Dedicated to Preserving the U.S.A. Constitutional Republic Form of Limited Government

What happened at Obama-no-show trial

2012-01-27T07:47:00.002-06:00

Sworn testimony reveals fake Social Security number, other gaps

Georgia citizens today delivered sworn testimony to a court that Barack Obama is slam-dunk disqualified from having his name on the 2012 presidential ballot in the state, because his father never was a U.S. citizen, which prevents him from qualifying as a “natural-born citizen” as the U.S. Constitution requires for a president.

The historic hearing was the first time that a court has accepted arguments on the merits of the controversy over Obama’s status. His critics say he never met the constitutional requirements to occupy the Oval Office, and the states and Congress failed in their obligations to make sure only a qualified president is inaugurated. His supporters, meanwhile, argue he won the 2008 election and therefore was “vetted” by America.

Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”

The hearing was before Judge Michael Malihi of the Georgia state Office of State Administrative Hearings. In Georgia, a state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

State law also grants the secretary of state and any “elector who is eligible to vote for a candidate” in the state the authority to raise a challenge to a candidate’s qualifications, the judge determined.

Citizens bringing the complaints include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by California attorney Orly Taitz, who has handled numerous cases concerning Obama’s eligibility; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield. Cody Judy is raising a challenge because he also wants to be on the ballot.

Several of the attorneys introduced passages from Obama’s own writings that Barack Obama Sr. was his father. They then introduced evidence that the man never was a U.S. citizen, that he was a citizen of Kenya at the time of junior’s birth and was therefore a subject of the United Kingdom.

His father’s citizenship, they said, precludes him from serving as president, since the Founders required that officer to be a “natural-born citizen,” not just a “citizen.”

The term is not defined in the Constitution, but evidence introduced included a passage from a 1875 Supreme Court opinion that states:”The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, 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.”

Weldon explained in his presentation that the 14th Amendment granting citizenship did not redefine Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which includes the requirement for a president to be a “natural-born citizen.”

The attorney argued also that another later court case referenced citizenship in the dicta, not the central holding in the case, and thus was not controlling.

Many of Irion’s arguments were echoed by Hatfield, a strategy that at least one constitutional expert, Herb Titus, said was sound.

Titus taught constitutional law, common law, and other subjects for nearly 30 years at five different American Bar Association-approved law schools. From 1986 to 1993, he served as the founding dean of the College of Law and Government in Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. Prior to his academic career, he served as a trial attorney and a special assistant United States attorney with the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and Kansas City, Mo.

He told WND the fact that Obama’s father was a Kenyan citizen should be sufficient.

“That is much stronger than the question of where he was born,” he said. “That alone is evidence. … They don’t need anything additional.”

Taitz argued multiple prongs of the case: that the birth certificate released by the White House is a forgery; that he probably has had several citizenships, such as when he was listed in Indonesia as an Indonesian citizen; and that he’s been known under the names Obama, Soetoro and Soebarkah.

She also had a private investigator, Susan Daniels, testify that it appears Obama is using a fraudulent Social Security number.

Documents and imaging expert Doug Vogt asserted the birth documentation released by the White House was a creation of a software program and not a scan of any original document. That would mean Obama’s documentation, despite what the White House released in April, is still under wraps.

Obama and his attorney boycotted the proceedings, issuing a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp that the judge was letting attorneys “run amok.” The statement came after Malihi refused to quash a subpoena for Obama’s testimony and his records, which effectively was ignored by the White House.

The judge is expected to review the evidence and make a recommendation to the state whether there is reason to be concerned about Obama’s name on the 2012 ballot.

He apparently will have no defense evidence, but Kemp had warned Obama about that.

Kemp said late last night in a response to a demand from Obama’s attorney that he simply order the hearing stopped.

“Anything you and your client place in the record in response to the challenge will be beneficial to my review of the initial decision; however, if you and your client choose to suspend your participation in the OSAH proceedings, please understand that you do so at your own peril.”

WND reported earlier on the stunning decision from Malihi, who refused to quash the subpoena even after Obama outlined his defense strategy for such state-level challenges, which have erupted in half a dozen or more states already.

“Presidential electors and Congress, not the state of Georgia, hold the constitutional responsibility for determining the qualifications of presidential candidates,” Obama’s lawyer argued. “The election of President Obama by the presidential electors, confirmed by Congress, makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant.”

But the judge thought otherwise.

“Defendant argues that ‘if enforced, [the subpoena] requires him to interrupt duties as president of the United States’ to attend a hearing in Atlanta, Georgia. However, defendant fails to provide any legal authority to support his motion to quash the subpoena to attend,” he wrote in his order.

“Defendant’s motion suggests that no president should be compelled to attend a court hearing. This may be correct. But defendant has failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority,” the judge continued.

“Specifically, defendant has failed to cite to any legal authority evidencing why his attendance is ‘unreasonable or oppressive, or that the testimony … [is] irrelevant, immaterial, or cumulative and unnecessary to a party’s preparation or presentation at the hearing, or that basic fairness dictates that the subpoena should not be enforced,’” the judge said.

Jablonski also had argued that the state should mind its own business.

“The sovereignty of the state of Georgia does not extend beyond the limits of the State. … Since the sovereignty of the state does not extend beyond its territorial limits, an administrative subpoena has no effect,” the filing argued.

The image released by the White House in April:

Obama long-form birth certificate released April 27 by the White House

Titus said, “‘Natural born citizen’ in relation to the office of president, and whether someone is eligible, was in the Constitution from the very beginning. Another way of putting it; there is a law of the nature of citizenship. If you are a natural born citizen, you are a citizen according to the law of nature, not according to any positive statement in a Constitution or in a statute, but because of the very nature of your birth and the very nature of nations.”

If you “go back and look at what the law of nature would be or would require … that’s precisely what a natural born citizen is …. is one who is born to a father and mother each of whom is a citizen of the U.S. or whatever other country,” he said.

“Now what we’ve learned from the Hawaii birth certificate is that Mr. Obama’s father was not a citizen of the United States. His mother was, but he doesn’t qualify as a natural born citizen for the office of president.”

_____

Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers "The Obama Nation" and "Unfit for Command." Along with serving as WND's senior staff reporter, Corsi is a senior managing director at Gilford Securities. Gilford Securities, founded in 1979, is a full-service boutique investment firm headquartered in NYC providing financial services to institutional and retail clients, from investment banking and equity research to retirementMore

School to teacher: 'God's not allowed'

2012-01-27T07:38:00.001-06:00

FAITH UNDER FIRE

Supremes asked to affirm Constitution's 1st Amendment

By Michael Carl

For 25 years, math teacher Bradley Johnson at Poway High School near San Diego took advantage of a 30-year school policy and hung patriotic posters with sayings such as “God bless America” in his classroom.

But then school officials ordered Johnson to take down the banners, even though other teachers were allowed to keep anti-religious slogans such as John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Buddhist prayer flags and images of Black Muslim leader Malcolm X.

So he went to court, and now the case is on its way to the highest court in the land.

The legal ordeal started in 2007 when school officials are alleged to have suddenly reversed the policy that allowed teachers to display banners, posters and signs that reflected their personal beliefs.

Poway officials told Johnson that his banners violated the establishment clause of the Constitution because they advocated a “Judeo-Christian worldview.”

Johnson pointed to what other teachers displayed, but the district dismissed his concerns.

Thomas More Law Center represented Johnson, and he won the first round in California federal district court, where Judge Robert Benitez said the teacher was within his First Amendment rights.

Benitez extolled the virtues of education while concluding Johnson doesn’t lose his liberties after walking through the school house doors.

“May a school district censor a high school teacher’s expression because it refers to Judeo-Christian views while allowing other teachers to express views on a number of controversial subjects, including religion and anti-religion? On undisputed evidence, this Court holds that it may not,” Benitez wrote.

Benitez also says that the federal courts should use restraint in dealing with local schools.

“Courts should not quickly intervene in the daily operation of schools and school systems, for that task is committed primarily to local school boards,” Benitez wrote.

But he said when a constitutional question is at the heart of the dispute, the courts have a valid role to play in the matter.

“The vigilant protection of constitutional freedoms is nowhere more vital than in the community of American schools,” Benitez wrote.

The school took the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most overturned appellate court in the nation, and Benitez’s ruling was reversed. That means Johnson has nowhere left to go but to the Supreme Court.

The Thomas More Law Center said the issue arose because of criticism from one of Johnson’s colleagues.

“The banners became a problem as a result of a complaint by one of Johnson’s fellow teachers,” the organization’s report said.

Johnson defended his banners because he says other teachers were apparently free to display religious signs. Thomas More said the school ordered Johnson to remove his banners because they believe they can.

“Basically, the school said, ‘we can tell teachers what to do.’ And school officials claim the use of the phrase ‘God’ in each of those phrases violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution,” a Thomas More spokesman said.

Buddha, on the other hand, is scientific, according to the district, the spokesman said.

“Additionally, they consider the image of Buddha to be more of a scientific interest than a religious symbol.”

The Poway district issued a statement saying school officials believe they were within their rights asking Johnson to remove the banner.

“The Poway Unified School District has believed from the beginning of this case that the removal of a teacher’s banners was consistent with the requirements of the United States Constitution,” the statement said.

“On September 13, 2011, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously agreed that the district acted correctly, holding that public-school teachers do not have a First Amendment right to say anything they want when teaching to a captive student audience. A month later, the entire 9th Circuit denied the teacher’s request to rehear the appeal,” the statement said.

School system attorney Jack Sleeth Jr. said in the statement that he believes the 9th Circuit acted appropriately.

“We believe that the 9th Circuit properly followed the Constitution and Supreme Court case law in ensuring that all students have a proper environment for learning. The 9th Circuit correctly found that teachers have no First Amendment right to espouse their personal religious beliefs in the classroom,” Sleeth said in the statement.

Civil rights attorney and legal writer Rees Lloyd disagrees with both the school and the 9th Circuit opinion.

“This 9th Circuit decision represents a dangerous, discriminatory, secular-cleansing, anti-Christian precedent, as well as a travesty of justice,” Lloyd said.

“The decision is sure to be perceived for what it is – another monument to arrogant judicial tyranny, transforming the nation beyond all recognition from its founding,” Lloyd said.

“The 9th Circuit, the most liberal and most reversed circuit in the United States, has now held that government school bureaucrats may establish policies creating a right of teachers to express their personal points of view in the classroom,” Lloyd said.

“That includes political, atheist, agnostic, irreligious, non-religious, and religious points of view, except the expression of words and symbols associated with the Judeo-Christian values upon which the American nation was founded, which those school bureaucrats can censure and ban because they find that point of view unacceptable,” Lloyd said.

Lloyd added that the 9th Circuit’s opinion fails to address the issue of whether Buddhist displays may offend Christians.

“Nowhere in the 9th Circuit opinion is there any discussion of whether those displays (the Dalai Lama, etc.) might be offensive to Christians or Jewish students. It is only the American flag, and words associated with Judeo-Christian points of view, upon which the nation was founded, that the school bureaucrats, and the 9th Circuit judges find might give offense,” Lloyd said.

