents returned to Sweden taking her with them, and they stayed in Sweden. At age 20, this young woman contacted the American diplomats in Sweden and, shortly after her 21st birthday, returned to the United States on a U.S. passport and was admitted as a U.S. citizen. Years later, while she was still in America, her father in Sweden relinquished his American citizenship, and, because of that, the Department of Labor (then the location of the Immigration & Naturalization Service) declared her a non-citizen and tried to deport her. The young woman filed suit for a declaratory judgment that she was an American citizen by birth. She won at the trial level, and at the circuit court - where she was repeatedly described as "a natural born citizen" [39]- and finally in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court decision quoted at length from the U.S. Attorney-General's opinion in Steinkauler's Case (mentioned above) including the comment that the person born in America and raised in another country could yet "become President of the United States".[40]
"Upon principle, therefore, I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen. It is surprising that there has been no judicial decision upon this question."
"After an exhaustive examination of the law, the Vice-Chancellor said that he entertained no doubt that every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever the situation of his parents, was a natural-born citizen, and added that this was the general understanding of the legal profession, and the universal impression of the public mind.[36]
held that the child born here of two Chinese parents was a birthright US citizen, and that decision also used the phrase "natural born".
repeatedly described as "a natural born citizen" [39]- and finally in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court decision quoted at length from the U.S. Attorney-General's opinion in Steinkauler's Case (mentioned above) including the comment that the person born in America and raised in another country could yet "become President of the United States". And she had no parent that was a citizen, geez
No, he's referring to Old English Common Law, and that is where our law defaults when nothing in our laws covers something. Well, guess what, Old English Common Law says what these guys are, if you are born the country's jurisdiction, you are natural born. Nothing will satisfy a birther, it's a mental illness I think. If you are natural born, you are eligible to be president, because you are a natural born citizen, and the cases detail that. Move the goalposts again, though, that's the history of this illness.
Are the Flat Earthers really still around?
Since all logical and defensible arguments are rejected out of hand, with, as Ron has noted, goalposts being moved every time a logical or legal objection that will stand is raised... entertaining myself is about all that remains.
But, since we're on the subject, here's the reason for the name of the club... NOT ONE Federal judge, be he or she Republican, Liberal, Democrat, Conservative or apolitical, men and women for whom the US Constitution is the basis of their lives' work, accepts a single argument or precedent the members of this absurd group keep touting. EVERY attempt to advance the arguments put forth in comments above and below this one has been rejected in the strongest possible terms, by EVERY Federal court in which they've been put forth. And by "strongest possible terms," I mean, in some cases, terms that amounted to near-ridicule from those judges.
In the face of all that, watching the birthers on this thread (all of whom would probably deny being birthers) twist and spin their tunnel-vision version of the Constitution's requirement for a "Natural Born" citizen to be President, is painful. Despite constant references to "plain language," understanding the Constitution isn't like reading a "Twilight" novel. People spend their entire academic and professional lives figuring out how the Constitution has evolved in its response to legal questions as society changed and the questions continued to come up. Digging through birther blogs and hate screeds for wanna-be Constitutional experts' opinions on constitutional law just makes the resultant stew of irrelevancy and outright fakery look pathetic. So yes, I ridicule them. Their position is ridiculous.
I saw the following in the article here:
And I’m horrified that these people have co-opted the name “conservative†to scream their messages of hate and anger.
And that is from a highly conservative activist who worked for Reagan. What helped convince him that the far right extremists were destroying conservatism was the Heartland Institute's recent campaign to equate anyone acknowledging the 100 years of climate science with murderers, tyrants, and madmen.
All honest Americans must stand up to these deceivers and not continue to give them a forum to spew their hatred.
The Republican Party willingly invited this to happen. They get no sympathy from me. Instead of standing up against the crazies, they used them, thinking it would either work well for them or they could use them again as fall guys. Looks like their attempt to blame them now is admission that they were wrong not to stop them. And, Mitt Romney, their presumed candidate is getting more cozy with them each day.
There must be several Tea Parties, considering the vastly conflicting reports of who they are, what they do, what motivates them.
So there's the birther philosophy: unless a document says "Obama's a Kenyan communist terrorist," then it's a forgery.
