I remind Birthers like paraleaglenm that there is a comment policy posted here that was updated almost exactly two years ago to handle people like him:
Added 2/25/2022:Updated 3/28/2022. I am adding a few additional rules to my blog comment policy:
Since it is indisputable that President Obama is a natural born citizen, was duly elected twice and served two terms any comment claiming otherwise without a citing a specific court case where either candidate Obama or President Obama was ruled ineligible by name will be deleted in it’s entirety. This applies equally to anyone commenting. This question was settled over a decade ago in 1898 and any further expression of ignorance about it is a waste of my readers’ time.
This prohibition also includes dishonest questions about President Obama’s place of birth and birth documentation. Those questions were also settled long ago.
Intentional misspellings of the name of the Democratic party will result in an entire comment being deleted. It is childish and intentionally done by conservatives to demean the party that does not support our enemy. See this article.
Commenters who obviously supported the January 6, 2021 insurrection or support those who participated in the planning and execution of the unsuccessful insurrection from Donald Trump on down the chain are not welcome to comment here. I consider them to be um-American, anti-democratic traitors and not capable of intelligent discussion.
Commenters who violate the rules multiple times will be placed on moderation until they demonstrate to the blog administrator(s) that they understand and will follow the rules.
Trolls may be permanently banned at my discretion. A troll is defined as someone who repeatedly leaves intentionally annoying or offensive comments in order to upset someone, to get attention or cause trouble
I think the rules are pretty clear and are why paraleaglenm joined Rambo Ike in moderation. He violated most of these rules within a few comments.
I should have clamped down earlier on paraleaglenm but since he followed a link over here that Doc C posted and he let me comment there I cut him some slack. He is done though.
Yesterday morning when I opened the RC Radio Blog I received the page shown in the screen shot above. That is the first time in 12 years that I have operated this blog on WordPress.com that anything like this has happened.
Of course, I was surprised to see this. When I followed a link that was provided on the screen for the blog owner, I was told that my blog had been suspended for violation of the terms of service agreement with WordPress.com.
I couldn’t imagine what I had done to deserve the suspension. I had received no warning via email or from any other means at WordPress.com. However, a link was provided to click on and report a problem with the suspension, which I of course did
The thought occurred to be if this had happened to someone like Sharon Rondeau at the Post & Email blog how would she have responded? Of course we all know how she would have responded. She would have immediately blamed other people like the government, Obots, and Joe Biden for trying to shut down her blog. That’s how she rolls! Remember how apoplectic she got at President Obama in 2013 when the Republican Congress caused a government shutdown that threatened to delay her SNAP payment?
Today I received a response from WordPress on my inquiry and was informed that an automated spam detector had flagged my blog. The suspension had been removed!
Yesterday when I couldn’t get to my blog. I was offered the option of downloading a copy of my blog. Of course I did this as the note said that this feature would only be available for a short time. With a full backup in hand I had the option of moving my blog to another hosting platform like Blogger or using the WordPress software to run my own blog on my own domain and hosting account (I have those by the way).
I have considered that option in the past. I had even registered a couple domains that I might use for my blog including rcradioblog.com. However, with the demise of the Birther movement and lack of ambition on my part, I decided not to do that. Anyway, I do have a backup copy of my blog and I will back it up regularly going forward. I will consider this a lesson learned for the future.
By the way, if you are a subscriber and can receive an email but cannot open the article then try refreshing the page or clearing you cache in your browser. I had to do that after my blog was restored.
However, I will admit for the briefest of instance, the thought did cross my mind that my blog had been reported by a disgruntled birther like Rambo or our newest Birther paraleaglenm.
I’m glad to be back, and I hope that what I do here is of some small value to the few readers I have left. I might start writing some articles on general politics, even sports, or other subjects in the future, if anyone would consider that worthwhile
Anyway, thank you to anyone who still reads here, comments, here, or just occasionally visits. I wish you all the best for 2024. It is a very important year and our entire democracy may be at stake. Let that sink in for a minute.
First I would like to extend best New Year’s wishes to all of my readers. I haven’t had much to write about recently but thanks to Donald Trump going Birther again on Nikki Haley I do. Haley is one of the few Republicans left standing in the race for the 2024 presidential nomination.
Recent polls show Haley running second to Trump nationally but the margin is fairly wide. However, some polls have her within single digits of Trump in New Hampshire. So who is Nikki Haley and why is Trump questioning her eligibility?
Nikki Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa in Bamberg, SC in 1972 making her a natural born US citizen. Her parents emigrated from Punjab India to Canada where her father received a PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1969. Her mother was also an educator and had received a law degree in India. Her parents moved to South Carolina after her father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, was offered a position as a professor of biology at Voorhees College, a HBCU in Denmark SC.
Neither of Nimarata’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972. They both later naturalized, her father in 1978 and her mother in 2003. Nimarata married Michael Haley in 1996. It is unclear when she began to use her middle name but she has been Nikki Haley for her entire political career. She served in the South Carolina legislature, two terms as Governor of South Carolina and then just shy of two years as Trump’s Ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2018.
As you would expect the Birther community (the ones who are still around) have questioned Haley’s eligibility since she became a candidate for the Republican nomination last year. Now that Trump has picked up the cause the issue has been in the news since he shared an Instagram post from the far right wing Gateway Pundit on his also far right social media site Truth Social. The Gateway Pundit had repeated a claim that Haley was ineligible to be president made on Twitter by a Paul Ingrassia.