Obama accused of disrespecting court, state, Americans

2012-01-27T07:31:00.001-06:00

CERTIFIGATE

'My belief is if Supreme Court held he was ineligible, he might simply ignore the ruling'

By Dave Tombers

One of the attorneys who fought a court case over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court says he fears that even if the U.S. Supreme Court declared Obama unqualified, he’d simply ignore the ruling and continue issuing orders.

But those who observed a court hearing today in Atlanta say it could be the beginning of the end for the Obama campaign, because of the doubt that could surge like a tidal wave across the nation.

The comments came today from Leo Donofrio, who led the pack in filing lawsuits over Obama’s 2008 election and his subsequent occupancy of the White House.

He was commenting on today’s hearing before a Georgia administrative law judge on complaints raised by several state residents that Obama is not eligible to run for the office in 2012. That hearing went on after Obama and his lawyer decided to snub the court system and refuse to participate.

Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”

A decision from the judge, Michael Malihi, is expected soon.

The Georgia residents delivered sworn testimony to a court that, among other things, Obama is forever disqualified from having his name on the 2012 presidential ballot in the state because his father never was a U.S. citizen. Because the Constitution’s requirement presidents be a “natural born citizen,” which is the offspring of two citizen parents, he is prevented from qualifying, they say.

The historic hearing was the first time that a court has accepted arguments on the merits of the controversy over Obama’s status. His critics say he never met the constitutional requirements to occupy the Oval Office, and the states and Congress failed in their obligations to make sure only a qualified president is inaugurated, while his supporters say he won the 2008 election and therefore was “vetted” by America.

In Georgia, the law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Citizens bringing the complaints include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield. Cody Judy is raising a challenge because he also wants to be on the ballot.

Donofrio’s case – like all the others that have reached the Supreme Court – simply was refused recognition.

“That President Obama’s attorneys didn’t show respect for the court, the citizens, the secretary of state, and the statutes of Georgia reveals the true character of the administration as being completely and utterly against state’s rights,” Donofrio said. “The federal government is growing out of control with every administration and this action today is a loud announcement that this administration is going to do what it likes, and you can imagine that their response to this judiciary would be exactly the same if this had been the U.S. Supreme Court.”

He said if Georgia does decide to keep Obama off its state election ballots, he won’t appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, “because if he were to lose there, his entire administration would be void, including his appointments to the Supreme Court.”

“If Obama were to appeal in Georgia, only this election is in play, and only as to Georgia’s ballots, but if he loses in Georgia, appealing to the SCOTUS brings in his entire eligibility, and the legitimacy of his current administration,” Donofrio warned.

“My personal belief is that if the U.S. Supreme Court held that he was ineligible, he might simply ignore the ruling, and test the will of the nation, just as he is testing the will of the state of Georgia,” he said.

The White House today was absolutely silent about the issue. The Georgia case is far different from the lawsuits over the 2008 election, in which judges virtually unanimously ruled that they could not make a decision that would remove a sitting president, no matter the circumstances.

This hearing was about concerns being raised, as allowed by Georgia state law, that Obama is not eligible for the office of president and therefore should not be allowed on the 2012 election ballot.

“If the judge’s recommendation – and I’ve been told that it’s going to be to disqualify Mr. Obama as a candidate – is followed by the secretary of state, Mr. Obama has got a real problem,” said Gary Kreep, of the United States Justice Foundation.

His organization pursued several of the lawsuits over Obama’s occupancy of the Oval Office to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices simply decided they wouldn’t be bothered with such issues as the constitutional eligibility of a president.

“He’s thumbed his nose at the court. He’s thumbed his nose at the secretary of state in Georgia. He’s thumbed his nose at the people and said, ‘I’m above it all. I’m above the law,’” Kreep said.

Kreep’s cases have outlined out there is precedent in the U.S. for the removal of a sitting chief executive because of an issue over ineligibility.

Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, had warned Secretary of State Brian Kemp yesterday that he needed to simply call off the hearing, and he and Obama would not participate.

Not only did Obama not participate, there also was no comment.

On a day when Obama was campaigning in Arizona and Colorado, he released formal statements about the retirement of Congressman Brad Miller, and the retirement of Gov. Bev Perdue.

But WND calls to the White House brought only the instructions to e-mail a question to the media affairs department. WND did but got no response. WND also contacted Obama’s campaign headquarters, to receive instructions to email a question. WND did again, but again got no response.

Jablonski, the Atlanta attorney representing Obama, also declined to return WND messages left at his office today.

Mario Apuzzo, who also shepherded a case to the Supremes, said Obama, by not showing, “actually failed to meet his burden of proof, to show that he is eligible and should be placed on the ballot.”

“For him to just ignore due process here is really telling a lot,” he said, noting, “This decision will have a ripple effect.”

“He’s not above the law. That’s a very important thing here. He’s a private person running for office, so he had no business not showing up. So the court can enter the judgment, and then the secretary of state does what he wants with it. And this will have a ripple effect for other secretaries of state, for other states, for the public. Also for any case that could be pending in the Supreme Court, where the issue of Mr. Obama’s eligibility is implicated,” he said.

“It’s a really important milestone that has been reached.”

Apuzzo warned that an administrative law judge certainly wields authority in such cases.

“We had a legitimate hearing in a legitimate court where this private person, Barack Obama, was asked to come there and satisfy the basic Georgia election law ballot procedure, and he doesn’t show up. Nor does he send an attorney. We don’t see this on television yet, but I can’t imagine this not being major news. It boggles the mind that a sitting president who is running for re-election doesn’t show up at a state’s legitimately constituted proceeding to make sure that he is indeed eligible to be on the ballot,” he said.

Charles Kerchner, on whose behalf one of those cases went to the Supremes, said, “Obama thinks he is a king and thus not subject to the election laws of Georgia and the United States Constitution. He will soon learn otherwise.”

He continued, “As the Georgia secretary of state said in warning Obama and his attorney if they did not show.up for the court hearing today … if they do that, they will do so at their own peril.”

Kreep, who has fought battles in both state and federal courts over the issue, said a ruling that would remove Obama’s name from the Georgia ballot would be a “tremendous victory for … America.”

“If the judge issues a default and rules that Barack Obama will not be on the Georgia ballot, and if the secretary of state upholds that, then Mr. Obama, having told the court to essentially stick it in their ear, he wasn’t going to participate, wasn’t going to recognize their power – he’s going to have a tough time convincing some other court to overturn the ruling, because he waived his right to object to it by not appearing,” he explained.

“That’s a big deal to judges. A judge may or may not agree with another judge’s ruling, but when one party waives their ability to object, judges are very reluctant to get involved, because the party has basically said, ‘We don’t care what you do, we’re not going to abide by it.’ Judges don’t like that. They don’t like to be blown off,” he said.

He said the election outcome also could be decided because of not being on a ballot in even one state. And he said there’s more to come.

“I can tell you from my own personal knowledge that there are challenges going on in other states. Van Irion has one in Arizona and one in Tennessee. We have one in Illinois that is has gone under the radar. We’re going to be filing similar challenges around the country. We’ll be filing one within a week and another right around the end of the month,” he said.

Rush: Obama speech a 'fantasyland' of lies

2012-01-26T11:42:00.003-06:00

'General Motors, the No. 1 car company in the world again?'

Published: 22 hours ago

by Joe Kovacs Email | Archive

Joe Kovacs, executive news editor for WND, is an award-winning journalist and author of the No. 1 best-selling book "Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You've Never Been Told."More ↓

PALM BEACH, Fla. – Radio giant Rush Limbaugh wasted no time today attacking President Obama’s State of the Union address, calling it a fantasyland packed with untruth.

“It was chock-full of lies. It was fantasyland. No, it didn’t soar. It was boring,” Limbaugh said.

“There was nothing to set it apart, nothing about it that’s going to be memorable in a positive way. General Motors, the No. 1 car company in the world again? It just isn’t true. None of the economic news is true. He did two things. He lied. He tried to paint the economy as back. We are back, except where we’re not back, and that’s Bush’s fault.”

During the president’s speech, Obama focused on what he claimed to be a massive turnaround for American carmakers, saying, “Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s No. 1 automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.”

“I don’t believe this General Motors number,” Limbaugh said. “What an absolute crock. Anyway, after talking about all the wonderful, great, miraculous things he did with General Motors, then what did he say? ‘It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts, and no cop-outs. An America built to last, insists on responsibility from everybody.’ Now, maybe I’m a bitter clinger, but the car companies appear to have received a bailout to me. The UAW got a bailout to me, and the UAW was handed General Motors and Chrysler, if you ask me. Now, I don’t know what that is if it’s not a bailout. So he spends a whole speech talking about, ‘No more bailouts. We’re not gonna do that! No handouts, no cop-outs,’ and then he gives as his greatest example of American prosperity a company he bailed out! Who wrote this? This speech was an embarrassment.”

Limbaugh noted there were numerous facts Obama omitted from his address:

He didn’t talk about the 13.1 million unemployed Americans. He didn’t talk about the 5.6 million unemployed Americans who have been on unemployment longer than 27 weeks. He didn’t talk about 8.1 million involuntary part-time workers. He didn’t talk about the falling civilian labor-force participation rate was 64 percent. The number of jobs, the universe of jobs shrinking, didn’t bring that up. Didn’t talk about the national debt, $15.2 trillion, five trillion of which is his! Do you realize one-third of our entire national debt as a nation over 200 years, one-third of it is his, his alone. Of course he didn’t bring it up. He didn’t talk about the Keystone pipeline.

This speech was so filled with contradictions. He talked about teamwork is what made America great? Teamwork? Do you know, ladies and gentlemen, how wrong that is? Do you know what our founding documents are about? The rights and freedom of the individual versus government. There’s nothing about teamwork. There’s nothing about compromise, getting along and working together. The whole point of this government, the whole point of this country, the whole point of this founding was to champion the power and the rights and the civil rights and the freedoms and the liberty of the individual over government. I’m gonna tell you, if anybody on our side running for office anywhere – Senate, House, president – is on their game, this is an immediate, I mean they have just, Obama unwittingly has tossed a softball with the bases loaded.

This is worth two grand slams, this whole concept of teamwork, when this country was premised on the power, the rights of the individual, on the uniqueness of all of us, that we are different, that we all bring different things. Then there was this, whatever we do, we gotta have fairness. There must be fairness. That’s a code word for class warfare. Fairness is in the liberal dictionary, and it gives them the opportunity, the right, the power to redistribute wealth. That’s what fairness is. …

Actually it wasn’t a State of the Union; it was actually a Class Warfare Rally last night in the House chamber on every network. To put this in perspective. So the magic, the Messiah, the hope and change, all that, it’s gone. The magic, all that stuff, it’s gone. Last night was deadbeat city. It really was.

