This link http://tinyurl.com/c34y7b references a 1969 US INS decision upheld by the DOJ BIA in 1982. Using the principle of lex loci celebrationis a Chinese customary marriage under the Chinese Civil Code 1931 and Chinese Code 1843 (as applied by British Hong Kong authorities) was deemed legitimate. This decision strongly suggests that Obama Sr too would have been deemed already married in British and Hawaiian law and so Jr would have been deemed illegitimate.

Donofrio dimisses Obama’s illegitimacy by emphatically stating that his parents’ later marriage would legitimate him, making Obama British at birth: this is a total misreading of the law, twice over.

1 The UK Nationality Act 1948 Section 21 (1) provided for illegitimate children presently excluded from British citizenship by descent to become legitimate and British citizens from the date of the subsequent marriage, not from date of birth. Donofrio’s case requires Obama’s British citizenship at birth, which is impossible under this statute.

2 The illegitimacy of Obama Jr could never be remedied in British law as his illegitimacy derived from bigamy, as stipulated in the 1926 UK Legitimacy Act. Application of the British Kenya Marriage Act 1902 and UK Nationality Act 1948 Section 21 (2), meant that Obama never had the remotest hope of ever being a British citizen by descent at birth or any other time.

Only physical birth in a British jurisdiction removed these barriers. The Kenya Marrige Act 1902 which made Obama Sr bigamous and Obama Jr illegitimate was retained after Kenyan independence in 1964 and remains operative today.

2.2.6.2 Any marriage celebrated on or before 31 July 1971 was regarded as void if, despite having taken place in a country whose law permits polygamy, it was:

* at the time of the marriage, EITHER party was domiciled in the United Kingdom or in another country whose law did not permit polygamy.

In 1961 Ann Dunham was domiciled in the United States.

UK Nationality Official Manual: Legitimacy http://tinyurl.com/dnkaxo

Practical Kat never answers questions when I pose them…but to be nice.

What is the difference between “all the current evidence points to…” and “all the current evidence is…” ?

Let me cite a couple of examples:

Nixon releases some White House tapes in 1973 and one has an 18 minute erasure. That erasure is just where Nixon wants an erasure to be. Nixon’s secretary says she may have inadvertently erased 5 minutes of tape. Later various advisors say Nixon might have done it because he was sometimes clumsy, tired, affected by prescription drugs, or over-refreshed. The Prosecutor’s Advisory Panel of experts said there were multiple, deliberate erasures. At this point do I say “all the current evidence points to…” or “all the current evidence is…” that Nixon erased or contrived to erase that tape ? Anybody here believe that those erasures were all accidents ? Not in 1973: Nixon eventually resigned.

Or take Clinton’s denial of many allegations of sexual misconduct: do I say “all the current evidence points to…” or “all the current evidence is…” that Clinton had a disgusting prior history apart from Lewinsky and Jones from which to extrapolate ? You know the rest.

In a court of law I may limit statements involving evidence to “is” rather than “points”…but this site is not a court of law. Practical Kat wishes to restrict all statements at this site which question Obama’s eligibility to statements of evidence only admissible in a court of law.

However Practical Kat will not subject Obama’s defense at this site to statements of evidence only admissible in a court of law. Pictures of Obama’s Certification of Live Birth are not admissible by that standard; the falsehood entered onto Obama original birth record (family address) removes from any paper version of that COLB prima facie status, and thus citations of Obama’s COLB are similarly are inadmissible by the legal standard. Yet Practical Kat has earnestly beseeched us to trust him that a paper COLB does exist, does contain what “its” pictures purport it to contain, and will be produced at a later date – so can we please stop questioning Obama’s eligibility ?

Where is the admissible evidence that Obama was born in Hawaii ? There is none. Not the COLB. Nothing in the public domain. Are we going hear Practical Kat requiring admissible evidence of birth (ie not the COLB) be supplied by Obama and himself witholding any statements in Obama’s defense until then ? All the current evidence points to…the near certainty that Practical Kat will not.

It’s transcends irony for Donofrio to accuse Obama of running away from the truth and then to run away from the truth himself – in this instance easily provable facts which destroy his case. Similarly Donofrio likes to quote British law when it supports him and stops others citing that law when it undermines him.

Donofrio deploys an almost fanatical insistence that any inquiry into Obama’s birthplace, birth documents, and his father’s bigamy is conspiratorial and tabloid. This blindness exposes him to a simple matter of legal fact – Obama Sr’s lawful Kenyan marriage and consequent bigamy with Ann Dunham (who was probably unwitting) – that proves the case Donofrio claims to oppose. How can that be rationalized ?

