Comments on: Call Andrew Sullivan: Obama Born In Kenya

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:53:38 +0000

That is so apples and oranges. If Trig was not her son it has absolutely no bearing on anything at all. For Obama, being born in Hawaii is a constitutional requirement for him to be eligible for the office.

And you are wrong…. NOTHING has been discredited. A Certificate of Live Birth from Hawaii does not assert birth in Hawaii (until they changed the law in 1972).

By: Jim Sturgeon

Jim Sturgeon — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 03:46:07 +0000

I am looking for a guest list for the Salute to the President dinner, that was held in Chicago on November 9, 1971.

If anyone has one, would you email it to me?

Thank you.

By: John H. Taylor

John H. Taylor — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:23:14 +0000

My friend: I have a vague recollection of the “Nixon” script, which was leaked to us, being wrong on Hiss whereas the film itself was not great but okay. The thing about OS is that he really thinks he’s a foreign policy scholar, as you know better than I. If he could put footnotes in the movies, he would. In “W.,” he spent way too much time for a feature film on how the yellowcake reference got into the SOTU, as if the moviegoer cares. Not that the moviegoer isn’t necessarily serious, but he’s or she’s not going to go to the movies for the definitive read on history. Especially from Stone, since there’s also the question of the books he consults — lots of off-beat conspiracy stuff.

By: I.M. Trenchant

I.M. Trenchant — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:40:27 +0000

Hi John: Rest assured I knew your tongue was firmly in your cheek when you directed your readers to give Sullivan a call. My followup was based on my inability to Google evidence that a regulatory electoral commission exists and that it is obliged, as a matter of routine, to validate that any registered candidate for the U.S. Presidency is a “natural born citizen” of the U.S.

One often reads that this or that candidate (e.g. a perenial is Ralph Nader) is registered to be put on the ballot in this or that state. I have assumed that such registrations are a matter for individual-state law (or maybe even a federal commission) and that the law is explicit about vetting that the required minimum number of petitioners is valid (i.e., that it does not contain names akin to Mayor Daley’s ‘cemetery voters’).

Recently I read in Weinstein’s ‘Perjury’ (about the Alger Hiss Case) on p.512 of the 1997 paperback edition that:

“Hiss’s continuing pursuit of vindication in the court of public opinion … was helped by Oliver Stone’s recent film biography, ‘Nixon’ [released in 1995, BEFORE the release of VENONA cable 1822 in march, 1996]. The movie provided viewers with a brief profile of a patently innocent Hiss in the early days of Richard Nixon’s career, hounded by the latter’s cynical ambition and by faked evidence.”

I didn’t recall this, and do not have a DVD of the film, so I wrote to an academic friend and colleague who is expert on the Stone film to ask for his comment about this. He assured me that there is no such material in the film. This led me to wonder if Stone edited the scene out after the appearance of the VENONA 1822 evidence in March, 1996. I frankly don’t know and Google has been of little help in resolving the matter.

Vetting the validity of this seemingly simple ‘fact’ — like the vetting of Presidential ‘natural born citizenship’ — is not as easy as one might expect, even in the Age Of Google. It seems to me that, even given Weinstein’s ungenerous attitudes to Nixon, he’d have been unlikely to publish an outright fabrication of this kind and that the answer is that Stone edited later post-release copies of his film. Proving it is another matter!

Certainly, on a companion DVD disc that accompanied the DVD of Nixon, which I once rented, Stone was vastly more complimentary to Nixon than he was in the film — almost shockingly so in the degree to which Stone revered Nixon’s SALT I and ABM Treaty efforts, even going so far as to suggest the Cold War would have ended in Nixon’s 2nd term if ‘Watergate’ hadn’t intervened. So, it isn’t impossible (though I think improbable) that Stone deleted a spurious reference to the Hiss Case in the post-initial-release of his film following release of the VENONA 1822 cable in 1996.

By: John H. Taylor

John H. Taylor — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:52:52 +0000

Fair enough. I did assume that, just as I can’t get a driver’s license without sending in the right form, there is some means by which authorities determine a person’s eligibility for the Presidency. In my post, I was more interesting in making fun of Andrew’s Trig fixation. Perhaps there’s something there. I really hope not.

By: I.M. Trenchant

I.M. Trenchant — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:15:23 +0000

Am I correct in thinking that there is (and always has been) an Electoral Commission that oversees U.S. Presidential elections and that one of the obligations of the commission is to verify, as a matter of routine, that a bona fide document is extant which establishes, beyond question, that every registered candidate for the U.S. Presidency was born in the U.S.A. ? Further, is it not stated in the laws of the U.S. Republic that a candidate for the U.S. Presidency must be born in the U.S.A.? Is it part of the U.S. Constitution? Assuming the answer to each of the foregoing queries is Yes, it would seem, to paraphrase Strother Martin’s immortal words in ‘Cool Hand Luke,’ that what we have here is a failure to regulate, which may be the reason why Keyes has picked up on this issue in the wake of the clear and present danger that the global financial system may fall apart as a result of a failure to properly regulate the financial system. In this context, John, I can easily see why your comment that “a constitutional crisis is not what we need.” This would surely be the last straw! But it would provide us with some relief from the monomaniacal fixation that is now besetting most the world’s citizenry.

By: John H. Taylor

John H. Taylor — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:07:58 +0000

Well, that would be ironic! But I don’t buy it. Besides, at this particular moment, a constitutional crisis is not what we need.

By: Ted

Ted — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:04:38 +0000

You gotta hear this 90 minute blogradio on why the media has a blackout of the looming Obama Birth Certificate Constitutional Crisis:

politicalpistachio.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-is-obamas-birth-certificate-still.html