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Bob McCarty’s guest blogger Paul Hollrah has written a piece worthy of your inspection. It has to do with a memo that literally and figuratively changed the course of America’s history. See if you don’t agree.
Understanding ‘The Jack Maskell Memorandum’
November 25th, 2010 ·
By Paul Hollrah, Guest Blogger
By far the most frequently asked question in America since August 28, 2008, the closing day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, is this: “Does Barack Hussein Obama meet the constitutional qualifications to serve as President of the United States?” With every reason to believe that he does not, the second most-asked question has been, “How could every single member of Congress… all 535 of them… fail in their constitutional obligation to properly vet Obama’s qualifications before certifying the vote of the 2008 Electoral College?”
For the past two years Americans have been flooding congressional offices with demands for answers to these questions. And now we know. The answer to the first question is, “No, Obama is not eligible to serve as president because he is not a ‘natural born’ U.S. citizen.” The answer to the second question is, “The Jack Maskell Memorandum.”
But before we approach the question of who Jack Maskell might be, and the role he plays in what history will doubtless record as the greatest single crime of all time, let’s first review the facts surrounding Obama’s eligibility. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that, “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; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.”
We know that Obama was not a citizen of the United States at the time the Constitution was adopted, we know that he was at least thirty-five years of age when he took office in January 2009, and we know that he had been a U.S. resident for at least fourteen years at the time he was nominated. But is he a “natural born” citizen? What is a “natural born” citizen, and how do we prevent someone who is not a natural born citizen from becoming president or vice president?
When the Founding Fathers met in Philadelphia in September 1787 to sign the final draft of the U.S. Constitution, the physical scars of the War of Independence from Great Britain were still visible all around them and a deep-seated animosity toward all things British colored every aspect of their daily lives. So is it even conceivable that, just five years and eleven months after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, the Founders would have affixed their signatures to a document that would allow an individual with divided loyalties – e.g., an individual with dual US-British citizenship – to serve as president or vice president of the United States? Not likely.
That is precisely why the Framers found it necessary to include the words, “or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this constitution…” At the time the Constitution was adopted, every citizen of the thirteen colonies was a British subject, or a citizen of some other country. And since the founders wished to exclude all those with dual citizenship (divided loyalties) from serving as president or vice president at any time in the future, they provided an exemption of limited duration for those who were officially U.S. residents at the time and who might wish to serve as president or vice president after reaching the age of thirty-five.
For example, George Washington was 57 years of age when he was inaugurated as our first president. But Washington, born and raised in Virginia, had been a British subject during all of his 57-plus years. Hence, as a means of qualifying a class of men for the presidency during the first thirty-five years of our nationhood, while preventing any man with dual or naturalized citizenship from ever serving as president, after a pool of “natural born” men had reached the age of thirty-five… limiting access to those offices only to those born to parents, both of whom were U.S. citizens… the founders included the words, “or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this constitution…”
Few Americans, not even our distinguished members of Congress, have ever stopped to consider what those sixteen simple words mean, or, more importantly, who they exclude from presidential consideration. That is why, after sitting silently in their chairs while the names of 365 Obama electors were read from the Speaker’s rostrum, not a single member of Congress rose to object… preferring instead to hide behind the legal skirts of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and their Legislative Attorney, Jack Maskell.
In the days immediately following Barack Obama’s unlikely election in November 2008, members of Congress began flooding the CRS with questions about Obama’s eligibility. Jack Maskell, a CRS Legislative Attorney drew the “short straw” and was assigned to provide members of Congress with legal cover. Maskell’s recently-discovered memorandum, dated April 3, 2009 and distributed to all members of Congress, contains the following words:
“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…
“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.”
Clearly, Mr. Maskell overlooked the words of the 20th Amendment, which reads in part, “If a president shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified…”
When members of Congress swear that they will “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and that they will “bear true faith and allegiance to the same… so help me God,” they take upon themselves, by direct implication, the obligation to rule on the qualifications of those who emerge from the Electoral College as President and Vice President-elect… in spite of what Jack Maskell’s opinion might be.
Under the U.S. system for selecting our president and vice president, there are three distinct vetting opportunities. The first occurs when the political parties certify their candidates to the state election boards so that ballots can be printed. And although it is customary for the parties to certify the eligibility of their candidates under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, the Democratic Party made that certification in 2008 only to the State of Hawaii, which has a statutory requirement that such certification be made. The remaining 49 states received no such certification in support of the eligibility of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
The second vetting opportunity occurs when the members of the Electoral College meet on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December. It is the obligation of all members of the Electoral College to cast their votes for individuals who are qualified, under Article II, Section 1. However, in spite of the clear knowledge that Obama had been born in 1961 with dual US-British citizenship, Democratic electors in December 2008 ignored that solemn responsibility.