I have been fully aware of the implications of Obama Sr’s bigamy since Christmas: if Jr was born in Hawaii, as Donofrio more than emphatically proclaims, then he was born with only one citizenship: American. This defines “natural born.” I have posted on the inadmissibility of Obama’s COLB because I consider Kenyan birth the likeliest explanation and the only basis for a successful challenge. Nobody raised Obama Sr’s bigamy.

When I read that Obama’s “legitimacy” had been accepted by Donofrio in pursuit of a Quo Warranto hearing based on the same old flawed premises and obsessions I realized Donofrio was making a fool of himself, and not least of his starry-eyed claque. Donofrio’s latest comment is: “The US Attorney will present whatever evidence he feels is important. They would probably introduce expert wtinesses. The Judge will decide what will be allowed as evidence…” Looks like Obama wouln’t have much to worry about: less Quo Warranto, more Cuius Confirmatio. This is what Donofrio wants ?

As for Orly Taitz: her industry is phenomenal but she’s relying on Donofrio “errors” instead of doing her own research. We all can and do make mistakes: but on principle when the facts change we must change – anything else is…

Anyone who you might want to not dismiss you out-of-hand as a “birfer.”

Please do be intellectually honest on this issue. I think that you know as well as I that anyone who even remotely questions the eligibility of the President is automagically assumed to be a “birther.”

Anyway, I don’t require anyone else “out there on the blogosphere” to validate my site. To date, the marketing, for what it is, has been done via word of mouth (or is that key click?). I started my site as a hobby and have already been approached by numerous people of varying degrees of influence in the world at large.

As I said, my site is what it is, and I’ll change it as I see fit.

Of course, all that being said, I do thank you for visiting, reading and commenting. Something must be pretty interesting ’round these here parts for you to spend time here! So, why would I want to change that?

-Phil

You completely left off everything after the third comma, which cannot be left off if my statement is to remain intact.

Nonsense Phil. I agreed you can’t whether Obama was eligible from those court rulings. You can also go to the library and find thousands of books from which you cannot tell whether Obama is eligible. So what? You have perfectly good source that will tell you. You remain ignorant by your own choice.

When you’re done blogging about what Taitz had for breakfast, trying checking out change.gov.

Similarly, Bob, I have to ask you, “It would be much more constructive to whom to focus on efforts to ensure substantiation for 2012?” Furthermore, “It would improve respectability with whom if I were to instead focus on 2012?”

Anyone who you might want to not dismiss you out-of-hand as a “birfer.”

Therefore, why should I fix something that isn’t broke?

The more you focus on 2008, the less you focus on 2012.

Hey: that’s a win-win. As you were.

What Congress gives, Congress can take away. Congress at any time can repeal DC’s quo warranto statute.

I can’t believe Phil let this one slide through. Do you find it “revealing” that Obama likens himself to Lincoln? Check out this: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/abraham-lincoln-racist/

“More problematic were Lincoln’s views on race. He held opinions not very different from those of the majority of his racist countrymen. Even if slavery was wrong, ‘there is a physical difference between the white and black races that will for ever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality.’ His solution was a form of ethnic cleansing: shipping blacks off to Liberia, or Haiti, or Central America — anywhere as long as it wasn’t the United States.

?????????? says:
March 12, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Practical Kat:

SCOTT V. SANDFORD, 60 U. S. 393 (1856)

Scott v Sandford (commonly referred to as the Dred Scott case) was OVERRULED by the Slaughterhouse Cases 83 U.S. 36 (1873) and by the passage of the 14th amendment.

But I find it rather revealing that the key case you cite in a challenge to an African-American President is one that rests on a determination that black people are not persons.

For me all the current evidence points to Obama being born in Kenya

What “evidence”? Could you please list “all the current evidence” that you have indicated Obama was born in Kenya?

Congress passed the law of quo warranto, so if a jury, in a civil suit in DC ONLY determines Mr. Obama to be ineligible, Congress is out of the loop. It is an automatic dismissal. No Congress involvement, no vote by them necessary. Done deal. Like the election didn’t even happen.

Leo Donofrio has many times stated rather major disagreement with folks at Plains Radio and other entities who have gone “too negative” (my words), in his view, on the President.

However, I think that you are right that when it comes to public officials, nothing is off the table. And, further, why should anything be off the table?

-Phil

It would be much more constructive (and improve respectability) to focus on efforts to ensure substantiation for 2012.

You bring up a fantastic point.

In Obama’s campaign, he promoted, “Change,” yet never opened himself up to one of the greatest of prepositions, “to,” as in, “Change,” to what?

Similarly, Bob, I have to ask you, “It would be much more constructive to whom to focus on efforts to ensure substantiation for 2012?” Furthermore, “It would improve respectability with whom if I were to instead focus on 2012?”

