Terry Lakin

Greeley native and former Army doctor Terry Lakin made a splash last year when he said he would refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan until he was presented convincing evidence, including the alleged missing long-form birth certificate, demonstrating that Obama was born in Hawaii. Lakin was the highest ranking member of the active-duty military to subscribe to the so-called birther conspiracy, which holds that the birth records of the president are illegitimate or have been falsified.

Shortly after he declared his intentions to the press, Lakin was met at the Pentagon clinic where he worked by officers who read him his rights and revoked his access to the building. Military investigators also reportedly seized his computer. Lakin was later court martialed, dismissed from the service without pay or benefits and sentenced to six months at the Leavenworth brig.

Lakin has a child and wife who visit him in prison. The Lakin Fund posts a diary Lakin writes of his life in Leavenworth and his continuing belief that Obama has been less than forthright about his citizenship.

Commentators like Colorado conservative talk radio host Peter Boyles see Lakin as an American hero in search of the truth. Others see his story as a contemporary American tragedy, where a military medal winner has thrown away a distinguished career, hypnotized by the anti-Obama theories that have cropped up and been repeated endlessly on the right since Obama took office, including that the president is a closet Muslim and that he was born in Kenya.

In recent weeks, birther speculation has flared again, fueled by the proto-presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who has rehashed the arguments at high-profile media outlets.

Obama said media coverage of birtherism generated by Trump and apparently irresistible to political reporters spurred him to request his birth certificate this month and to post it online. He said the nation faced real challenges but was being distracted by “sideshows and carnival barkers.”

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he said. “We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do.”

Few, including the president, believe the release of the certificate will end the debate, especially among true believers like Lakin who have invested so much in the theory.

“I’m hearing that there are some anomalies on this birth certificate,” Ciavolino said today. “I’m waiting for our people to weigh in and then we’ll post something on the site.

“The main thing is, even if this birth certificate is legitimate, it doesn’t address the question about whether [Obama] is a natural-born citizen of the United States. This is about the Constitution. The Constitutional question has never been addressed by the courts.”

Although the term “natural born citizen” is not specifically defined in the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution states that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen.

Ciavolino points to the views expressed by Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama for the Illinois Senate and who argues that some of the Founding Fathers thought the term “natural-born” meant that two parents would have had to be citizens. Keyes will not be satisfied, he said, until the matter is decided in court.

“You go to court and present the evidence. There is an issue of law as well as fact…. You present the evidence, then a determination can be made…The American people want to see the Constitution respected, want them to go through the steps required and look at all the evidence and all the arguments and come to an authoritative judgment, not one that’s all piecemeal, where judges say it’s been Twittered about or politicians declaim or celebrity figures like Trump come out. That is not suitable.”

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The event, to be held in Miami from Sept. 16 to 18, offers attendees a choice between “the world of standards and morality, self-government and accountability to God or the world of tyranny and ever-changing moral codes enforced by government.” The 15 speakers include a who’s who of the “birther” movement, and many have ties to the conservative website WorldNetDaily, which is the event’s sponsor. That site’s managing editor and a conference speaker, David Kupelian, penned the piece, “Why I care about Obama eligibility issue.”

Kupelian’s boss, WND founder Farah, is also outspoken in his belief that Obama might not have been born in the United States. Farah has been instrumental in plugging Corsi’s book, Obama Nation, which questions the legality of an Obama presidency.

Other Farah employees who are speaking: Floyd Brown, who says there’s no proof Obama was born in the the country, and Aaron Klein, who has written a book doubting Obama’s legitimacy. Also invited to address the confab is Gary DeMar, president of American Vision, a small religious right outfit who has doubts about Obama’s legitimacy.

“Whether Barack Obama was born in the United States is important, but even more important is for him to demonstrate his constitutional loyalty to a nation built on Christian principles,” DeMar wrote in 2009.

Keyes, the perennial Senate and presidential candidate, refuses to refer to Obama as “president” and has filed suit to gain access to Obama’s birth certificate.

Also speaking alongside Bachmann is former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), who shares similar views with birthers, having once said, “Send Obama back to Kenya.”

Only one speaker — Ann Coulter — has the distinction of taking a firm public stance against “birtherism.” She called the movement’s proponents “cranks,” yet she’ll be sharing the stage in Florida with a lineup that includes a majority of so-called “cranks.”

As will Bachmann, whom Farah described Sunday as “one of the leaders in calling for a repeal of Obamacare.”

“She’s a rock star, a principled, liberty-loving woman of conviction,” he wrote. “It will be a treat to see her and hear her and interact with her in Miami.”

The Aliso Viejo dentist and attorney was sanctioned by one court, accused of suborning perjury in another, and saw all her lawsuits dismissed without going to trial. Taitz has responded that the judges are part of a Soviet-styled conspiracy to protect Obama.