Georgia warns Obama of 'peril' of ignoring eligibility hearing

2012-01-26T11:26:00.003-06:00

CERTIFIGATE

Lawyer had urged secretary of state to simply cancel challenges

by Bob Unruh

The state of Georgia is warning Barack Obama of the “peril” of simply ignoring today’s hearing on his eligibility to be on the 2012 presidential election ballot in the state

The hearing before an administration law judge was streamed live today, but Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, yesterday told the state he and his client would not participate.

The attorney told Secretary of State Brian Kemp that the issue already had been resolved and it wasn’t any of the state’s business anyway.

Kemp disagreed, explaining in a response that was posted online after hours last night that the case simply was “in keeping with Georgia law.”

“As you are aware, OSAH Rule 616-1-2-.17 cited in your letter only applies to parties to a hearing. As the referring agency, the Secretary of State’s Office is not a party to the candidate challenge hearings scheduled for tomorrow. To the extent a request to withdraw the case referral is procedurally available, I do not believe such a request would be judicious given the hearing is set for [this] morning.”

He continued, “I expect the administrative law judge to report his findings to me after his full consideration of the evidence and law. Upon receipt of the report, I will fully and fairly review the entire record and initial decision of the administrative law judge.”

He also had a warning about the costs of simply not showing up for a court hearing.

The hearing could have a huge impact. It is the first time among the some five dozen different legal cases that have been filed over Obama’s eligibility that evidence actually is being heard in a courtroom. Being introduce today is the evidence about Obama’s background, his documentation, the results of investigations of private investigators and other information.

None of this heretofore has been put into an official court record, and judges earlier all had dismissed cases based on technicalities, such as “standing.”

It was yesterday that Barack Obama announced through his attorney that he will boycott the administrative hearings, prompting an attorney for one set of the plaintiffs to describe the nation’s commander-in-chief as acting like a “5-year-old brat.”

A letter from his lawyer, Jablonski, was posted on the website for California attorney Orly Taitz, whose determined pursuit of Obama’s eligibility documentation has taken her to courts across the nation, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jablonski told Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp in the letter that “serious problems” had developed in the hearings “pending before the Office of State Administration Hearings.”

He said, “At issue in these hearings are challenges that allege that President Obama is not eligible to hold or run for re-election to his office, on the now wholly discredited theory that he does not meet the citizenship requirements.”

Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”

Jablonski said the judge – who previously rejected Obama’s demand to quash a subpoena for him to appear and bring with him his birth records documenting his status as a “natural-born citizen” – has “exercised no control” over the proceeding.

“It threatens to degenerate into a pure forum for political posturing to the detriment of the reputation of the state and your office. Rather than bring this matter to a rapid conclusion, the ALJ has insisted on agreeing to a day of hearings, and on the full participation of the president in his capacity as a candidate,” Jablonski wrote.

“We await your taking the requested action, and as we do so, we will, of course, suspend further participation in these proceedings, including the hearing scheduled for January 26,” Jablonski wrote in the letter on the Taitz site, which indicated it had been sent to the participants in the case.

A blast of sarcasm aimed at Obama also was posted on the Taitz site.

“What Obama is asking now is totally insane,” it said. “He is asking the secretary of state of GA to take the trial away from the judge on the eve of the trial. He is mostly crying on the shoulder of the secretary of state of GA and saying that Orly is bad, because she issued all of those subpoenas. So after the judge told Obama that the subpoena that I issued was perfectly valid and he had to appear in court tomorrow and bring with him all of the documents that I demanded, Obama decided to go behind the back of the judge and send the same complaint about me to the secretary of state and he is asking the secretary of state to take the trial away from the judge.

“Does this look like a behavior of an innocent person? An innocent person would have come to court and showed all the valid documents with the embossed seals, which are verifiable,” the statement said. “Instead he is acting like a 5-year-old brat, saying, ‘I am afraid of Orly, I want the secretary of state of GA to act like my mommy and protect me from Orly.’ Some leader of the free world.”

The hearings are being brought by citizens of Georgia under a state law that allows voters to challenge the eligibility of candidates on the state’s ballot. It is the states that run elections in America, and national elections are just a compilation of the results of the 50 state elections.

The schedule for the hearings was set by Judge Michael Malihi of the Georgia state Office of State Administrative Hearings. In Georgia, a state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Jablonski told Kemp he should simply “withdraw” the original hearing request as “improvidently issued.”

“It is well established that there is no legitimate issue here – a conclusion validated time and again by courts around the country. The state of Hawaii produced official records documenting birth there; the president made documents available to the general public by placing them on his website,” he wrote.

Jablonski accused Malihi of allowing the attorneys to “run amok.”

“Perhaps he is aware that there is no credible response; perhaps he appreciates that the very demand made of his office – that it address constitutional issues – is by law not within its authority.”

Obama, meanwhile, has a campaign trip to several Midwest and Western states lined up over the next few days.

The judge thought otherwise.

Separately, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona told WND he also had received a subpoena to be at the hearings in Georgia. He said the purpose apparently is to ask him about his Cold Case Posse investigation of Obama’s eligibility, but he said since the investigation remains open, he wouldn’t be able to say much about it.

Hatfield also had filed with the court a “Notice to Produce” asking for Obama’s documents and records.

He wants one of the two original certified copies of Obama’s long-form birth certificate.

Obama’s attorney, Jablonski, also had argued that the state should mind its own business.

Taitz’s supporters joined a discussion on her website, where she also solicits support for the expenses of her court cases, judging that Obama is on the defensive.

“What a joke. He claims to be too busy performing the duties of the president of the United States. How many days of vacation has he taken? How many rounds of golf? If he is too busy to provide the documents that provide the basis for meeting the requirements of the office, then perhaps he better sit out the next four years,” said one.

Wrote another, “The election of President Obama by the presidential electors, confirmed by Congress, makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant. … This is complete utter nonsense!”

In fact, a presidential elector in California brought a lawsuit challenging Obama’s eligibility at the time of the 2008 election and was told the dispute was not yet ripe because the inauguration hadn’t taken place. The courts later ruled that the elector lost his “standing” to bring the lawsuit after the inauguration.

Barack Obama

Irion said his argument is that the Founders clearly considered a “natural-born citizen,” as the Constitution requires of a president and no one else, to be the offspring of two citizen parents. Since Obama himself has written in his books that his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan, and thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, Irion argues that Obama is disqualified under any circumstances based on his own testimony.

Those who argue against his birth in the United States note that numerous experts have given testimony and sworn statements that they believe Obama’s Hawaiian birth documentation to be fraudulent.

It is that concern that also has prompted Arpaio to turn over an investigation of that issue to his Cold Case Posse. Its investigative report is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

The image released by the White House in April:

Obama long-form birth certificate released April 27 by the White House

Top constitutional expert Herb Titus contends that a “natural-born citizen” is born of parents who are citizens. That argument also is supported by a 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court decision, Minor v. Happersett in 1875. The case includes one of very few references in the nation’s archives that addresses the definition of “natural-born citizen.”

That case states: “The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, 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.”

An extensive analysis of the issue was conducted by Titus, who has taught constitutional law, common law and other subjects for 30 years at five different American Bar Association-approved law schools. He also was the founding dean of the College of Law at Regent University, a trial attorney and special assistant U.S. attorney in the Department of Justice.

“‘Natural born citizen’ in relation to the office of president, and whether someone is eligible, was in the Constitution from the very beginning,” he said. “Another way of putting it; there is a law of the nature of citizenship. If you are a natural born citizen, you are a citizen according to the law of nature, not according to any positive statement in a Constitution or in a statute, but because of the very nature of your birth and the very nature of nations.”

___________

Email | Archive

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after spending nearly three decades writing on a wide range of issues for several Upper Midwest newspapers and the Associated Press. Sports, tornadoes, homicidal survivalists, and legislative battles all fell within his bailiwick. His scenic photography has been used commercially, and he sometimes plays in a church worship band.More ↓

Watch now: Obama eligibility hearing broadcast live

2012-01-26T10:17:00.002-06:00

CERTIFIGATE

'Complicit media ignoring all calls for honest reporting on the issue'

Published: 17 hours ago

by Joe KovacsEmail | Archive

Joe Kovacs, executive news editor for WND, is an award-winning journalist and author of the No. 1 best-selling book "Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You've Never Been Told."More ↓

A political action committee which believes Barack Obama is not legally qualified for U.S. president plans a live broadcast of tomorrow’s hotly anticipated court hearing in Atlanta regarding Obama’s eligibility.

The Article II Super PAC says it will provide uncensored, gavel-to-gavel video coverage of the event beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern at this online address.

Based in Simi Valley, Calif., the PAC says it decided to act out of a sense of frustration, since most national news outlets have been ignoring the constitutional mandate that presidents be a “natural-born citizen,” which the PAC maintains is a person who is a child of two U.S. citizen parents.

Discover what the Constitution’s reference to “natural-born citizen” means and whether Barack Obama qualifies, in the ebook version of “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?”

“The PAC saw the need to do this last month, because of the often incomplete and biased coverage of this issue by mainstream news media and recently received permission from the court,” said director Helen Tansey, who will personally manage on-site efforts.

“After the office of the president of the United States was usurped by a dual-citizen candidate in 2008, the nation was awakened to the realization that the U.S. Constitution, in particular Article II and presidential eligibility, no longer matters to our elected representatives and the mainstream media,” the PAC says on its website.

“Efforts for redress against this attack on the U.S. Constitution ranging from lawsuits to merely seeking the truth as to how it could happen were met with lies, obfuscation and even ridicule. With a complicit media ignoring all calls for honest reporting on the issue, Americans harnessed the Internet and the new technologies of the 21st century to join in a communications revolution bypassing the media and bringing to life the ideals of our Founding Fathers.”

The PAC says its overall goal is to “ensure that citizens and elected officials clearly understand Article II and the definitive meaning intended by the United States of America’s Founding Fathers of ‘NATURAL BORN CITIZEN,’ thereby working to create a legally binding vetting apparatus which will ensure all presidential and vice-presidential candidates are constitutionally eligible in 2012 and future elections.

“We are raising the needed resources to develop materials, to promote our message across the country, assisting with key state ballot challenges, continuing to assemble our legal team which include the brightest constitutional and elections law experts and so much more.”

The PAC has even produced a brief video stating its concerns:

WND reported Friday on the stunning decision from Judge Michael M. Malihi, who refused a demand from Obama’s lawyer to quash the subpoena for Thursday.

WND had reported earlier when Obama outlined a defense strategy for a number of state-level challenges to his candidacy in 2012 which argue that states have nothing to do with the eligibility of presidential candidates. Such challenges have been raised in New Hampshire, Arizona, Illinois and several other states.

“Presidential electors and Congress, not the state of Georgia, hold the constitutional responsibility for determining the qualifications of presidential candidates,” Obama’s lawyer argued in a motion to quash a subpoena for him to appear at the hearings in Atlanta Jan. 26.

“The election of President Obama by the presidential electors, confirmed by Congress, makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant,” the lawyer said.

Malihi, however, took a different view.

Hearings have been scheduled for three separate complaints raised against Obama’s candidacy. They all are raised by Georgia residents who are challenging Obama’s name on the 2012 ballot for various reasons, which they are allowed to do under state law.