The third and final vetting opportunity occurs during the first week in January following a presidential election when the Congress meets in joint session to certify the votes of the Electoral College. It is the third and final fail-safe vetting opportunity.
So the question arises, can the Congress simply ignore its obligation to fully vet those selected as president and vice president-elect by the Electoral College? The answer to that question, in spite of Jack Maskell’s advice to Congress, is a resounding “no.” As Edwin Viera, Jr., Ph.D., J.D., a leading authority on the Constitution, argues, “… the question of Obama’s eligibility vel non is not within the discretion of Congress to skirt or decide as its Members may deem politically or personally expedient… Even by unanimous vote, Congress cannot constitutionally dispense with the requirement that Obama must be ‘a natural born citizen,’ by simply assuming that he is such…”
But what if the members of Congress, on the advice of CRS counsel, fail in that responsibility? Dr. Viera argues that, if no objection is made on the basis that Obama is not a “natural born” citizen… “the matter cannot be said to have been settled to a ‘constitutional sufficiency’ (emphasis added),” because Congress has no power to simply waive the eligibility requirement… Maskell memorandum or no Maskell memorandum.
When we consider the difficulties involved in reversing the effects of two years or four years of an illegitimate presidency, it is difficult to imagine any single written document in recorded history that has had, or will have, the devastating effect on freedom and the rule of law that the Jack Maskell Memorandum will ultimately have. When Maskell drafted his memorandum and affixed his signature, it is unlikely that he had any concept of the terrible consequences of his words. If only he had folded it into a paper airplane and tossed it out the window…
WOW! Double-WOW!
A golden opportunity awaits the incoming Congress.
Becuase no vote was taken on the eligibility question in January 2009, it is still technically a “de novo” issue for the incoming Congress to address. (Allen West, check your messages….)
If they fail to fix the problem, then a COMPLETE cleaning of the House is warranted during the 2012 elections.
(That is, assuming that there will still be elections then.)
This gives me fuel for a column at AIP News.
These articles will provide background and reasons for this Maskell memo (an attempt to cover for the massive election frauds).
http://jbjd.org/2010/08/10/a-coup-through-and-through-1/
http://jbjd.org/2010/08/17/a-coup-through-and-through-2-of-3/
http://jbjd.org/2010/09/06/a-coup-through-and-through-3-of-3/
http://jbjd.org/2010/09/15/coup-through-through-epilog/
The Democratic National Committee Services Corporation, disguised as the DNC, installed Barack Obama into the Office of President of the United States of America by committing massive election fraud that played out uniquely during each of these 3 (three) phases of the 2008 Presidential election cycle in relation to the company’s August 2008 Presidential Nominating Convention: 1) pre-Convention; 2) Convention; and 3) post-Convention. The fraud committed both before and after the Convention has been dissected in several articles previously posted here on the “jbjd” blog.
This three-part series entitled, “A Coup, Through and Through” analyzes the fraud pulled off at the Convention
Paul wrote “At the time the Constitution was adopted, every citizen of the thirteen colonies was a British subject, or a citizen of some other country. And since the founders wished to exclude all those with dual citizenship (divided loyalties) from serving as president or vice president at any time in the future, they provided an exemption of limited duration for those who were officially U.S. residents at the time and who might wish to serve as president or vice president after reaching the age of thirty-five.
“For example, George Washington was 57 years of age when he was inaugurated as our first president. But Washington, born and raised in Virginia, had been a British subject during all of his 57-plus years.”
This is totally ignorant of history. At the time of adoption of the Constitution, the colonies no longer existed. They were now “States,” not colonies, and made up the United States of America.
Every citizen was a citizen of the United States, not of Britain or any other country.
Washington was a United States citizen from 1776 on, not a British subject “during all of his 57-plus years.”.
The USA began with the Declaration of Independence and was legally named the USA in the Articles of Confederation.
Paul has been corrected at McCarty’s site but cannot recognize his error.
His constitutional argument is also wrong. The framers intended to exclude naturalized citizens from the Presidency in order to bar foreign princes, generals or other adventurers from coming in to seize power.
Better get him a history book.
The latest historical ignorance of Paul Hollrah: “There is no evidence that he [Obama] ever took steps to renounce either his British or his Kenyan citizenship.”
The facts are different. The Obama campaign explained this in 2008:
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.
“Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate.html
The historical fact is that Obama lost his dual citizenship when he took no action before age 21. That citizenship was conditional and contingent. He lost it when he did nothing to claim it.
Paul cannot even read his own pasted-up source material. Here is what he posted: ““(1) A person who, upon the attainment of the age of twenty-one years, is a citizen of Kenya and also a citizen of some country other than Kenya shall, subject to subsection (7), cease to be a citizen of Kenya upon the specified date unless he has renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and, in the case of a person who was born outside Kenya, made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament.”