'It's a movement,a nd we all need one, every day.' (Harry Shearer)
Despite your title, I don't see any apology. Despite the quote from your post, I don't see any such insistence in that linked article. It only said he would comment on Wednesday. Since that appeared on Wednesday, I assume he means next Wednesday.
“If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent,” Bennett said Tuesday in an interview with a local radio station. (Second Link)
I don't see any such insistence in that linked article.
You are correct. I misread the following sentence in the same article... "Still, Bennett — who insists he is not a member of the “birther” movement that continues to promote the unsubstantiated claim that Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president..." I evidently missed the word "that" between 'movement' and 'continues,' not sure how. I usually read pretty carefully.
Upon re-reading, it is obvious that the sentence says it is the idiotic birther "movement" that "...continues to promote... etc." If this weren't a Skywriter article, I could rewrite it, but it is, so I'm not permitted to. This correction will have to do.
You have taken a quote out of complete context. Also, there is no apology as you and others are falsely leading. What he said was based on contingency, If I embarrassed the state," so he did not at all apologize for what he did. If certain people in his state are offended such as this shock-jock jerk who interrogated him and made false accusations throughout the process for which he had to continually defend, this is why he made that statement. He did not apologize for having done what he did. You, and everyone else I've read so far, left out what was an integral part to understanding that quote, but that's what happens when people all copy and paraphrase each other's rags without verification.
"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent, and I don’t think there is anything embarrassing about doing my job." So obviously, he didn't make any apologies for what he did.
In the context of the interaction, after this guy made him out to be pandering to birthers, excluding the rest of the constituency, he had nothing he could do but to make it clear that he didn't do this to offend anyone. In fact, the jock himself knew he hadn't apologized because right after Bennett made that statement, the question he asked was “Are you sorry you did it?†He would not have asked that question if he felt Bennett had admitted he was sorry he had requested the verification. (I'll address the rest later, but I have some things to do right now.)
(Still not finished addressing the rest, but I have to do continue to finish what I’m doing at home.)
I'm not duplicitous. You're welcome to fill this thread with all the blather to that effect you like, but I've already told you I built that argument on a misread. If you still have a problem with it, you can contact my Program Manager, Eric Edson at: eedson@gatherinc.com
I see, however, that you have absolutely no refute now as you did before to anything I've written here, either in unbolded or big, black bold print, because I provided the complete quote which makes just about 99.999% of everything else you contended here one giant prevarication, and the podcast with the contents of the complete, ghoulish grilling and the responses from Bennet are the irrefutable proof of what I've said. So, of course, all you can do is make up some more "sillydamnnonsense" and accuse me of making it instead without any substantiation of what you contend yet once again. Consistency is a virtue too, though. Congratulations!
As I pointed out, however, all you did was go to other rags to paraphrase their lies in your own words and some of them are not even in your own words, but that's beside the point of this particular issue. The point is that you're not the only one doing this so I will probably not comment further to your post, but make another one of my own, pointing to the false, misleading and otherwise erroneous reporting of what Bennett actually said. The only accurate account I've seen so far is from the AP which was before he made any statements, only verifying that he had received the verbal verification from Hawaii he had requested.
I won't be creating that article until later tonight or tomorrow, however. I don't think you'll comment because you won't have anything to refute there either, but I know you'll view. You have a nice Memorial Day weekend now, Chuck. Be sure, as usual, not to give a second thought to conscience that might spoil anything for you.
No, I would not do such a thing; that's not my job. You have an editor and it's your editor's job to see to it that what you propagate here is commensurate with whatever SkyWriter deems acceptable to whatever its agenda may be.
That you admit to some kind of inaccuracy is not the inaccuracy that I spoke of here. That's the next thing I would deal with if I were going to continue here about what you wrote. The only specifics of your post that I addressed to this point were the ones concerning the title. You not only took the words of the Secretary of the State of AZ out of the context of the larger framework of the radio broadcast from which they were taken, but you actually truncated the sentence that, had you not done so, would have given no credence whatsoever to what you claimed in the title of your post. If your editor, who should be cognizant of what his writers are peddling, does not see what you've done, or does see what you've done and condones it anyway, there won't be anything I say or do that would probably change that. It this is the kind of common "journalism" he wants to propagate here, that's far beyond my realm to have any control over, realist as I am. Also, it's not in my character to cry to "mumma" over such.