It is states, usually through the office of secretary of state, that run elections, not the federal government. The national election is simply a compilation of the results of the individual elections within states.

The schedule for the hearings was set by Malihi of the Georgia state Office of State Administrative Hearings. In Georgia, a state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Three different plaintiffs’ groups are lined up for separate hearings, including one represented by California attorney Orly Taitz. She had the judge sign a subpoena for Obama’s testimony, and Michael Jablonski, Obama’s attorney for the cases, argued that he should be exempted.

“Make no mistake about it. This is the beginning of Watergate Two or ObamaForgeryGate. I believe this is the second time in the U.S. history a sitting president is ordered to comply with a subpoena, and produce documents, which might eventually bring criminal charges to the president and a number of high-ranking individuals,” Taitz said.

Separately, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona told WND he also had gotten a subpoena to be at the hearings in Georgia. He said the goal apparently is to ask him about his Cold Case Posse investigation of Obama’s eligibility, but he said since the investigation remains open, he wouldn’t be able to say much about it.

Hatfield also had filed with the court a “Notice to Produce” asking for Obama’s documents and records.

He wants one of the two original certified copies of Obama’s long-form birth certificate.

Obama’s attorney, Jablonski, also had argued that the state should mind its own business.

Taitz’s supporters joined a discussion on her website, where she also solicits support for the expenses of the battles she’s confronting, judging that Obama is on the defensive.

Barack Obama

Irion said his argument is that the Founders clearly considered a “natural born citizen,” as the Constitution requires of a president and no one else, to be the offspring of two citizen parents. Since Obama himself has written in his books that his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan, and thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, Irion argues that Obama is disqualified under any circumstances based on his own testimony.

Those who argue against his birth in the United States note that numerous experts have given testimony and sworn statements that they believe Obama’s Hawaiian birth documentation to be fraudulent.

It is that concern that also has prompted Arpaio to turn over an investigation of that issue to his Cold Case Posse. Its investigative report is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

The Georgia hearing apparently will be the first time among dozens of so-far unsuccessful lawsuits brought over Obama’s eligibility issue that evidence will be heard in a court. Other cases all have been dismissed over issues such as standing, without a presentation of the evidence.

There are similar challenges to Obama’s 2012 candidacy being raised before state election or other commissions in Tennessee, Arizona, Illinois, New Hampshire and other states.

The image released by the White House in April:

Obama long-form birth certificate released April 27 by the White House

Top constitutional expert Herb Titus contends that a “natural born citizen” is born of parents who are citizens. That argument also is supported by a 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court decision, Minor v. Happersett in 1875. The case includes one of very few references in the nation’s archives that addresses the definition of “natural-born citizen.”

Judge whacks Obama in eligibility case

2012-01-22T19:00:00.000-06:00

CERTIFIGATE

'Defendant has failed to enlighten the court with legal authority'

Published: 2 days ago

by Bob Unruh

A Georgia judge has refused a demand from Barack Obama to quash a subpoena to appear at a series of administration hearings Jan. 26 at which residents of the state are challenging, as allowed under a state law, his name on the 2012 presidential ballot.

WND reported this week when Obama outlined a defense strategy for a number of state-level challenges to his candidacy in 2012 which argue that states have nothing to do with the eligibility of presidential candidates.

“Presidential electors and Congress, not the state of Georgia, hold the constitutional responsibility for determining the qualifications of presidential candidates,” Obama’s lawyer argued in a motion to quash a subpoena for him to appear at the hearings in Atlanta Jan. 26.

“The election of President Obama by the presidential electors, confirmed by Congress, makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant,” the lawyer said.

Judge Michael M. Malihi, however, took a different view.

She told WND that it’s been 40 years since any court issued such a ruling concerning a president.

Separately, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona told WND he also had gotten a subpoena to be at the hearings in Georgia. He said the goal apparently is to ask him about his Cold Case Posse investigation of Obama’s eligiblity, but he said since the investigation remains open, he wouldn’t be able to say much about it.

Citizens bringing the complaints include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Cody Judy, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield.

Hatfield also had filed with the court a “Notice to Produce” asking for Obama’s documents and records.

He wants one of the two original certified copies of Obama’s long-form birth certificate.

Also, required are medical, religious administrative and other records about Obama’s birth; passports, applications and related records; college and university applications; bar association applications and materials; details on the citizenship of Obama’s father and other documents.

Taitz had filed an opposition to the motion to quash, taking Obama directly to task over what many consider an important constitutional question – the eligibility of a presidential candidate.

“It is noteworthy, that [the quash request] comes on the heels of his extended 17 day Hawaiian vacation, which cost U.S. taxpayers 4 million dollars. Mr. Obama has earned a dubious distinction as a Vacationer in Chief, Tourist in Chief, Partier in Chief and a Golfer in Chief due to his endless vacations, parties and rounds of golf. Considering … it is not too much to ask for Mr. Obama to show up once at a hearing and present his original identification records, which were not seen by anyone in the country yet,” she argued.

Obama’s attorney, Jablonski, also had argued that the state should mind its own business.

Taitz’s supporters joined a discussion on her website, where she also solicits support for the expenses of the battles she’s confronting, judging that Obama is on the defensive.

Barack Obama

Those who argue against his birth in the United States note that numerous experts have given testimony and sworn statements that they believe Obama’s Hawaiian birth documentation to be fraudulent.

It is that concern that also has prompted Arpaio to turn over an investigation of that issue to his Cold Case Posse. Its investigative report is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

There are similar challenges to Obama’s 2012 candidacy being raised before state election or other commissions in Tennessee, Arizona, Illinois, New Hampshire and other states.

The image released by the White House in April:

Obama long-form birth certificate released April 27 by the White House

That case states:

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, 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.

Obama: Cautious with Keystone XL, but sprints over the Constitution

2012-01-22T17:30:00.003-06:00

Brett McMahon

“We can’t wait” has been the phrase uttered by President Obama throughout the fall while he was ~~campaigning for 2012~~ touting his American Jobs Plan. Then, his first order of business in 2012 was bypassing the Senate to appoint Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, and three union stooges to his rogue Nation Labor Relations Board—because, of course, "we can't wait".

But when it comes to the Keystone XL pipeline—a project estimated to create over 20,000 jobs and lessen the country’s dependence on foreign oil—Obama can wait; in fact, he needed more time to give the project “careful consideration.”

Oh course, this rush to approve a project (that has been on the table for years) can be blamed on the “Republicans in Congress who forced this decision” in a mere 60 days.

This is quite an odd attitude coming from a party that once famously said in 2010 regarding its hasty passage of a barely reviewed healthcare reform bill, "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it".

In a time where our country is entering a standoff with Iran, the opportunity to have an ally, Canada, be the supplier of our foreign oil can wait says Obama. The President continues to put re-election before national interest.

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman joined others in a bipartisan chorus scolding President Obama on his denial of the project. Heineman stated that rather than disapprove TransCanada’s plan altogether, Obama “should be focused on putting Americans back to work, and could have done so by issuing conditional approval of the pipeline. Approval of the pipeline would have allowed TransCanada to move forward with the project while Nebraska finished the review process of a new segment of the route around the Sandhills.”

Gov. Heineman brings up a valid point that should have been considered by a president who claims to have urgency in creating jobs and reigniting the US economy. Canada has already explicitly stated they “can’t wait” to sell their oil—and after Obama’s rejection, Canada has threaten to sell it to Asia.

Clearly, if Obama has proven anything throughout his term it is that everything he does is carefully calculated when it comes to his re-election. And by not issuing a final decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, he keeps the environmentalists happy, yet can still pretend to be a warrior for the working class.

On Jan. 24, when the President delivers his State of the Union address, you can bet he will plead his goals of bipartisan compromise in the coming year. He may even give the illusion that he is working feverishly on job creation and his policies are geared toward the national interest. President Obama will be full of excuses, but offer few answers for his failures.

Yet, the reality is when it comes to Obama, it’s not national interest that is at the core of his decisions, it’s his re-election. He treads cautiously when contributions and his 2012 prospects are at risk, but “he can’t wait” when it comes to sprinting over the Constitution.

Obama to Kill Keystone XL Pipeline Permit

2012-01-19T10:48:00.002-06:00

Caves to Environmental Fanatics

by JWF

If you needed any further evidence Barack Obama is intent on destroying American jobs, look no further. It was expected in some circles he would buck the environmental extremists in his party and proceed with Keystone, but apparently not.

The Obama administration has decided that it will not issue a permit before Feb. 21 for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, according to people with knowledge of the decision.

Controversial only among the Luddites that rule with an iron fist of drilling policy.

Today’s decision, expected from the State Department, would make official what the administration has said from the outset: that under current law, it cannot accelerate the permitting process, especially in light of the need for additional environmental reviews of a new path for the pipeline through Nebraska.

Nebraska hasn't identified possible alternate routes that would allow the pipeline to circumvent a key aquifer.

"It's a fallacy to suggest that the president should sign into law something when there isn't even an alternate route identified in Nebraska and when the review process is" not yet done, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. "There was an attempt to short-circuit the review process in a way that does not allow the kind of careful consideration of all the competing criteria here that needs to be done."

It's unclear whether the administration will reject the pipeline project outright or will revert to the longer time line that it announced in November, which calls for a final decision to be made in early 2013, the people familiar with the decision said.

That conveniently puts it off until after the election. Such clear, decisive leadership.

Always one to enjoy having it both ways, Obama's own so-called "Jobs Council" said it's time to go all-in on drilling and pipeline expansion.

President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.

“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines.

Drill here, drill now, but, uh, let's just do it some other time.

JWF is a guest blogger for Human Events and the proprietor of Jammie Wearing Fools.

Obama argues against appearing at eligibility hearing

2012-01-19T07:36:00.003-06:00

CERTIFIGATE

'Electors, Congress, not Georgia, hold responsibility for qualifications of candidates'
by Bob UnruhEmail | Archive

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after spending nearly three decades writing on a wide range of issues for several Upper Midwest newspapers and the Associated Press. Sports, tornadoes, homicidal survivalists, and legislative battles all fell within his bailiwick. His scenic photography has been used commercially, and he sometimes plays in a church worship band.

Barack Obama has outlined a defense strategy for a multitude of state-level challenges to his candidacy on the 2012 presidential ballot in a Georgia case that is scheduled to come before a judge later this month – simply explain that states have nothing to do with the eligibility of presidential candidates.

“Presidential electors and Congress, not the state of Georgia, hold the constitutional responsibility for determining the qualifications of presidential candidates,” Obama’s lawyer argues in a motion to quash a subpoena for him to appear at the hearings Jan. 26.

“The election of President Obama by the presidential electors, confirmed by Congress, makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant,” the lawyer said.

Hearing have been scheduled for that date for three separate issues to be handled. They all are raised by Georgia residents who are challenging Obama’s name on the 2012 ballot for various reasons, which they are allowed to do under state law.

It is states, usually through the office of secretary of state, that run elections, not the federal government. The national election is simply a compilation of the results of the individual elections within states.