Crystal clear. He “ceased to be a citizen of Kenya” when he failed to renounce US citizenship and take an oath to Kenya. Sure, there is no evidence that he renounced Kenyan citizenship. He lost it when he failed to renounce US citizenship.
There is nothing in the Constitution, in its history, or in the court cases that supports his theory. It is a crank constitutional notion.
Who is going to listen to this guy Paul if he still thinks the United States did not exist as a country until adoption of the Constitution.
He will not even learn some history and correct his mistakes.
He does not like to be corrected. They just cut off comments at the McClarty site.
Cowards.
http://bobmccarty.com/2010/11/25/understanding-the-jack-maskell-memorandum/
All of the above is predicated upon one assumption: that Obama was born anywhere on US soil.
But, if he was born on Kenyan soil (which is what his actual birth CERTIFICATE says — Coast Hospital, Mombassa, Kenya, with a baby footprint — versus the forged COLB posted on his campaign site), then all of the above legal citations, etc., become worthless.
He was born a Kenyan. He is still a Kenyan.
He is in this country illegally, because he does not have an entrance visa.
Therefore, for him to even set foot in the White House, much more to live there, is an illegal act.
So sorry, but that so-called Kenyan birth certificate is a blatant forgery, uttered by a convicted forger, so it does not prove that Obama was born in Kenya.
“Observer”, you are only half-right.
There was ONE purported Kenyan birth certificate that WAS a fraud. It was traced back to a Left-winger that was trying to discredit the eligiblity movement by putting out a document that would later be discredited. THAT one is NOT the one to which I referred.
The Kenyan birth certificate to which I referred was one that a young man had to pay hospital employee to get. It has a footprint. It has the name of the hospital (Coast Hospital). It has the name of the city (Mombassa). It has the name of the doctor, AND his signature. (And, a different researcher has confirmed that said doctor did practice, delivering babies at Coast Hospital, during the time frame of BHO’s birth.)
That birth certificate — the real one — also has something that even the COLB from Hawaii lacked: a raised official seal.
At least one retired Federal agent has written an analysis of the COLB that was displayed by the Obama campaign. The agent, who was trained and experienced at identifying counterfeit money, has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that Obama’s purported “birth certificate” from Hawaii is, indeed, a forgery.
Everything about Obama is a lie. Wanna know why? Click here.
http://tomkovach.us/Columns/Crossbow/100411–HaitiSatanClinton.html
(if you dare…)
Tom, I found at another site that a well known birther, Jim Byrne recently tried to authenticate the Kenyan birth certificate put up by Lucas Smith. It proved to be a phony. It was described on a site called Post and eMail, but then deleted. Seriously, do not put a lot of money on Lucas Daniel Smith or on the Kenyan birth certificate. It does not even purport to be a government birth certificate. It is purely a hospital cert, of the type issued as a souvenier, complete with the footprint.
[quote] A contribution by Jim Byrne, describes how he sent an email to the doctor whose name appeared on the ‘Kenya Birth Certificate’ obtained by Lucas Smith:
I need to know three things:
1. Were you the Chief Administrator (or acting Chief Administrator) of CPGH on Feb. 19th 2009?
2. Do the stamp and signature that appear in the attached document appear to be your stamp and signature?
3. Is the attached CPGH birth certificate representative of what a birth certificate issued by CPGH in 1961 would look like?
The good doctor did not immediately respond but eventually, a short email was received
However, much to my surprise and delight, Dr. Heltan Maganga responded to my email on July 29. His response was not what many of us would have wanted it to be, nor what I suspected it would be.
The following is the message received from Dr. Heltan Maganga’s email address:
From: Heltan Maganga
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2010 4:53 PM
To: Jim Byrne
Subject: Re: Lt. Col. Lakin
The answers to all your questions is a resounding NO.
There you have it, folks! While we may still question whether or not the document in the possession of Lucas Smith really did come from Coast Province General Hospital, we can be reasonably sure that the signature on that document IS NOT that of Dr. Maganga.
Some background: I am a court-accepted expert in the field of computer forensics. I examined the header information for Dr. Maganga’s email response. It was indeed sent from Kenya. It appears that he used a dial-up service out of Nairobi. (Until very recently, high-speed access was limited to expensive satellite connections in much of Kenya, including Mombasa.) Nothing contained in the header was indicative of the email coming from anywhere other than the account I had for Dr. Maganga.) [unquote]
http://nativeborncitizen.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/post-and-email-kenya-birth-certificate-a-forgery/
The bottom line is that the Kenyan birth certificate of Lucas Smith is phony. It is a crude forgery, disowned by the person who supposedly “signed” it.
