Oh, this chit ain't going to go away!
Fox and the eligibility facts
April 27, 2010
© 2010
"We report, we decide."
That could be the new marketing slogan at the Fox News Channel when it comes to radioactive issues like the eligibility of Barack Obama to serve as president.
Take this so-called "news story" post on FoxNews.com last Friday. It demonstrates that Fox is not the "alternative" news network so many believe it to be. Often, it's just the same old echo chamber.
The case of Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, an Army doctor and Bronze Star recipient who defied orders to deploy to Afghanistan unless Barack Obama demonstrates he is constitutionally eligible for office as a "natural born citizen," is derided before it ever begins.
Lakin is dismissed as a "birther" in the headline. The story goes on to define that term as those "who believe the president is not a natural-born citizen," even though the officer has made no such assertion.
Once again, dropping the old-fashioned press notion of "innocent until proven guilty," Fox joins the rest of the Big Media in assuming him guilty unless, presumably by some miracle, technicality or quirk of the military justice system, he is found innocent.
Worse, in this story about Lakin Fox's unnamed reporter never bothers to talk with him or his attorney.
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But, it gets worse.
Look at the factual errors!
"In 2008 the White House posted a copy of Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate online, and announcements of his birth have been found in Honolulu newspapers dated August 4, 1961," the story alleges.
The White House posted Obama's birth certificate online in 2008? Would that have been President Bush who did that?
I'm afraid that never happened. In 2008, the Obama campaign posted a document online, but it was certainly not his birth certificate, which would have revealed details of his birth such as the hospital in which it took place and the name of the attending physician. That document was a "certification of live birth," a digital document printed a few years ago and one easily obtained by people not necessarily born in Hawaii. By the way, that digital document has never even been confirmed by the state of Hawaii as an authentic, state-issued certification of live birth.
Furthermore, those newspaper announcements, published right here in WND, are as meaningless as a certification of live birth, given that one of those documents, if indeed generated by the state of Hawaii in 1961, which I don't doubt, would have automatically triggered the publication of those announcements.
"But neither of these have stopped skeptics from charging that Obama, the son of a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, was born either in Kenya or Indonesia," the Fox smear continues.
Having actually interviewed Lakin myself, I have not heard him suggest Obama was born in either Kenya or Indonesia. What I hear him saying, and I emphatically agree, is that Obama has not proven he is a natural born citizen. No persuasive documented evidence has been put forward to make that case.
The story goes on to asset "military experts called Lakin's effort a tragedy and waste." One wonders how many military experts Fox interviewed. According to Fox there is less than nothing to this story to begin with. It's unlikely the network searched very hard for a military expert who would disagree with the premise of the story – and, in fact, all of Fox's coverage of this issue and all of its on-air commentary, as well!
Fox won't entertain a "fair and balanced" discussion of this issue. Period. End of story. The last network anchor who did so was fired by CNN, after about 30 years on the job. That, of course, had a "chilling effect" on the rest of the establishment press.
Next Fox turns to Phillip D. Cave, a Washington attorney and director of the National Institute of Military Justice, for his opinion.
"He is likely to lose everything and accomplish nothing," concluded Cave. "No military judge will say that (obtaining documents) of the president is necessary to prove the charges."
I don't know how familiar Cave is with the case. But if he's that knowledgeable about how every military judge in the nation is going to decide before a trial is even set and before any evidence is heard, it seems to me the military could save a lot of money by just running all legal matters by Cave for review and decision. Why bother with any messy trials – just send it to Cave.
Cave added that the validity of Lakin's orders, under military law, does not depend on the president but on the chain of command. Apparently this military expert doesn't understand that the chain of command begins with the president – the commander in chief.
It's simply not true that all military law experts agree. Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely says he thinks Lakin has a point. Vallely, by the way, is a former Fox News military analyst. Did the network lose his number?
Read the rest of the Fox report if you have the stomach for it.
But the point is this: Why does the "fair and balanced" network speak with one, single, solitary voice on the eligibility issue? Why is it that not one debate has ever been conducted on any Fox show on this issue? Why is it that when, according to the latest CBS/New York Times poll, at least 42 percent of the American people don't even think Obama was born in the U.S., every single media outlet treats those folks like they are from another planet? And since when is it a matter of opinion any way? Why should we have to guess whether Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president after more than a year in office? Why can't we see some hard evidence? And why is everyone who asks for it, including courageous military officers, crazy?
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=146013
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