The schedule for the hearings was set by Judge Michael M. Malihi of the Georgia state Office of State Administrative Hearings. In Georgia, a state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

State law also grants the secretary of state and any “elector who is eligible to vote for a candidate” in the state the authority to raise a challenge to a candidate’s qualifications, the judge determined.

Three different plaintiffs’ groups are lined up for separate hearings, including one represented by California attorney Orly Taitz. She had the judge sign a subpoena for Obama’s testimony, and Michael Jablonski, Obama’s attorney for these cases, argtued that he should be exempted.

Jablonski earlier had argued that state eligibility requirements didn’t apply to Obama, but the judge said that isn’t how he reads state law.

“Statutory provisions must be read as they are written, and this court finds that the cases cited by [Obama] are not controlling. When the court construes a constitutional or statutory provision, the ‘first step … is to examine the plain statutory language,” the judge wrote. “Section 21-2-1(a) states that ‘every candidate for federal and state office’ must meet the qualifications for holding that particular office, and this court has seen no case law limiting this provision, nor found any language that contains an exception for the office of president or stating that the provision does not apply to the presidential preference primary.”

In Obama’s attempt to be excused from providing testimony and evidence such as his original birth certificate, he argues that such testimony would “interrupt duties” as president.

He also argues that the documents and testimony “is, on its face, unreasonable.” And further, the documents and testimony already have been made public, he argued.

“The president made the documents available to the general public by placing it on his website. Although the document has been generally available for years, the president took the extraordinary step of acquiring a copy of the record of birth, informally known as the ‘long form,’ making it available to anyone who cares to check the website,” the filing argues.

And the state should mind its own business anyway, he argued.

“The sovereignty of the state of Georgia does not extend beyond the limits of the State. … Since the sovereignty of the state does not extend beyond its territorial limits, an administrative subpoena has no effect,” the filing explains.

Taitz’ supporters joined a discussion on her website, where she also solicits support for the expenses of the battles she’s confronting, judging that Obama is on the defensive.

“What a joke. He claims to be too busy performing the duties of the president of the United States. How many days of vacation has he taken? How many rounds of golf? If he is too busy to provide the documents that provide the basis for meeting the requirements of the office, then perhaps he better sit out the next four years,” said one.

Wrote another, “The election of President Obama by the presidential electors, confirmed by Congress, makes the documents and testimony sought by plaintiff irrelevant. … This is complete utter nonsense!”

In fact, a presidential elector in California brought a lawsuit challenging Obama’s eligibility at the time of the 2008 election, and was told the dispute was not yet ripe because the inauguration hadn’t taken place. The courts later ruled that the elector lost his “standing” to bring the lawsuit after the inauguration.

Barack Obama

Those bringing the complaints include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Cody Judy, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield.

Irion said not many court observers believed Obama actually would comply with the subpoena for a number of reasons. He said for his clients’ arguments the testimony wouldn’t even be an issue.

His argument is that the Founders clearly considered a “natural born citizen,” as the Constitution requires of a president, to be the offspring of two citizen parents. Since Obama himself has written in his books that his father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Kenyan, and thus subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, Irion argues that Obama is disqualified under any circumstances.

Those who argue against his birth in the United States note that a multitude of experts have given testimony and sworn statements that they believe Obama’s Hawaiian birth documentation to be fraudulent.

It is that concern that also has prompted Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona to turn over an investigation of that issue to his Cold Case Posse. Their investigation report is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

The Georgia hearing will be the first time among dozens of so-far unsuccessful lawsuits brought over Obama’s eligibility issue that evidence will be heard in a court. Other cases all have been dismissed over issues such as standing, without a presentation of the evidence.

Top constitutional expert Herb Titus explains that the use of “natural born citizen,” does, in fact, require parents who are citizens. That argument also is supported by a 19th-century U.S. Supreme Court decision

The hearing is set at 9 a.m. on Jan. 26 for the complaint brought by Weldon. Following immediately will be hearings for the cases brought by Swensson and Powell, and the issue raised by Farrar, Lax, Judy, Malaren and Roth will be third.

Malihi’s ruling said: “The court finds that defendant is a candidate for federal office who has been certified by the state executive committee of a political party, and therefore must, under Code Section 21-2-5, meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

There are similar challenges to Obama’s 2012 candidacy being raised before state election or other commissions in Tennessee, Arizona, Illinois, New Hampshire and other states as well.

The U.S. Supreme Court opinion cited is Minor v. Happersett from 1875. It includes one of very few references in the nation’s archives that addresses the definition of “natural-born citizen,” a requirement imposed by the U.S. Constitution on only the U.S. president.

That case states:

“The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, 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.”

What the White House in April released was as an image of a “Certificate of Live Birth” from the state of Hawaii in support of Obama’s claim that he was born in the state. The White House has not addressed the questions raised by Obama’s father’s nationality.

The image that the new lawsuits contend is irrelevant:

Obama long-form birth certificate released April 27 by the White House

An extensive analysis of the issue was conducted by Titus, who has taught constitutional law, common law and other subjects for 30 years at five different American Bar Association-approved law schools. He also was the founding dean of the College of Law at Regent University, a trial attorney and special assistant U.S. attorney in the Department of Justice.

“‘Natural born citizen’ in relation to the office of president, and whether someone is eligible, was in the Constitution from the very beginning,” he said. “Another way of putting it; there is a law of the nature of citizenship. If you are a natural born citizen, you are a citizen according to the law of nature, not according to any positive statement in a Constitution or in a statute, but because of the very nature of your birth and the very nature of nations.”

If you “go back and look at what the law of nature would be or would require … that’s precisely what a natural born citizen is …. is one who is born to a father and mother each of whom is a citizen of the U.S. or whatever other country,” he said.

“Now what we’ve learned from the Hawaii birth certificate is that Mr. Obama’s father was not a citizen of the United States. His mother was, but he doesn’t qualify as a natural born citizen for the office of president.”

Video: Obama Denounces His Re-Election Strategy

2012-01-17T16:06:00.007-06:00

Guy Benson
Political Editor, Townhall.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcfmvFIAUF4&feature=player_embedded

Using Barack Obama's own words against him should -- and will -- be one of the GOP's most potent weapons in the upcoming general election cycle. Captain Hopenchange claimed to be all about good government (except when it was inconvenient) and positive campaigning back in 2008. Never mind the fact that his words didn't match his campaign's actions; the media bought into it, so it somehow became "the truth." As we all know, even symbolic adherence to those lofty standards is being tossed out the window this year, despite the president's professed refusal to take the low road. What's so off-putting about the low road? I could explain, but I'd prefer to let him explain (pay close attention between the 16- and 30-second marks):

"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run away from."
Here we have 2008's Barack Obama denouncing his entire 2012 re-election strategy. It's shameless, but it certainly adheres to his pattern. The Republican National Committee dug that gem up, and I hear there's a lot more material where it came from. As we'll be reminding you many times in the coming months, Hope and Change was an elaborate and effective fraud. Now that the mask is off, it's time to replace its ring-leader.

The Alice-in-Wonderland President

2012-01-16T16:23:00.004-06:00

John Ransom

It’s official: Obama lives on the other side of the Looking Glass.

Not that there was any doubt based on his performance to date, but it’s nice to know that the White House has acknowledged that fantasy plays a major part of this president’s platform, policy and procedure.

To recap for the folks at home: Obama had a creepy, secret Halloween party at the White House produced by Hollywood’s head creepster, Tim Burton, which starred French resident-in-chief, Johnny “America’s a Big Dumb Puppy” Depp.

Why so secret?

Well, besides the little problem of having an anti-American expatriate like Depp at the White House, some in the president’s staff thought it might “look” bad to hold such an extravagant affair at a time that many Americans were out of work.

Image courtesy the Blaze.com

According to Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, which publicly outed the party, “White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans — or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care — that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged.”

In fact, as a kind of life-is-stranger-than-fiction moment, Obama stole the premise from the movie A Few Good Men, and made sure that neither Burton nor Depp showed up in official White House logs that are supposed to record such visits, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. The White House claims that entertainers don’t log-in.

“White House visitor logs from 2009 do not list any of the stars that attended the party, but there certainly were some boldfaced-names that did make the cut,” reports the Daily Mail. “Actors George Clooney and Brad Pitt (listed under his legal name of William B Pitt) both visited the hallowed halls, Mr Clooney just a month after President Obama took office and Mr Pitt for a standard tour of the building.”

But missing in the outcry is this very simple observation: The White House staff understood how bad the party would look- it looks bad with good reason, too- yet instead of doing the right thing by NOT having the party, they decided to have the party and then lie to cover it up.

It only “looks” bad if you get caught, I guess.

Here’s a follow-up question for you: What else don’t we know that “looks” bad?

It’s a question that would have little consequence except that Obama’s whole presidency is predicated on one untruth after another.

I am daily reminded of this by volumes of bad news coming from the White House.

For example, Obama is now asking Congress for the power to merge certain federal agencies, he says, in a quest to make government “smaller.” I’m sure any day he’ll start “demanding” that Congress “act quickly” so he can make government “smaller.”

Obama? Smaller government? This guy’s no longer president of anything. He’s just a cartoon caricature of Warren G. Harding with a score of Tea Pot Domes: Stimulus, Solyndra, Soros, Fast and Furious.

A Do-Nothing Congress? Try a Say-Anything President.

In February of last year Obama presented a budget that asked for roughly another $1.5 trillion in deficit spending, but by July he was “demanding” that Congress cut the deficit by raising taxes.

Here’s a tip to Obama: You want to make government smaller, stop spending money; present a balanced budget; get off the backs of business in this country and let the economy do its proper job.

Or how about this: Fire ONE person at 1) the EPA; 2) The Department of Energy; 3) the IRS; 4) the Treasury, Education, Agriculture, Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, Justice Departments.

Making government smaller doesn’t really take an act of Congress.

But demanding that Congress give him the power to make government smaller is just another Through-the-Looking-Glass day for The Knave of Hearts.

Bloomberg Hides Government Causes of Financial Crisis

2012-01-08T06:26:00.004-06:00

Peter Ferrara

On December 21, Bloomberg News breathlessly reported, "The leading Republican candidates for president have embraced an explanation of the financial crisis that has been rejected by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, many economists and even three of the four Republicans on the government commission that investigated the meltdown."

Reporter David J. Lynch further explained, "Both former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lay much of the blame on U.S. government housing policies, saying they led to the real estate crash that almost brought down the banking system and has cost homeowners $6.6 trillion since 2006."

But it's not just Gingrich and Romney. Virtually every Republican and conservative across America recognizes what is by now well established in the literature -- the government caused the financial crisis.

Among the leading expositions of that government malfeasance are Paul Sperry, The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Financial Crisis (Thomas Nelson, 2011), Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner, Reckless Endangerment (Times Books, 2011), John B. Taylor, Getting Off Track (Hoover Institution Press, 2009), and many contributions by Peter Wallison, including in particular his Dissenting Statement in Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States (December 24, 2010). My own book, America's Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb (HarperCollins, 2011), explains in great detail how the government caused the financial crisis.