Anyway, I will still attempt to right the wrongs that have been propagated over the "internets" in general about this birth certificate "verification" as I said I would. I can only do my very small part here, but I will do it with the best of intentions, whether I'm called a birther, a truther, a teabagger or whatever other pejoratives may be appropriate to characterize what is rightfully characterized as fact vs. fiction.
I had a bit of a chuckle (no pun intended) thinking of how you said you were going to "drop by." If it wouldn't be against TOS, I thought it might be fun to post a series of your usual "drop by" insults to a selected audience so they could place bets on which one or ones you might use on my post. Rules make things so boring, though.
It is the Memorial Holiday weekend where we all celebrate those who have fought for our rights to say what we will, when we will, how we will, where we will and to whom we will, no matter lies or not. Whether many of those battles were not fought for those rights but for an agenda different from that kind of defense, it's all the more incumbent on me to do my part to ensure that the wars that were fought for the right things, those men and women who did lose their lives for those freedoms, are honored by my attempts to propagate what they would have considered a worthy endeavor.
If I were you, Chuck, (which, no doubt, I am not) I would retract this post, editor or no editor, on the grounds that you rushed to a judgment you now realize is not so. You can't chop the last clause off this sentence with any sense of integrity just so you can make your hook in your title:"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent, and I don’t think there is anything embarrassing about doing my job."
You didn't need to respond to lots of words that I included not for you, but because the readers, outside Gather especially, are from a wide range of demographics who may have needed the emphasis. You only needed to respond to that one thing that I addressed here. No other boogers and horse pucky apply in your response.
“If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn’t my intent,” Bennett said Tuesday in an interview with a local radio station.
Obama’s name will appear on the ballot “as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has,” Bennett said.
Still, Bennett — who insists he is not a member of the “birther” movement that continues to promote the unsubstantiated claim that Obama was born in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to be president — defended himself for making the request.
What you bolded isn't there... so I didn't cut it off. But it wouldn't have been unreasonable to do so, just as the article author did. It's irrelevant. What he thinks is embarrassing was never the issue. The question was, did the citizens of the State of Arizona think he embarrassed them? The part you show is just hubris. It was never his job to harass the Hawaiian officials for the several thousandth time to demand answers to an already answered and answered and answered question.
And immediately following what I used was something i didn't use:
“What is so sacred or untouchable about this question that you can’t even ask the question?” he said.
More hubris. It MIGHT have made sense if it had been the first, maybe the tenth, or the fiftieth, or even the hundredth time the question had been asked. But eventually, having political figures like this guy ask it yet again, when "asked and answered" is a finish line long passed, is nothing but grandstanding and a demand for attention.
Oh, one more thing. It's not my editor's job to fact-check me; it's mine, and I'm usually better at it that I was here. I thought you might want to complain about my "duplicitous" article.
Not unless you learn to make it pop, it isn't.
Your links starts........
"Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days"
The original starts.........
"ASSOCIATED PRESS
4:44 p.m. June 25, 2004
CHICAGO – Illinois Senate candidate Jack Ryan dropped out of the race Friday amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days. "
You can see how the originals were posted the day before here and here
You ladies and the gentleman who posted it here a couple of weeks ago were duped by a tabloid.
You and your fellow believers will be historical laughing stocks soon enough. Meanwhile, I'll just keep laying out the evidence when I find it.
You asked me below if I disagreed with AP. Apparently I don't, but I DO disagree with the blogger who added the birther nonsense to the first of that article, and then sold it to you as truth. And even after being shown the real article (WITH a poppy link to it), you talk about laying out the "evidence" where you find it, as if that blog's fake article were evidence. Never mind "CRITICAL" thinking... do you think at ALL?
You disagree with the Associated Press?
I have no idea about the AP. I don't follow C&P links. That little chain down there to the right cures that.
Count Soba... I'm not too "lazy" to cut and paste links... I'm just too easily aggravated by the need to do your job.
Barack Obama is playing America - and especially gullible people like you - like a dime store kazoo. The evidence is there. That you keep trying to ignore it away is purely goofy.