A congressional document posted on the Internet confirms no one – not Congress, not the states and not election officials – bothered to check Barack Obama's eligibility to be president, and that status remains undocumented to this day.
It's because state and federal law did not require anyone in Congress or elsewhere to check to see if Obama was a "natural born Citizen" under the meaning of Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, according the document.
The analysis by the Congressional Research Service, a research arm of the U.S. Congress, openly admits no one in the federal government, including Congress, ever asked to see Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate. It explains no one was required to do so.
Technically, the CRS is a public policy research arm of the United States Congress that is organized as a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress; the CRS works exclusively for members of Congress, congressional committees and congressional staff in an advisory capacity, answering questions.
The CRS memorandum, published and distributed to congressional offices April 3, 2009, was written to explain to senators and member of the House how they could answer constituents who were demanding to see Obama's birth certificate.
Authored by Jack Maskell, the legislative attorney in the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service, the document was a memorandum written for the subject "Qualifications for the Office of President of the United States and Legal Challenges to the Eligibility of a Candidate"
It can be viewed and downloaded on Scribd.com.
Maskell confirmed to WND that the document is authentic.
He explained he wrote it only for distribution to congressional offices, not for public distribution, and it was not posted on any of the CRS report sites where the public might have been able to find it.
He suggested one of the congressional offices that got the report facilitated its release, and it ended up posted on the Internet.
Maskell told WND he wrote it because so many members of Congress were getting questions from constituents about the issue, and they wanted to know how to respond. It would explain why so many mailed and e-mailed responses to constituents on the issue of eligibility sound just alike.
The CRS begins the memo by stating the problem:
"Many of the inquiries have questioned why then-Senator, and now President, Obama has not had to produce an original, so-called 'long' version of a 'birth certificate' from the State of Hawaii, how federal candidates are 'vetted' for qualifications generally, and have asked for an assessment of the various allegations and claims of non-eligibility status."
In other words, senators and members of the House could not explain why nobody ever saw Obama's long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate, and they needed a ready answer to give angry constituents who were writing, faxing and telephoning their offices for an answer.
The second full paragraph of the CRS memo must be read in its entirety to understand fully the circumstance that allowed a candidate for whom documentation was concealed from the public to be elected and sworn in as president.
It states:
"Concerning the production or release of an original birth certificate, it should be noted that there is no federal law, regulation, rule, guideline, or requirement that a candidate for federal office produce his or her original birth certificate, or a certified copy of the record of live birth, to any official of the United States government; nor is there a requirement for federal candidates to publicly release such personal record or documentation. Furthermore, there is no specific federal agency or office that 'vets' candidates for federal office as to qualifications or eligibility prior to return."
What the CRS admits is that Obama got a pass from Congress and the federal government as a whole on his birth qualifications under Article 2, Section 1. Nobody in Congress or the federal government sought to look for Obama's certified long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate, because no law or regulation required them to look.
After the document was written, nobody in Congress could claim that Congress or anyone else in the federal government had reviewed Obama's birth certificate or determined Obama was eligible to be president. It simply did not happen.
A screen capture of the document's first page, including the key second paragraph, confirms the conclusion:
The CRS memo also admits that federal elections are administered under state law, a circumstance apparent to lawyers but sometimes complicated for others.
The relevant paragraph:
"The mechanics of elections of federal officials within the several states are administered under state law. The quadrennial presidential election, although required since 1845 to be held on the same day in each state is, in an administrative and operational sense, fifty-one separate elections in the states and the District of Columbia for presidential electors. States generally control, within the applicable constitutional parameters, the administrative issues, questions, and mechanisms of ballot placement and ballot access."
The next key point is that like federal law, neither do state laws require anyone to examine the birth qualifications of presidential candidates.
The states may have discretionary authority to question a candidate's eligibility to run for federal office, but there is no requirement in state law to do so, not when it comes to looking at birth records.
Once more, the memo makes this plain:
"In Keyes v. Bowen, the California Supreme Court discussed a suit against the secretary of state that challenged President Obama's eligibility and the California electoral votes for [the] finding that: 'Petitioners have not identified any authority requiring the secretary of state to make an inquiry into or demand detailed proof of citizenship from presidential candidates,' and thus mandamus (a writ of mandate) was not granted. However, although no 'ministerial duty' or mandatory requirement exists to support a mandamus action, there may still exist discretionary authority in such elections official."
A writ of mandamus in this case brought by Ambassador Alan Keyes would have involved a court order being issued by the secretary of state in California demanding Obama produce his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate to get his name on California's presidential ballot in 2008.
What the CRS is saying is that since there was no state law demanding Obama show his birth certificate, the court could not demand he do so. It was entirely up to the California secretary of state who had discretion to ask for the document or not ask for the document, depending upon what the California secretary of state, a Democrat for othis election cycle, wanted to do.
The CRS's conclusion is that Obama could refuse to show his long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate because no state or federal law required him reveal it.
The report said, therefore, Obama could release exactly what information he chose.
"Despite the absence of any formal administrative or legal requirement or oversight at the federal level, or specific state requirement to produce a birth certificate for ballot placement, it may be noted here briefly that the only 'official' documentation or record that has been presented in the matter of President Obama's eligibility has been an official, certified copy of the record of live birth released by the Obama campaign in June of 2008, as an apparent effort by then-candidate Obama to address rumors and innuendos concerning the place of his birth."
The result is that Obama could choose exactly what information – and in what format – he wanted released. He chose the computer-generated Certification of Live Birth, a form from the state of Hawaii that officials there have provided to those not born in the state, to document his eligibility.
The CRS also makes it clear that if the birth requirements of the Constitution are to be taken seriously, new laws at the state and federal levels will be needed to institutionalize government procedures requiring president candidates to come forward with their eligibility documentation.
WND has reported on a multitude of legal and other challenges to Obama's eligibility that arose even before his election.
The claims are that Obama does not meet the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural born citizen." The lawsuits have asserted he either was not born in Hawaii as he claims or was a dual citizen because of his father's British citizenship at the time of his birth.
The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
However, none of the cases filed to date has been successful in reaching the plateau of legal discovery, so that information about Obama's birth could be obtained.
Besides Obama's actual birth documentation, the still-concealed documentation for him includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
Several states already have begun working on various requirements for candidates to document their eligibility, and one proposal remains pending at the federal level.
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