This is not just a matter of historical interest. It will be central to the debate throughout the 2012 election cycle. For if the liberal/left propagandists are right, and private sector greed and malfeasance caused the crisis, then President Obama's regulatory government takeover of the financial industry is the answer. But if the government caused the crisis, then the further extension of Reagan's free market policies are the answer.

Clinton's Overregulation

The fallacies of the last three Presidents, Clinton, Bush, and Obama, came together to cause the devastating financial crisis, costing the American people trillions in lost value of their basic financial assets, from their homes to their retirement accounts. Though these policies had earlier roots, they really sprouted under Clinton, who announced his new National Home Ownership Strategy to great fanfare in a splashy White House ceremony in June 1995. As Stanley Kurtz reported the event for National Review Online:

In his remarks, Clinton emphasized that: "Our homeownership strategy will not cost the taxpayers one extra cent. It will not require legislation." Clinton meant that informal partnerships between [federally established and backed mortgage backers] Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] and groups like ACORN would make mortgages available to customers "who have historically been excluded from homeownership." In the end, of course, Clinton's plan cost taxpayers an almost unbelievable amount of money.

This is where the subprime mortgage market was born.

Under this new Clinton vision, it became federal regulatory policy to force the nation's financial institutions to abandon traditional lending standards for home mortgages, on the grounds that those standards were racially discriminatory, as African Americans and other minorities could not qualify for mortgages to nearly the same degree as whites and Asians. This overregulation reached the point of forcing lenders to discount bad credit history, no credit history, no savings, lack of steady employment, a high ratio of mortgage obligations to income, undocumented income, and inability to finance down payment and closing costs, while counting unemployment benefits and even welfare as income in qualifying for a mortgage. As Sperry documents so thoroughly, this turned into government-sanctioned looting of the banks.

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) was only one part of that federal regulatory policy. The CRA required banks to lend throughout the entire geographic area in which they operate, including the poorest neighborhoods, where qualification for credit under traditional standards was quite limited. Based on intense lobbying by the far left activist group ACORN, Clinton expanded this originally toothless regulatory ornament into a great lever to break open bank vaults.

The freedom of banks to operate their businesses in opening new branches, mergers, and lending was held hostage to each bank's CRA rating, which had to reach mandated goals to earn necessary government regulatory approvals. Clinton issued new CRA regulations requiring banks and savings and loan associations to meet quotas for mortgages to borrowers at or below 80 percent of median income in their service areas. He also doubled CRA examinations of banks by adding several hundred bank examiners to enforce tougher CRA rules.

Clinton's HUD contributed with new regulations greatly strengthening CRA requirements, as Wallison explained in The American Spectator in February, 2009:

In 1995, the regulators created new rules that sought to establish objective criteria for determining whether a bank was meeting CRA standards. Examiners no longer had the discretion they once had. For banks, simply proving that they were looking for qualified buyers wasn't enough. Banks now had to show that they had actually made a requisite number of loans to low and moderate income (LMI) borrowers.

But this was just the beginning. Even more powerful were so-called "anti-redlining" regulations, based on liberal mythology that financial institutions just arbitrarily redlined low income and minority neighborhoods for denial of home mortgages, which was considered racial discrimination in violation of the law. Under Clinton's innovations, pursued by his Attorney General zombie Janet Reno, any difference in lending to minorities or low income Americans was racially discriminatory "disparate impact," even if it resulted from mere adherence to traditional lending standards.

Any troglodyte financial institutions failing to get hip with the New Age lending "standards" soon found themselves subject to discrimination suits brought by Justice or HUD, and pilloried as racist in the media. Kurtz quoted a colorful Chicago newspaper report explaining the effect of these new standards, "You've only got a couple of thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don't despair. You can still buy a house."

The big problem wasn't caused just by loans to low income borrowers. Once lending standards were trashed for these borrowers, they couldn't be maintained for more creditworthy borrowers. This let more well-heeled speculators in on the scam, now able to qualify for highly speculative mortgages they could not have qualified for previously. That vastly expanded the resulting credit risk vulnerabilities for the financial system.

HUD then broadened the developing disaster to the entire financial community, across the nation and even around the world, through mandatory regulatory quotas on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac forcing them to drop their traditional lending standards as well for eligibility for securitization. That securitization pooled these vulnerable mortgages and sold shares in them, known as "mortgage backed securities" (MBSs), to other financial institutions. By the time the housing market collapsed, Fannie and Freddie faced three regulatory quota mandates. The first was to devote 56 percent of their mortgage funding to individuals with below-average income. The second required 27 percent of their mortgage funding to be granted to families with incomes at or below 60 percent of area median income. The third required 35 percent of their mortgage funding go to geographic areas deemed to be underserved.

The debasement of mortgage lending standards and massively increased mortgage funding through securitization of the new subprime and other non-prime loans greatly increased demand for housing, which spawned the rise of the housing bubble. Because the capital markets believed, rightly as it turned out, that the bonds issued by Fannie and Freddie to raise money for their mortgage financing were effectively government guaranteed, the two organizations were able to raise huge sums at low interest rates to pump into these mortgages and their securitization. That pumped housing prices beyond sustainability, and exploded the pollution of U.S. and world financial markets to toxic levels.

Going back to his ACORN days, and through his many years as an ultraleft politician, Obama was a supporter and cheerleader for these very Clinton housing policies. As President, he has been busily reinvigorating them, setting the stage for another housing crisis.

Bush's Cheap Dollar

The Bush Treasury supported a cheap dollar policy, falling for the Keynesian fallacy that a low dollar helps the economy by promoting exports. The central role of the resulting Fed policies in causing the financial crisis was most authoritatively explained by Stanford Economics Professor and monetary policy guru John Taylor in his timely book, Getting Off Track. Taylor begins:

The classic explanation of financial crises, going back hundreds of years, is that they are caused by excesses -- frequently monetary excesses -- that lead to a boom and an inevitable bust. In the recent crisis we had a housing boom and bust, which in turn led to financial turmoil in the United States and other countries. I begin by showing that monetary excesses were the main cause of the boom and the resulting bust.

Economics Professor Lawrence H. White, now of George Mason University, elaborates:

In the recession of 2001, the Federal Reserve System... began aggressively expanding the U.S. money supply.... The expansion was accompanied by the Fed repeatedly lowering its target for the federal funds (interbank short term) interest rate.... The real Fed funds rate was negative... for two and a half years. In purchasing power terms, during that period a borrower was not paying but rather gaining in proportion to what he borrowed. Economist Steve Hanke has summarized the result: "This set off the mother of all liquidity cycles and yet another massive demand bubble."

From early 2001 until late 2006, as White further explains, "the Fed pushed the actual federal funds rate below the estimated rate that would have been consistent with targeting 2 percent inflation," which had been the enormously successful, long term, Reagan Fed policy. Steve Forbes adds, "In 2004, the Federal Reserve made a fateful miscalculation. It thought the U.S. economy was much weaker than it was and therefore pumped out excess liquidity and kept interest rates artificially low."

But low interest rates by themselves do not mean monetary policy is excessively loose. That depends on what market prices are saying, as reflected by the dollar, gold and inflation. The Fed's loose monetary policies during the Bush Administration generated sharp declines in the dollar. The dollar was worth 1.15 Euros near the start of 2002, but declined by close to 50 percent near to 0.6 Euros by the start of 2008. The price of gold soared from $350 near the end of 2002 to almost $1,000 by the start of 2008. Even inflation, defeated 25 years previously, started to come back, increasing from 1.55 percent at the end of 2001, to as high as 5.6 percent in July 2008.

That cheap dollar monetary policy further inflated the housing bubble because it generated flight into real assets to escape the depreciating greenback. Because real estate is an especially long-lived asset, its market value is especially boosted by low interest rates.

When the Fed finally realized it had to rein in its loose monetary policy, or risk soaring inflation, skyrocketing housing prices slowed, flattened out, and then tipped into decline. The steep decline in housing prices produced chaos throughout the financial industry in the U.S., and ultimately the world, as widespread financial assets based on housing collapsed in value. As Taylor concluded, "[The] extra-easy [Fed monetary] policy accelerated the housing boom and thereby ultimately led to the housing bust."

The Crisis in American Media

Lynch argues in his Bloomberg article, "The Community Reinvestment Act can't explain why house prices in the U.K., Ireland, Spain and France doubled earlier this decade and almost doubled in Australia. All have suffered steep losses since then, with Ireland's home prices dropping 38 percent by December 2010 from the 2006 peak."

But this fails to recognize that the Fed managing the world's reserve currency effectively exported its weak currency policy globally. Other countries loosen their monetary policies to avoid the negative short term trade implications of appreciating currencies relative to the dollar. Moreover, the dollar's weakness masks the looseness of their monetary policies, misleading them into even looser policies. Their loose policies pumped up their own real estate bubbles.

Lynch argues further that federal housing policies can't explain the bubble in commercial real estate, which also contributed to the housing crisis. But the Fed's low interest rate, loose monetary policies would have the same effect in creating a bubble in commercial real estate that it had in housing.

Lynch adds that, "Losses on subprime mortgage-backed securities didn't start shaking financial institutions until 2007, three decades after the CRA was introduced and 15 years after affordable housing goals were established for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." But this fails to recognize that the CRA was not expanded into a real problem until the Clinton years, and even then it was only one factor in creating the crisis. The regulation carrying out Clinton's undeniable federal policy of trashing traditional mortgage standards was much broader, greatly exacerbated by the Fed's cheap dollar policies as well. This is why the problem extended well beyond CRA regulated institutions, which Lynch also fails to understand.

The crisis in American media now goes well beyond media bias. The real problem is now outright ideological partisanship and activism. Far too much of America's self-professed media are not journalistic enterprises at all. They are political activist organizations posing as journalistic enterprises. In this crisis, Bloomberg News is just another part of the problem.

Peter Ferrara

Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation and General Counesl for the American Civil Rights Union.

Obama's 'abuse of power' threatens to shut down Senate

2012-01-06T13:19:00.005-06:00

by Audrey Hudson

Key Republican Senators are bracing for legislative battles and Constitutional challenges to President Barack Obama’s unprecedented end-run around Congress to install several controversial political appointees.

Obama announced the decision Wednesday to make the so-called recess appointments -- even though the Senate is not in recess -- putting Richard Cordray in charge of a contentious new consumer protection agency and also naming three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) – Sharon Block, Richard Griffin and Terence F. Flynn.

“Business as we know it in the Senate is over for this administration in terms of accomplishing anything legislatively or finding any cooperation from this side of the aisle,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R. –Wyo.). “He has poisoned the well.”

“Apparently, advise and consent called for in the Constitution doesn’t apply to this Chicago-style politician. He’s more interested in rewarding his friends than living under the law Americans need to abide by,” Barrasso said.

The Constitution allows the president to make recess appointments, but the controversy in this case is whether or not the Senate is in recess.

“I believe it’s an abuse of power. Now he is saying he’s above the law -- the law doesn’t apply to him,” Barrasso said.

