Why eligibility story is still alive: Public awareness triggered by Farah's billboard campaign

Source: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=105168

July 27, 2009

WASHINGTON – How did a supposedly "bogus" story questioning Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency get to the top of the news budgets of every major media outlet in the country?

It didn't happen by accident.

Three months ago, Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily, the largest independent news source on the Internet, hatched a plan to do just that – create public awareness and media curiosity.

Frustrated by the lack of coverage of what he considered to be an issue of extraordinary importance, Farah launched a national billboard campaign asking the question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

The campaign raised nearly $100,000 in its first week and resulted in billboards springing up around the country. Even more important to the plan was the controversy it engendered.

Three major outdoor advertising companies rejected the ad for reasons of suitability.

"The plan was to create some buzz – to get people talking about a grave constitutional issue," he explained. "Before that campaign began, this really was a dead story, other than in WND. Now, every major media outlet is covering it – if only in covering the tracks of their previous ineptitude and negligence."

The facts are simple, says Farah. No controlling legal authority in America ever checked to see if Obama was a "natural born citizen" as the Constitution requires. They took at face value Obama's story as told in his autobiography and accepted a document he released that could never prove his eligibility.

Farah says the release of Obama's long-form birth certificate is vitally necessary even to begin proper vetting as to his constitutional qualifications.

While the media is now on to the story, Farah says, they seem to be more interested in killing it than exploring. CNN President Jon Klein even went so far as to issue a memo to his news staff declaring it dead because the state of Hawaii had supposedly destroyed original long-forth birth certificates in 2001.

"Where is the curiosity among my media colleagues?" Farah asked. "If this were Watergate, would they be calling the story dead because of the 18-and-a-half-minute gap in the recording? This is incredible!"

As WND has reported, Obama has also failed to release his school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records and his files from his years as an Illinois state legislator.

WND has produced hundreds of stories reporting on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen" and other issues. The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "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."

Some of the challenges question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Additionally, questions have been raised about Obama's move to Indonesia as a child and the passort he used to travel to Pakistan as a young man.

Complicating the situation is Obama's decision to spend sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid releasing a state birth certificate and other documentation, such as educational records, that would put to rest the questions.

The billboards, also, have remained a key to raising the question.



The billboard campaign follows an ongoing petition campaign launched several months ago by WND Editor and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah.

Send a contribution to support the national billboard campaign that asks a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

If you are a member of the media who would like to interview Farah about this story, e-mail press@wnd.com.