I am one concerned citizen with one measly little web site on the Internet who has garnered a small — but growing, according to multiple statistics counters — audience of fans and adversaries. It works for me. Therefore, why should I fix something that isn’t broke?

-Phil

There are two ways Obama’s parents can be proved legally unmarried, with consequences that would dramatically affect deliberations in Quo Warrento hearings. On current evidence such hearings would never find against Obama:

a British citizenship under the UK Nationality Act 1948 transmitted automatically only to children of a legitimate marriage. Obama’s father was already married in Kenya before he came to America. The marriage was by native custom. In British Kenya in 1961 “customary marriage” for black Kenyans was absolutely legal. Customary marriage for white Kenyans was not permitted: their marriages required official licenses and generated certificates. These two forms of marriage could not be contracted simultaneously to different spouses: that was bigamy under the Kenya Marriage Act, Chapter 50, 1902 and the Kenya Penal Code of 1930, Section 171. Customary marriage was very public, invariably polygamous, and very legal — in British Kenya. The question is: what was the status of Kenyan customary marriage in America in 1961 ? Common law marriage had no official status in Hawaii in 1961 (or now). Problem: Would a perfectly legal British Kenyan customary marriage (between Obama Sr and his wife Kezia Grace), which had no official certificate, be ruled by a US court in 1961 as being “common law” ? If it would, Obama’s parents were legally married under US law (if they did legally contract a marriage); if Obama Sr’s customary marriage would NOT have been ruled “common law”, if Obama Sr’s very Kenyan, very respectable, and eminently lawful customary marriage (to a doctor’s daughter) would have been deemed legal under US law (had authorities here and Ann Dunham herself known about it !), Obama’s parents could never have been lawfully married by any authority within US jurisdiction. We do know that it was Ann Dunham-Obama herself who left Obama Sr in August 1961 and only returned to Hawaii in 1963, many months after Obama Sr left Hawaii for Harvard. Under these circumstances if Obama Jr was born in Kenya, just one year’s residency in America was all his mother needed to transmit US citizenship; though it should be said, he could never possess natural born citizenship. Conversely, if Obama’s parents are deemed by US authorities to have been legally married ONLY in America, then his mother did not have sufficient residency to transmit US citizenship if he was born in Kenya; and again Obama could never possess natural born citizenship.

b Obama’s father contracted a customary marriage in Kenya, perfectly legal there, several years before coming to study in Hawaii. Obama Sr then contracted (if he did) a second marriage with Ann Dunham in Hawaii in 1961. Polygamous customary marriage was legal for black Kenyans in British Kenya. Problem: It was not legal under the British Kenya Marriage Act 1902 and Kenya Penal Code 1930 to mix the two types of marriage. American marriages were recognized foreign marriages and governed by statute, whereby “NO marriage in Kenya shall be valid…where either of the parties…is married by native law or custom to any person other than the person with whom such marriage is had”: ie for one customarily married any statutory spouse must be the customary spouse – thereby outlawing statutory polygamy. This means that Obama Sr’s Hawaiian marriage (if real) to Ann Dunham was bigamous and illegal in Kenya under British law. While birth in Kenya would necessarily have entitled Obama Jr to British citizenship immediately, an Obama Jr birth in America to bigamous parents could never bestow British citizenship upon him, because at no time would Britain have regarded Obama Jr as the child of a marriage that was legitimate under British Kenyan law. Marriage (incontrovertibly bigamous) in the US for Ann Dunham and Obama Sr without a Kenyan birth for Obama Jr, or merely an American birth for Obama Jr, are both deadly poison for Leo’s brief.

There is only one possible escape – an escape which relies on alleged facts that Donofrio has previously dismissed as without interest – and it revolves around what Ann Dunham was doing in the summer of 1961: and, more precisely, where she might have been doing it. For this escape to work it is indispensable that Ann Dunham was in Kenya in 1961: not married to Obama Sr in February 1961, not yet having given birth to Obama Jr (in this escape that can only happen later in Hawaii – otherwise it’s too easy !), but necessarily contracting a customary marriage. The 1902 statute allows that “…nothing in this Act…shall affect the validity of any marriage contracted under or in accordance with any native law or custom, or in any manner apply to marriages so contracted…”

Remember it could not be a marriage under statute: for Obama Sr that would have been bigamy punishable by 5 years imprisonment. Maybe that was why Obama Sr’s father was vehemently opposed to Sr’s marriage to Ann in Hawaii: could some decision have been made to return home and make a legal marriage under native law ? Given that in customary marriage Ann would be marrying man AND family AND tribe it was not something that could have been arranged on short notice and without complex preparations by all parties. I find it hard to believe that British officials would have smiled benevolently on such follies. Some might ask: Kenya is vast, how were British authorities to know what was going down far out in the bush ? Quite frankly, as a consequence of civil unrest in the 1950s, I believe British information systems were such that authorities would have known in exhaustive detail everything an impulsive white American girl aged 18 was doing upcountry, and most probably would have done all in their power to dissuade her.