Republicans have kept the Congress in a pro forma session, gaveling in for a few minutes of official business every three days. It’s a tactic that was used by Democrats during the Bush administration to block recess appointments. Additionally, Obama’s own Justice Department argued before the Supreme Court in 2010 that Congress is not in recess unless it’s absent for more than three days.

Republicans say they are frustrated because Obama did not nominate the NLRB picks until last month -- just two days before the Christmas holiday -- allowing no time for the Senate to hold hearings.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats have stalled the confirmation of the lone Republican nominee for the labor board, Brian Hayes, since July 2009.

Another contentious factor in Obama’s maneuver, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by the Dodd-Frank Act, requires that the new director be confirmed by the Senate, so Cordray’s appointment puts the agency’s legal authority in limbo.

“I don’t think he has the full authority to run this agency,” said J.W. Verrett, an assistant professor of law at George Mason University and a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center.

“The president’s decision is a purely political one, and not about consumer protection,” Verrett said. “In fact, he’s sacrificed consumer protection. He’s more interested in being tough on Congress than being tough on predatory lenders.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R. –Utah), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said these actions were not ordinary recess appointments but “egregious and inexcusable” acts of a president who thinks he’s above the law.

“As a matter of raw political force, can he do it? He just did,” Lee said.

“I think the president wanted to pick a really big fight, and he has surely chosen one,” Lee said. “This is a direct affront to the American people and the constitutional system of government that we have.”

Republicans are hesitant to give away their game plan on how they will respond to Obama’s move, but Lee suggested that Congress could withhold the salaries for the new federal appointees.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R. Ky.) said Obama “upped the ante” and set “a terrible precedent that could allow any future president to completely cut the Senate out of the confirmation process, appointing his nominees immediately after sending their names up to Congress.”

“This was surely not what the framers had in mind when they required the president to seek the advice and consent of the Senate in making appointments,” McConnell said.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R. –Utah) said Obama made the appointments to placate his “big labor allies,” but that it might not be enough to save him come Election Day.

“The president put his own political future and the radical views of his far-left base ahead of constitutional government. The president will have to answer to the American people for this power grab," Hatch said.

Vincent Vernuccio, a labor policy lawyer with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the NLRB appointees are a gift to Obama’s labor backers, and that Griffin comes to the board directly from a labor union.

“The vacancies on the Board have occurred because Obama has insisted on nominating pro-union ideologues too controversial to pass Senate confirmation,” Vernuccio said.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, congratulated Obama on overcoming what he called “Republican obstructionists.”

“Working families and consumers should not pay the price for political ploys that have repeatedly undercut the enforcement of rules against Wall Street abuses and the rights of working people,” Trumka said.

Audrey Hudson, an award-winning investigative journalist, is a Congressional Correspondent for HUMAN EVENTS. A native of Kentucky, Mrs. Hudson has worked inside the Beltway for nearly two decades -- on Capitol Hill as a Senate and House spokeswoman, and most recently at The Washington Times covering Congress, Homeland Security, and the Supreme Court. Follow Audrey on Twitter and Facebook.

Warning to America: 'We are at crossroads'

2012-01-01T20:11:00.003-06:00

Will church 'collapse' and nation become 'Third World' country?

By Andy Butcher

Used with permission from Charisma magazine, January 2012. Copyright Charisma Media, USA.

Jonathan Cahn

As he looked across the waters of the Hudson River from the Statue of Liberty, the twin towers of the World Trade center spiking the New York City skyline, Jonathan Cahn had a deep sense of foreboding.

The Messianic rabbi had joined with other prayer and prophetic leaders at the nation's symbolic gate – Lady Liberty greeting the many immigrants arriving at nearby Ellis Island, where they would take their first steps in their new land – to seek God. They had gathered with a shared burden to pray for the city and a sense of concern about a possible terrorist attack on the United States. Two years later, the suicide flights that stunned the world would touch Cahn's, too. His future wife, Renata, was to have been at the World Trade Center for an appointment but changed her plans at the last minute, as did other members of his congregation who worked there. Two who were in the Twin Towers were among those who escaped before the collapse.

But in addition to feeling personal relief, Cahn was pitched into a journey of discovery. It would take him to ground zero, historical sites and research libraries, collecting hundreds of pages of notes in a mission to uncover the deeper story behind the shocking news footage.

From disparate fragments of present-day events, key moments in America's past and somewhat obscure biblical passages, he has pieced together a jaw-dropping jigsaw puzzle that presents a disturbing picture of a nation on the brink.

(Story continues below)

Cahn shares what he has uncovered in his new book, "The Harbinger," revealing that the 2001 terrorist attacks, the war on terror, the economic collapse, the actions of the U.S. government and even the words of its leaders all are part of a modern-day replaying of an ancient drama. Laying out current happenings over an Old Testament template, Cahn presents an uncanny match.

The message: Israel's fall to judgment for failing to return to God, as described in Isaiah 9, is being reenacted step by step in the U.S. today with the appearance of nine prophetic harbingers, or warning signs, from ancient times manifesting to America. The Assyrian invasion, Israel's ruin and ultimate exile are remarkably being mirrored in a sequence of events that started unfolding on 9/11.

Read "The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery That Holds the Secret of America's Future" for yourself!

Cahn reveals how Scriptures recording Israel's defiance of God have actually been quoted by America's leaders in the wake of the terrorist attacks and that contemporary events have often unfolded on dates with specific significance in the Jewish calendar. He traces the ways in which occurrences at ground zero have inexplicable links to Bible texts and connects the dots of the economic collapse to God's progressive judgment.

"We are at a crossroads," says Messianic movement leader and broadcaster Sid Roth simply of Cahn's book. "Either the church will act like the church in the New Testament or it will collapse and the U.S. will become a Third World country and we will not fulfill our destiny."

Though Cahn describes "The Harbinger" as a trumpet call, it may ring bells for some who recall messages from David Wilkerson in the wake of 9/11. The famed New York City pastor and author told how he believed that the strikes at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a sign of God's judgment – referencing Isaiah 9. The Harbinger expands on Wilkerson's early broad-brush alarm, with Cahn inheriting the now deceased pastor's prophetic mantle and "building on the shoulders of his revelation," Roth says.

He became aware of the first stirrings of Cahn's message several years ago. Cahn had spoken about what he believed God was showing him at the Messianic congregation he leads in New Jersey and some conferences. But Cahn turned down an invitation to talk more widely about the message on Roth's TV and radio broadcasts, sensing that the time was not right.

After the economic collapse of 2008, Cahn realized that what was revealed and foreshadowed in the nine harbingers was affecting the entire American and global economies. Cahn says: "A lot of believers have a sense regarding America – this sense that America is rapidly departing from God and that if it doesn't return, its future is bleak. The book is a revelation that behind this sense is a deep and uncanny biblical reality."

An atheist finds Yeshua

While the book releases in print only this month, its message has already created waves through early interest in an e-book edition, made available in September, and Cahn's two appearances on Sid Roth's "It's Supernatural" TV show in the fall. The broadcasts – "the most important prophetic show you will ever see," Roth says – produced "a phenomenal response."

Though the bearded 52-year-old, who might be mistaken for an amiable college professor, may be unfamiliar to many, Cahn is well known and respected within the Messianic movement. Since 1988 he has led Beth Israel Worship Center, one of the country's largest Messianic congregations. Members travel from four states to a former furniture department store in Wayne, N.J., where Jerusalem's Western Wall and the old city gates are being recreated as part of the fellowship's celebration of the Jewish roots of their faith.

Located 20 minutes outside New York, the center is also home to Cahn's Hope of the World, an outreach ministry with radio broadcasts – including Cahn's weekday "The Nice Jewish Boy" – and compassion programs providing clean water and supporting orphanages overseas. Cahn has traveled to Cuba, Nigeria and India on ministry and spoken at the United Nations. He often symbolically blows the shofar at gatherings, echoing its Old Testament call to worship.

Cahn leads Beth Israel Worship Center, a messianic congregation near New York City

Cahn is known for unlocking Bible mysteries through the understanding born from his Jewish background, and his heritage and personal history have prepared him to sound the trumpet in "The Harbinger." Descended from the line of Aaron, whose priestly role included calling the people to worship and leading Israel into battle through the sounding of the shofar, he grew up in a reformed Jewish home, the youngest of three children to scientist parents.

Though he attended synagogue services, he became an atheist at age 8. "In the synagogue, people would say the prayers by rote," he recalls. "There was no sense that God was real in their lives. It made me question the whole thing."

Cahn was dubbed "The Atheist" at school for his vigorous unbelief, but things started to change when he became a teenager. He began to question his atheism and then to embark on a quest for the truth through science, philosophy, the occult, even UFOs. He was surprised to find Jesus mentioned in many of the books.

"God got me through the back door," he says with a smile, recounting how in a store one day he stumbled across a book that seemed by its cover to be like some of the others he had read. It was "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsey, a best-selling exploration of end-times prophecy that brought many to Christ.

Eventually Cahn came to accept that the Bible was true and that Jesus, Yeshua, was the Jews' long-promised Messiah. He even witnessed to others about Him and led them to faith – but he wasn't ready to take the step himself.

Cahn told God he would surrender His life when he reached old age. Two car accidents within a few months – one of which saw him escape unscathed when his vehicle was crushed "like aluminum foil" by a train on a railroad crossing – caused him to reevaluate. As a 20-year-old college student, Cahn climbed to the top of a mountain overlooking the Hudson River and told Yeshua he was ready.

Cahn's first job as a new believer was as a night watchman, at one stage guarding property that included the headquarters of an outreach to Jews. Keeping night watchman hours to this day – he typically studies and works until the early hours, rising later in the day – Cahn observes of his past: "I think that the Lord prepares us in our life, and He gives us signs and indications of His will."

The start of 'Something Big'

There was also a prophetic element to "The Harbingers" acquisition by Charisma Media. Having finished the manuscript, Cahn had someone in mind to speak with about finding a publisher. "I wanted it to get out God's way," he says. "There's conventional wisdom in publishing that you have to promote yourself, but I didn't want to do that."

Mulling things during an early morning layover at a North Carolina airport on his way to speak at a Promise Keepers conference, Cahn bowed his head and prayed that the Lord would get the message of "The Harbinger" out His way. When he looked up from praying and reading his Bible, he noticed a man sitting to his left.

"He was looking at me," Cahn says, "and he said, 'What's the good word?' I figured he was a businessman who didn't know the Lord, so I started witnessing to him." Cahn was half right. The man was Hubie Synn, a New York accountant – a believer with a prophetic gifting. Synn had once told client David Tyree, a devout Christian and wide receiver for the New York Giants, that God was going to highlight his skills.

Synn's word to the athlete was delivered several months before the 2008 Super Bowl, during which Tyree dramatically snagged an Eli Manning pass with his right hand, pressing the ball against his helmet. Footage of the stunning play became an Internet sensation, and ESPN SportsCenter dubbed Tyree's catch "the greatest play in Super Bowl history."

