Index Records And Divided Loyalty

Leo Donofrio has come to the conclusion that to finally get at the actual "he can't be a natural born citizen since his father was a foreigner" issue of Obama's divided loyalties he's going to need to clear away the "Obama birth certificate" quagmire first.

He believes that Obama was likely born in Hawaii but realized together with one of his commenters (TerriK) that there was something fishy about the recent confirmations of Obama's "NBC" status from Hawaiian officials. Specifically, they referred to multiple original records (plural!) that they referred to in making their verification. This would lead a reasonable person to believe that Obama's birth records have been amended.

Leo is now working to understand Hawaii's freedom of information laws and determine what information that the officials used in their determination should in fact be shared with the public. For instance it appears that the Hawaii Attorney General rendered an opinion to them that itself should be made public. It also appears that "index data", though limited in the amount of information it contains, cannot be denied according to Hawaii statute:

(d) Index data consisting of name and sex of the registrant, type of vital event, and such other data as the director may authorize shall be made available to the public.

So what is index data? At the top of this post is what death record (not birth record) index data looks like on the North Dakota state website. I shrunk and redacted it to protect myself but this is the list of death records that includes my Father and Aunt. As you can see there are two records displayed. The minimum information I had to enter to get it was last name and a date range for when the death occurred. In this case I entered my last name and dates spanning the decade of the 90s which was when both of them passed away.

So if there are birth records (plural) for Obama, you might see something listed like the original birth record and also an entry at some later time for an amendment (who knows what).

However, North Dakota does not have an open index such as the above of birth records and to get access to them you need to go through what appears to be a third party (Lexis-Nexis) company called VitalChek and as part of that process you need to show specific interest and send them a copy of your ID, etc. There does not appear to be an online search-able database birth event index data like there is of death event data. (And not all states seem to have open death index data like North Dakota does -- I do not currently have the time to do an inventory of what the various states do. I just had something interesting I could look for in North Dakota even though I no longer live there.)

It seems very clear based on the Hawaii open information statutes that the public should at minimum be able to gain access to Obama's birth index data if not his actual certificate as people have been hoping for.

My guess is that if necessary -- that is if Leo starts to get too close to the truth -- there will be an emergency session of the Hawaii legislature to retroactively rewrite this law. Pardon my lack of faith in our current kakistocracy but that's my take. That or they'll just keep saying no even if Leo nails them to the wall technically.

Ironically, I just (re-)ran across something that made me believe even more in Leo's argument that the founders were requiring two citizen parents AND birth on U.S. soil to qualify as NBC. In going through the yearly "Standards of Business Conduct" training materials for my company, a key point that's hammered home is that while "outside employment" is not "forbidden", the standards do "forbid any outside work that could lead to divided loyalties."

Shockingly ethical isn't it? And of course the Obama argument implies that the founders were not smart enough to apply this common sense approach. Not.

Leo has concisely summarized John Jay's revision of Alexander Hamilton's draft:

The question presented then is whether the US is willing to allow persons who were born without sole allegiance to the US to be Commander in Chief of our military.

For it is this specific fear that prompted our first Supreme Court Chief Justice – John Jay – to suggest to George Washington the following:

Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.

This letter was written on July 25, 1787. It is in direct response to Alexander Hamilton’s suggested Presidential requirement appearing in the first draft of the Constitution wherein Hamilton – five weeks earlier – on June 18, 1787 submitted the following:

No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.

There you have the crux of the issue now before the nation.

There is no reason to believe that the standard that corporations use today to protect their own interests should be more stringent than that which protects the very survival of our Republic.

If you weren't born on U.S. soil, that's a potential for divided loyalities.

If one of your parents wasn't a citizen, that's another -- and potentially even more dangerous -- potential.

Both matter and need to be proscribed for the CinC.

And as Leo has done such a remarkable job of elucidating, the historical record has plenty of support for this common sense position.

UPDATE: Even better, I have come up with a little experiment that you can perform directly here.

Go to the link above and enter “Johnston” in the last name field and “01/01/2000″ thru “01/01/2009″ in the date fields and hit the search button. Interesting, no? (The name is not related to me or my family as was the [therefore redacted] example in my post -- I just experimented until I found something useful.)

Now you can know first hand what Leo's talking about when he says index data! In fact, this is richer index data than the Hawaii statute requires probably because it’s death rather than birth “index data” and thereby less prone to fraud abuse (as well as being from a different state with different requirements).

[Also fixed typo from 'less' to 'more' stringent.]