The doctor, the president and the birth certificate
Posted: October 05, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010
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A decorated Army flight surgeon, after 18 years of service including year-long tours in Honduras, Bosnia and Afghanistan, now risks his career and faces almost certain court-martial and imprisonment.
Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin claims there's a serious conflict between adhering to his military oath and obeying deployment orders coming down the existing chain of command with Barack Obama at the top – since the president's constitutionaleligibility to be commander in chief has never been documented.
Although some scoff, Lakin is acting "exactly" as "proper training dictates," confirms retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, a Fox News military analyst who served as vice commander in chief of USAF forces in Europe. Likewise, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, agrees Lakin "has every right to question the lawfulness of the orders of the commander in chief."
Moreover, just like Lakin, 3 out of 5 Americans – 58 percent according to a recent CNN poll and 61 percent according to a"60 Minutes/Vanity Fair" poll – are not convinced Barack Obama was born in Hawaii as he has long claimed. The Constitution requires in Article 2 Section 1 that every president be a "natural born citizen."
So, now this veteran Army doctor, who would much rather continue serving his country than go to prison, is respectfully telling the military tribunal judging him that he needs for Obama or his representatives to prove that the president is occupying his office constitutionally.
In simple terms, Col. Lakin wants to see Obama's birth certificate.
Not the computer-generated summary document that almost everyone in the media mindlessly and ignorantly refers to as "Obama's birth certificate," but the actual document that virtually everyone reading these words possesses – showing the hospital of birth (to date, no hospital on earth officially claims Obama was born there), the attending physician or midwife and similar information that actually proves where and when he was born.
For Obama, at long last, to produce the documentation proving his eligibility to be commander in chief is critical not just to Lakin's defense, said McInerney, but to the preservation of the nation itself.
Indeed, in an extraordinary affidavit he filed with the court in Lakin's defense, McInerney, who also served as assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force and commander of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing, made this bold statement:
The President of the United States, as the Commander in Chief, is the source of all military authority. The Constitution requires the President to be a natural born citizen in order to be eligible to hold office. If he is ineligible under the Constitution to serve in that office, that creates a break in the chain of command of such magnitude that its significance can scarcely be imagined.
Adds McInerney: "Officers in the United States military service are – and must be – trained that they owe their highest allegiance to the United States Constitution."
So, what does the officer presiding over Lakin's court-martial say in response to all this?
Army Col. Denise R. Lind, acting as judge in the case, has so far ruled that Lakin will be denied access to any of Obama's records as well as testimony from any who may have access to his records. Her reason for what amounts to denying Lakin the right to defend himself is, according to Lind, that producing such evidence about Obama in a military tribunal could be – and I'll quote her exact word – an "embarrassment" to the president.
Let's make this crystal clear: Lakin's whole argument is that the sacrosanct chain of command may well have been corrupted by a usurper – and millions of Americans agree he has valid reason to suspect this is the case. Yet the presiding officer in the hearing has ruled that neither Lakin nor his defense team may present any evidence bearing on Obama's eligibility to be president – because it might be embarrassing.
Instead, the only "defense" Lakin is being allowed, by Lind's order, revolves around whether a deployment order was given (no one contests this) and whether he refused to obey it (no one contests this either). In other words, this is shaping up as a sham proceeding in which Lakin cannot defend himself, reminiscent of the kind of justice the old Soviet Union used to mete out in kangaroo courts, followed by imprisonment.
Since when does "embarrassment" – especially since the embarrassment in question wouldn't even occur unless Obama actually were indeed lying and usurping the office of the presidency – have anything to do with administering justice?
Truly an amazing and consequential case, both for Lakin and for the nation.
Why, then, have you not heard anything about it from the rest of the media?
Because it's the "mainstream media" – which Rush Limbaugh calls the "state-run media" – that gave us Obama as president in the first place, and which continues to run interference for him to this day. (Who can forget the "thrill going up" Chris Matthews' leg and Newsweek's Evan Thomas rhapsodizing that Obama was "sort of God"?)
Moreover, when it comes to the question of Obama's constitutional eligibility, the media, including much of the "conservative" or "alternative" media, remain in denial – with the exception of WorldNetDaily, which has endured constant ridicule and marginalization for daring to cover what the CEO of a major radio syndicator recently told me was "the story of the decade."
Fortunately, most conservative talkers – with the notable exception of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck – admit this is an important, albeit radioactive, story. Beck and O'Reilly, both immensely talented commentators whom I enjoy watching, live in a "birthers-are-crazy" bubble in which they reassure each other there's just nothing to this "conspiracy theory" – you know, the one 3 out of 5 Americans now suspect is true, according to repeated polling. Meanwhile, virtually the entire rest of the talk-radio world acknowledges the issue's legitimacy – from Rush Limbaugh ("All [Obama] has to do is show a birth certificate") and Sean Hannity ("What was so wrong in saying that, 'Can we see your birth certificate?'") to Lou Dobbs ("I don't understand why he shouldn't produce a birth certificate") and Michael Savage ("the presidency may have been usurped by a foreign power"). Not to mention politicians, from U.S. congressmen ("Those are legitimate constitutional concerns")to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ("I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue").
Although most of these good folks are still somewhat afraid of the issue – nobody likes to be mocked and attacked mercilessly – at least they acknowledge occasionally that it's a valid and important issue.
Maybe things are starting to change. I increasingly see conscientious pundits threading this scary needle – first engaging in the obligatory distancing of themselves from the "birthers," and then agreeing with them. A typical "non-birther birther" would be National Review's Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and highly respected analyst, who after making clear he doesn't give credence to conspiracy theories, nevertheless argues that Obama seriously owes it to the American public to come clean with the major documentation of his past, including his birth certificate.
For the record, this is exactly what I – and Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi and Aaron Klein and pretty much every other journalist at WND – believe. After exhaustive research, we don't know where he was born, and neither do you. Not only does he continue to conceal his birth records, but also the rest of his life's documentation – his 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, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, and on and on. All the documents that are a routine matter of public record for all other presidents are, for Obama, hidden. And if you try to access them to find out what he's hiding, you're called a conspiracy nut.
Meanwhile, we're about to witness the spectacle of a true patriot, a decorated military physician who wants nothing more than to save more lives and continue to serve his country, a man of admirable conscience and backbone, being court-martialed and sent to Fort Leavenworth prison as a sacrificial lamb because the "judge" – just like the establishment press and so many others for whom Obama is "too big to fail" – is fearful of "embarrassing" the president.
If this isn't an outrage, then we have lost our capacity for moral indignation in America.
Barack Obama, if he indeed has been lying about his constitutional qualification to serve as president, should be more than embarrassed – he should be impeached. But that's for next year.
Right now, dear reader, help Col. Lakin. Later will be too late. His court-martial is scheduled for Nov. 3-5.
- Send a contribution, whatever you can manage, to Col. Lakin's Legal Defense Fund.
- Write, call and e-mail your congressmen and senators about this case. Call talk radio shows. Forward this column to your friends. Do what you can and make your voice heard!
David Kupelian is an award-winning journalist, managing editor of WorldNetDaily.com, editor of Whistleblower magazine and author of the best-selling book, "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom." His newest book is "How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America."
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