When Cahn realized that Synn was a fellow believer, the two began talking. "Then he began to prophesy over me," Cahn says, "telling me that God was about to do something big."

When Cahn later mentioned that he had been working on a book, Synn suggested that he contact Charisma Media founder Steve Strang, whom he knew for having published Tyree's book, "More Than Just a Catch."

Synn recalls being at the airport because his flight had been delayed and initially being reluctant to follow the nudging he felt by the Holy Spirit to speak to Cahn, because he was preoccupied with family concerns. "The way my gift works, I don't really know what I say, it just blows right through me," Synn says.

But when he bowed to God's prompting and finished telling Cahn that an important book he had written would be published, Cahn told him he had been praying to know what to do about his book. "God literally answered his prayer right away," Synn says, "because he opened his eyes and I was there."

Cahn originally documented his revelatory findings as nonfiction but decided to rewrite and present them in story form to reach a wider, general audience intrigued by past-and-present mysteries such as "The Da Vinci Code" and "National Treasure." "In the Bible, God uses images, symbols, stories and parables to convey prophetic messages or spiritual truths," he explains.

But why would God choose Cahn to deliver the message of "The Harbinger?"

Cahn shrugs, cross-legged in the chair of his basement home office that looks out over a small lake. "He chooses the foolish things of the world," he says. "At school I was known as 'The Atheist.' Perhaps that makes me the least likely person."

Roth offers other reasons, pointing to Cahn's prophetic gift, his rich understanding of the Old Testament as a Messianic believer, his proximity to ground zero and that premonition two years before 9/11 that something was going to happen. All of it makes him "a very unique person," Roth says.

He also wonders whether Cahn's personality – passionate but restrained, a combination Roth says makes him like "a kind John the Baptist" – fits him well to deliver such a sobering message.

With a thoughtful manner belying the intensity of his message, Cahn says that he is driven by love, not anger. "If you see people who are in danger of calamity and you don't warn them, and you say nice things to them and make them feel good, that's not love," he says. "If you love them, you will sound the alarm. You will plead with them and you will do everything you can, even if it costs you, to get them saved. That's what love is."

Andy Butcher , an award-winning journalist, is the editor of Christian Retailing and former news director of Charisma.

Used with permission from Charisma magazine, January 2012. Copyright Charisma Media, USA.

The Ron Paul Vote

2011-12-29T10:48:00.001-06:00

It has little to do with the Texas congressman.

By DANIEL HENNINGER

As if they didn't have troubles enough, the Republicans have not one, but two Ron Paul problems.

The first is a cranky congressman from Texas named Ron Paul who won't disown a third-party spoiler candidacy. The second problem is the Ron Paul vote, which as we'll see has little to do with Ron Paul.

The congressman named Ron Paul has served in the House off and on since the 1970s to no discernible effect. Every four years he runs for president, tapping into a vestigial base of Newsletter Libertarians, whose support qualifies him for the debates.

Let no one deny that swimming eternally amid the rightward waves of American politics is an ever-present school of fish that would solve Washington's spending problem mainly with cuts in the defense budget (ending foreign "entanglements"), set a place at the nuclear table for Iran ("Who are they going to bomb?"), cut Israel loose, cut the Federal Reserve loose, and legalize many currently controlled substances.

The Ron Paul vote is a separate matter. In June, polling put the familiar Mr. Paul at about 5.5% for the Iowa caucus and 8% nationally. That would be his normal ceiling. Suddenly, Ron Paul is the Iowa front-runner at over 22.5% and is up to 12% nationally. Why?

Daniel Henninger writes in The Wall Street Journal's Wonder Land column that it has little to do with the Texas congressman.

Is this surge a vote for the congressman named Ron Paul? Impossible. It's in fact the Republican Party protest vote. Since summer, this block of votes has jumped from one candidate to another, desperate for an anti-Obama champion whose anti-Washington intensity matches its own.

In July the Republican protest vote fixed on Michele Bachmann, who materialized in the No. 2 spot. In September it became the Perry vote, cresting at 31%. He couldn't debate, so in October it became the Cain vote. When he collapsed, the "left for dead" Gingrich candidacy miraculously rose to 35%. With Newt carpet-bombed and again left for dead, the GOP protest vote mounted its last pony, the Ron Paul campaign.

The policy set of any of these candidates has been of minimal importance to voters who've boiled down their beef with Washington to one idea: Attack.

Meanwhile Mitt the Whale swims serenely onward at 25%, month after month, dipping occasionally to feed on these pilot fish. But the whale should be worried. These Republican protest fish have sharp teeth. Unless fed something soon, they may tear the Romney campaign to pieces. And there are a lot of them.

Political commentary sometimes refers to one of these second-tier candidates as appealing to "the tea party vote." This is intended as condescension—you know, it's those people who gave the Republicans Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller and Sharron Angle in 2010. Ah, yes, 2010.

In the no-longer-mentioned November 2010 elections, the often disrespected "tea party vote" handed the Republican Party a victory of historic magnitude and depth. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives but also won state offices on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.

The 2010 election was the result of a coalition that extends well past the formal tea parties. It combines Republicans of all stripes, libertarians, independents and worried centrist Democrats. They all are "fiscally conservative" and socially all over the map. The Republican nominee, however, will be produced by only one part of this fiscal-conservative coalition—the angriest, most politically committed Republicans and libertarians.

The Paul candidacy is of course doomed. But the Paul vote won't die. This vote has been building in the depths of the American political ocean since the spending spree of the second Bush term. These people see the upward spending trend in annual outlays and accumulated commitments not as a "problem," as the Beltway prefers, but as a threat to their well-being.

The Romney campaign may assume that this vote must land by default in their man's lap. By the relentless logic of the Romney camp, that's true. But if we've learned anything the past several months, it's that this is one of the most volatile Republican electorates in a long while.

Mr. Romney is running a campaign strategy indeed targeted at the broad fiscal conservative coalition that emerged in 2010: Hold the worried independents and centrist Democrats by avoiding what in his Dec. 24 Wall Street Journal Weekend Interview he called "incendiary things." OK, we get that. Independent voters are easily flustered, dependent as they are on the policies of strangers.

But if the former Massachusetts governor doesn't reach out pretty soon to the Paul-Perry-Bachmann Republican protest voters, he may never get them. The longer he waits, the more pressure will build for a third-party challenge that will cost him the election. That it would be led by a Ron Paul or Donald Trump is irrelevant to why these people would vote third party—or stay home.

Mr. Romney is going to have to take a risk with some piece of his locked-down strategy—the RomneyCare denial, the "middle-class" ceiling on his tax cut, naming a running mate who could have beaten him in the primaries.

Mr. Romney needs to give these Republicans a reason to come in his direction, before they walk away from him forever.

Write to henninger@wsj.com

Obama, Holder among 'most corrupt politicians'

2011-12-29T08:09:00.003-06:00

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

America's top elected leader makes ethically challenged list yet again

In a capital city where the U.S. Constitution apparently fast is becoming an anachronism, both the nation's chief executive, Barack Obama, and his buddy, chief law enforcer Attorney General Eric Holder, have been named to a list of the nation's "most corrupt politicians."

"Barack Obama apparently believes it is his 'prerogative' to ignore the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law," said the report compiled by Judicial Watch, the Washington-based watchdog on government behavior.

And the allegations connected to Holder go far beyond the cerebral world of political position, statement and argument – into the lives and deaths of real people.

"Revelations from the Operation Fast and Furious scandal suggest that programs approved by the Holder DOJ may have resulted in the needless deaths of many, including a federal law enforcement officer," Judicial Watch said.

Read the inside story on Washington corruption, from the ultimate Washington insider, Jack Abramoff, in "Capitol Punishment."

This year's list, alphabetically, includes: Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala.; former Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev.; Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla.; Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.; Barack Obama; Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif.; Rep. David Rivera, R-Fla.; Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.; and Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska.

Dishonorable mentions for 2011 includes a potential GOP presidential candidate, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as well as former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.; Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.; Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.; Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.; and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

Read all the details.

Obama made last year's list after Judicial Watch reminded Washington watchers of Obama's promise regarding "transparency and the rule of law."

"Instead, Americans have suffered through lies, stonewalling, cover-ups, corruption, secrecy, scandal and blatant disregard for the rule of law … this has been the Obama legacy in its first two years," the report said then.

This year's was not a significant improvement.

(Story continues below)

"Obama makes Judicial Watch's 'Ten Most Wanted' list for a fifth consecutive year. (The former Illinois senator was also a 'Dishonorable Mention' in 2006.) And when it comes to Obama corruption, it may not get any bigger than Solyndra," the 2011 report said.

"Solyndra was once known as the poster child for the Obama administration's massive 'green energy' 'initiative, but it has become the poster child for the corruption that ensues when the government meddles," the report today said. "Solyndra filed for bankruptcy in September 2011, leaving 1,100 workers without jobs and the American taxpayers on the hook for $535 million thanks to an Obama administration stimulus loan guarantee."

Judicial Watch cited Obama's "reticence to release details" but said it's abundantly clear that the Obama administration rushed the Solyndra loan through the approve process "so it could make a splash at a press event."

"The company's main financial backer was a major Obama campaign donor named George Kaiser. While the White House said Kaiser never discussed the loan with White House officials, the evidence suggests this is a lie. … Further demonstrating the political nature of the Obama administration's activities, the Energy Department pressured Solyndra to delay an announcement on layoffs until after the 2010 elections."

Even now, Judicial Watch said, Obama "continues to defend the indefensible."

Dedicated to Preserving the U.S.A. Constitutional Republic Form of Limited Government

What happened at Obama-no-show trial

Sworn testimony reveals fake Social Security number, other gaps

School to teacher: 'God's not allowed'

FAITH UNDER FIRE

Supremes asked to affirm Constitution's 1st Amendment

Obama accused of disrespecting court, state, Americans

CERTIFIGATE

'My belief is if Supreme Court held he was ineligible, he might simply ignore the ruling'

Rush: Obama speech a 'fantasyland' of lies

'General Motors, the No. 1 car company in the world again?'

Georgia warns Obama of 'peril' of ignoring eligibility hearing

Lawyer had urged secretary of state to simply cancel challenges

Watch now: Obama eligibility hearing broadcast live

CERTIFIGATE

'Complicit media ignoring all calls for honest reporting on the issue'

Judge whacks Obama in eligibility case

CERTIFIGATE

'Defendant has failed to enlighten the court with legal authority'

Obama: Cautious with Keystone XL, but sprints over the Constitution

Obama to Kill Keystone XL Pipeline Permit

Obama argues against appearing at eligibility hearing

CERTIFIGATE

'Electors, Congress, not Georgia, hold responsibility for qualifications of candidates'

Video: Obama Denounces His Re-Election Strategy

The Alice-in-Wonderland President

Bloomberg Hides Government Causes of Financial Crisis

Peter Ferrara

Obama's 'abuse of power' threatens to shut down Senate

Warning to America: 'We are at crossroads'

Will church 'collapse' and nation become 'Third World' country?

The Ron Paul Vote

It has little to do with the Texas congressman.

Obama, Holder among 'most corrupt politicians'