Despite it all, Byrne is still a birther.
This is the end of the copy from the other site. Everyone, just google Lucas Daniel Smith. Note that he banned Jim Byrne from his own site.
Even if everything written above is true, it still changes nothing.
Why?
Because a candidate has an affirmative duty to prove that he IS qualified, and not an ex-post-facto presumption to the office unless his opposition proves that he is NOT qualified.
Do you understand the difference?
An applicant at the DMV must prove that he IS qualified to drive a car. Only after proving it does he get a driver’s license. It is not a matter of going out and driving a car until one has an accident, and then forcing the accident victim to prove that one does NOT have a driver’s license.
Obama STILL has not proven that he IS qualified. Therefore, he is NOT qualified.
And, if you’re such an expert in examining documents and in computer forensics, then you already KNOW that the purported Certification of Live Birth that was posted on Obama’s campaign site is a FORGERY.
The fact that someone else might’ve posted a forged document does not negate the above. Obama is NOT qualified for the White House, period.
http://tomkovach.us/blog/2009/01/the_obama_oxymoron.html
Still waiting for a military sentry to deny him access.
Sorry, that sentry is busy guarding Lakin, who shared your views, to his detriment. BTW, the entire world, with a few small exceptions, bleives that the US has a President at the present time.
The COLB is not a forgery. It was examined by independent press representatives exercising First Amendment rights. They photographed it at Factcheck.org. Everyone, go and take a look. http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
Look it up at Politifact.org.
Obama did meet his burden of proof. The question came up, and he issued his birth certificate. No one else did.
Please post a link to McCain’s birth certificate.
Well, “Observer”, you did get one fact right.
“… he issued his birth certificate. No one else did.”
For sure, it was not issued by the State of Hawaii.
I’m no fan of McCain, either. To my understanding, he was born at a hospital in Panama at a time when his parents were not legally married (under US law). They had gotten “hitched” at a saloon in Tijuana, but it was not legally sufficient to convey US citizenship to John Jr. while his father served in the Canal Zone. So, BOTH of the Big Two parties put up illegal aliens for candidates.
Alan Keyes for president.
BTW, does anyone here still believe Hollrah when he said “At the time the Constitution was adopted, every citizen of the thirteen colonies was a British subject, or a citizen of some other country.”
That is so ignorant. As said over and over again, the framers were, each and every one of them, UNITED STATES CITIZENS in 1787. The Declaration made them citizens, and even King Geo III recognized in the peace treaty.
Is anyone here going to break the news to Hollrah?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28117439/Sb2937-Testimony-Jgo-02-23-10-Late
“For more than a year, the Department of Health has continued to receive approximately 50 e-mail inquiries a month seeking access to President Barack Obama’s birth certificate in spite of the fact that President Obama has posted a copy of the certificate on his former campaign website. Hawaii is a “closed records” state, meaning that vital records are available on ly to those with a direct and tangible interest as defined by statute; hence they are not subject to disclosure under public records requests.”
So in testimony to a state legislative subcommittee, the official custodian of state birth records reaffirmed that they were still getting requests for Obama’s birth certificate even though it was posted on his website.
So the statement “it was not issued by the State of Hawaii” might stand some correction.
Or not.
Some folks still do not believe Armstrong landed on the Moon.
And some folks would still argue, even if they were hanged with a BRAND-NEW rope!
The COLB that was posted on Obama’s campaign site was proven to be a forgery. Period.
A former Honolulu elections official has released a sworn affidavit that his supervisors told him there is NO birth certificate, and they KNEW it, and they wanted NOTHING done about it.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=254401
Even the governor of Hawaii had to give up his very publicized search for the elusive (read: “non-existent”) document.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=255769
ALL of the factual evidence points to Obama being a non-citizen to this day. (He has never renounced his Indonesian citizenship. He visited Pakistan in 1981, when it was on the banned list for American citizens, but an Indonesian citizen could get in.)
NONE of the factual evidence points to Obama being qualified to live in the White House.
ALL of his deeds since laying occupation to the White House indicate an intense Marxist-Islamist agenda, and NONE of his deeds indicate a love for the United States of America. (He even refused to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem.)
He doesn’t belong where he is. He belongs in prison.
What part of “FACTS” is not clear to you??
Of course, some folks simply swallow whatever the government says. Some folks still think that Bill Clinton did nothing to cover up the cause of the crash of Flight 800.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53996
It would be funny, were it not so tragic: people on the Left are ready to shout to the highest hilltop if a conservative (even phony ones, like both Bushes) violate the Constitution. But, when it’s someone from the Left that shreds the Constitution, they link arms in support and ask for more of the same.
What a weird double-standard.