I just received a call from Orly Taitz, my attorney in the case seeking proof of Obama’s eligibility for the Office of President of the United States. Judge Carter has released a statement declaring that the dates he set for the hearing and trial on the eligibility issue are confirmed, and it will move forward as scheduled. Apparently he was not swayed by the Obama lawyer’s arguments.

Background on the trial right here. And here’s an explanation of what is actually happening–Taitz, of course, is lying, and a decision to dismiss could come at any time.

For starters, less than half of the film deals with the conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth. Most of the footage is taken from cable news coverage of the president’s election and first months in office. At the height of its sloppiness, the producers use, in its entirety, a video that Media Matters put together to mock Fox News coverage of the president’s first 100 days. You can spot the rip-off because the blue bars and white text that Media Matters mark the 100 days with are still on the screen. Where the liberal group meant to mock the hyperbolic rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the network’s line-up, WND treats this like pages from the Gospels.

Then there’s the coverage of the “birther” conspiracies, which are pretty slapdash and depend on interviews with only three people: Alan Keyes, Jerome Corsi, and Janet Porter. (The latter two are WND writers.) Orly Taitz, whose name has been used to promote the film, only appears in ambient audio clips and in the already well-watched footage of her angrily demanding to Chief Justice John Roberts that the Supreme Court look at her latest bungled legal filing.

Should the poor quality of the film be a surprise? Probably not, but what does it say that WND is charging $17.99 for its product? For that price, you could grab a Blu-Ray copy of “Slumdog Millionaire.” Of course, the 2008 Oscar-winner doesn’t include a shot like this:

Part one of the film is here:

We’ve been working kind of hard to figure out what’s going on amongst the places. Going to the Federal Election Commission, that does nothing to certify or validate a candidate’s legitimacy either as a citizen, as a person in good standing, of a certain age, qualification for the Congress or the Senate, or president of the United States. I think a lot of people would be surprised at that. They leave it up to the states. The states — it turns out, at least the state of Illinois, doesn’t require proof of citizenship, proof of age, proof of residency. I mean, it’s extraordinary the degree to which our political system relies on the so-called honor system.

Of course, Dobbs could clear this up with a phone call to Janice Okubo of the Hawaii Department of Health, who told me yesterday that the short-form birth certificate released to the press one year ago verifies what the state has in its records; that the president was born in Honolulu in 1961.

Dobbs wasn’t entirely won over by Keyes and Taitz, but he repeatedly asked leading questions about what’s missing from the the short-form certificate of live birth. “It doesn’t have a doctor’s name on it,” said Dobbs. “It has nothing on it.” Later, he referred again to the long-form version of Obama’s birth certificate “which is purportedly on file somewhere in Hawaii, but not made available to the press or anyone else. You produce the signature, the doctor, the birth date, so forth, the witnesses, which normally accompany any birth certificate, and produce it from the hospital record, and we’re done.”

Here’s the audio:

Click To Play

Notice that Keyes didn’t get a question about the birth certificate –it was the first thing that came to mind when he was asked what he would say if he had 30 seconds to speak to the president.

Keyes, whose already-waning credibility was demolished in his 2008 third party run for president, is trying to make some kind of a comeback as a Tea Party speaker. He appeared at a pre-tax day Tea Party in Pittsburgh, April 15 events in Washington and Hazelton, P.A., and a weekend Tea Party in Indianapolis. Not too shabby for a conspiracy theorist. The man can give a pretty good stemwinder, even if most of the content is gibberish.

I very much appreciate the fact that Chairman Steele is now finally starting to reach out to the true grassroots side of the free-market movement in America. Unfortunately, it appears that he has only just decided to reach out after realizing how big the movement has gotten and how much media is now involved.

That said, we’re still excited to know that Chairman Steele will be in Chicago and we hope, after knowing that he’ll be in the city, that he’ll stop by and mingle with the Americans who will be rallying on April 15th. This will also present a fantastic time for Chairman Steele to LISTEN to what we have to say and perhaps gather some thoughts on what the RNC needs to be doing moving forward.

With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steele that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around.

That’s pretty harsh, though Odom’s followers on Twitter seem to like the move. In the Tea Party cosmos, Rick Santelli > Alan Keyes > anybody else > Michael Steele.

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Keyes has been a controversial figure for years, before and after his disastrous 2004 Senate bid against Barack Obama. In the last few months, he’s returned as a plaintiff in lawsuits alleging that Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States.

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It’s classic Keyes: rambling, patronizing, fact-less (Obama hasn’t spent “more than $1 million” combating these kinds of frivolous lawsuits), and embarrassing to everyone but him.

Toward the end, Molotov asks Keyes: “Is there a line at which people take to the streets?” If Molotov wants to riot in the streets and inform revellers that he wants to yank the new president out of office, that’s his right. I’d suggest downtown D.C. on January 20. They’d love to hear it!