But perhaps, only perhaps, some colonial officials told her: “Don’t mind us, it’s legal – if as you say you’re not legally married in America” ? It is 99.999999% certain that no white woman ever contracted a customary marriage in British Kenya in 1961, as this would have meant complete and forced absorption into tribal lifestyles, customs, and culture as was expected of a dutiful wife, not to mention incurring some notoriety. Even if it were legal, even if a wayward, unconventional, runaway, and hard-to-hide Ann Dunham did MARRY customarily, where could we ever find the evidence ? Where’s the Certificate a US judge could rustle and squint at ? Could there be such a Certificate, from such a marriage ? What foreign investigation conducted by which authorities (US and\or British and\or Kenyan) in remote regions and times, to establish probative evidence of a white woman contracting a customary polygamous marriage in British Kenya in 1961, would be accepted as valid in US law ? Could the child of a second polygamous (in this case, Kenyan) customary marriage ever be judged legitimate in US law ? For this escape to work it is Obama Jr’s status at birth in British law that is decisive: his status at birth in Hawaii as the son of Obama Sr’s second legal customary wife. Some may say, “Maybe that’s what behind those Hawaii divorce papers – which marriage was really being terminated: the Hawaiian, as earlier claimed, or maybe, as can be seen with hindsight, or the Kenyan” ? No comment.

It should be blindingly obvious by now that there’s very little chance of this escape being successful but maybe Donofrio will find alleged events in Kenya in 1961 more compelling than he has so far. Donofrio’s case has no hope of success unless Obama’s COLB is ruled inadmissible, bypassed, and the original 1961 record is examined. (There are irrefutable arguments to achieve this) Anyhow, there’s no getting away from annoying Certificates: we all want one, “our” one. Not least Obama’s “genius” attorneys (as Donofrio calls them) !? All those foolish admissions by Obama Jr online that he was a Kenyan citizen until age 21: are they just romantic daydreams in the context of this analysis ? Donofrio believes Obama has trapped himself into admitting ineligiblity and that “Birthers” are being cunningly distracted from this vulnerabilty by Obama’s “simply the best” puppetmaster lawyers: in this conspiratorial spirit a better theory would be that the admissions are a masterstroke to hide in plain sight the truth that Obama never received British citizenship from his father. I’m suprised they haven’t already snapped to it and found the Hawaiian marriage certificate, the certificate that makes Ann Dunham’s purported US marriage bigamous, the certificate that makes Obama Jr a natural born citizen of the US, if he was born here. Maybe they’re holding it in reserve, a secret weapon ?

As simple as I can make it:

Obama Born In Kenya: British citizen by birth; US citizen if Kenyan customary marriage is not recognized in US law and Hawaii marriage correspondingly legal; not a US citizen if Kenyan customary marriage is recognized in the US and Hawaii marriage correspondingly bigamous. Obama is never a natural born US citizen.

Obama Born In Us: US citizen by birth; never a British citizen because Obama Sr’s bigamous marriage cannot allow transmission of British citizenship under British law. Britain has no claim upon Obama Jr and therefore he is a natural born US citizen, unless “natural born” is strictly interpreted as requiring two US parents: even Leo has doubts that a court would so rule.

Therefore: Leo’s case will never be successful if Obama’s COLB is admitted by our courts as prima facie evidence: only if Obama’s COLB is ruled legally irrelevant and Obama’s long form Certificate upon discovery shows Kenyan birth can Leo’s case be sustained.

OK even more simply:

Only if Obama Jr was born in Kenya is Obama not a natural born US citizen; only if Obama Jr was born in Kenya and his parents contracted a legal US marriage is Obama not a US citizen. If Obama was US born he is a natural born citizen, very probably.

Conclusion: Donofrio’s central arguments against Obama’s eligiibilty, (that place of birth was immaterial, that British citizenship was transmitted through Obama Sr, that natural born citizenship required two citizen parents) have collapsed. Obama’s birthplace has now become the supreme and decisive issue. Unless Obama’s COLB is ruled irrelevant, and a court examines the original 1961 birth record, Obama will remain securely in office.

For Donofrio to reject that assessment as beneath contempt works only for Obama’s side of the dispute. Strange to say, Donofrio is on record as having conceded legitimacy to “President” Obama to further his brief.