The original source seems to be a post on his Substack by Ingrassia on January 1, 2024 declaring that Haley was not constitutionally eligible to be president (or vice-president):
“The Constitution Absolutely Prohibits Nikki Haley From Being President Or Vice President
Nikki Haley’s flagrant defiance of the Constitution’s textual prerogative, if allowed to continue, will thrust all that remains of the Framers’ now-enervated handiwork into inexorably aimless waters.”
Ingrassia’s Substack bio gives us a clue as to his political leanings: Constitutional Scholar | Author of President Trump’s favorite Substack | @NYYRC Board of Advisors | @CornellLaw ‘22 | @theIACRL Founding Member | Trump 2024. He also bills himself as “President Trump’s go to source for political an social commentary!”
I am not sure how someone less than two years out of law school can be a Constitutional Scholar but as Birther attorneys like Mario Apuzzo and Orly Taitz and commenters at the Post & Email blog have demonstrated anyone with or without a law degree can declare themselves to be one. Ingrassia’s post is very superficial and consists of more opinion than fact. He quotes some of the usual Birth talking points such as Emer de Vattel and John Jay’s letter to Washington about the commander in chief not being a foreigner. (Recall that at the time John Jay wrote this letter the commander in chief was not necessarily the president as the roles had not been defined. Jay’s letter also did not mention parentage.)
Trump’s post was greeted with near universal scorn by the main stream media, e.g.:
Of course Trump’s post was greeted with excitement at Sharon Rondeau’s Birther blog. Rondeau posted her own editorial Has Trump Endorsed the Two-Citizen-Parent, Born-on-the-Soil Definition of “natural born Citizen?” and another one by her frequent guest writer, the mysterious Joseph DeMaio, The Trump nbC Post. The Birthers who espouse what I call the Two Citizen Parent Theory also declare that current Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy are not natural born citizens for similar reasons.
It is not clear if Trump plans to challenge Haley’s eligibility in New Hampshire or elsewhere. In 2016 Trump questioned Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility on different grounds (Cruz was born to US a citizen parent in Canada). Trump blustered about a court challenge but never followed through. Several challenges were filed by voters against Cruz but all failed. I covered some of those at this blog.
In addition to historical and textual analysis, numerous holdings and references in federal (and state) cases for more than a century have clearly indicated that those born in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction (i.e., not born to foreign diplomats or occupying military forces), even to alien parents, are citizens “at birth” or “by birth,” and are “natural born,” as opposed to “naturalized,” U.S. citizens. There is no provision in the Constitution and no controlling American case law to support a contention that the citizenship of one’s parents governs the eligibility of a native born U.S. citizen to be President.
In summary, Haley is a natural born citizen but for many other reasons she is not fit to be president of the United States and doG help us if she were to be elected.
The article is pretty much a rehash of Ingrassia’s original article except in this one he goes down the rabbit hole of questioning whether or not Nikki Haley is a citizen at all and demands Haley provide proof that Haley’s parents were here legally at the time of her birth. Of course even on this point the non-barred law school graduate gets it wrong: the immigration status of Haley’s parents does not matter. She is a US citizen regardless of how they were here. Just to add there is absolutely no evidence they were here illegally. Her parents moved from B. C., Canada when her father was offered a professorship in biology at Voorhees College in South Carolina. They were residents here when she was born.
Ingrassia’s attack on Haley’s parents and background reminds me that with Birthers when you start peeling that onion there is always an rotten racist in the center. Yeah let’s question that dark skinned lady and her parents from that strange land as somehow un-American or worse yet not even a citizen at all. Those of us who saw Birthers pull the same despicable crap with Barack Obama we .have seen this all before.
Ingrassia goes on to provide a terrible analysis of US v Wong Kim Ark. Again it’s the same Birther nonsense that because the majority opinion in WKA didn’t use the phrase “natural bon citizen” in describing Wong then it never ruled that “those” kind of people were natural born citizens. Of course he conveniently forgets to tell us what kind of citizen Wong was or that in the same opinion the court said Wong could not by law be a naturalized citizen and that in the same opinion said that there are two and only two kinds of citizens, natural born and naturalized. Birthers want us to believe that because WKA didn’t tell us that 2+2=4 it must therefore = 5.
Since the Fogbow is barely working I thought I would add a new article as a place to comment on anything of your choice. The highlight today should be Trump’s arraignment in DC in a few hours. Too bad no cameras are allowed. That would be must see TV.
I noticed I haven’t written anything for months so I thought I would check in with any readers I might have left. We were in the path of Hurricane Ian but managed to get through w/o any damage and were in one of the few neighborhoods that never lost power or Internet. I am thankful for that. No the thanks does not go to any imaginary being who randomly spared me but ruined other peoples lives but instead to the engineers and craftsmen who built my house and designed a hurricane resistant electrical distribution system with almost everything installed underground.
I must have started and stopped writing at least five articles about Trump and how crazy the right wing in this country is but every time I started they did something even worse. One article was going to include things right wing nuts pretend to be true that aren’t. I still might finish that one when I get time. There is a long list of things they believe are true that are false so it will take some time.
The news of course has been dominated (at least until Hurricane Ian popped up) with two main stories: The January 6th hearings and revelations about just how much coordination there was between Trump, his minions and some really dangerous groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. I think it is clear how close we actually came to losing our Democracy.
The other big story is Trump’s theft of thousands of government documents many of them which were top secret and classified. Now a Trump appointed moron of a Judge named Aileen “Loose” Cannon has inserted herself and is trying every way she can to prevent the DoJ from doing its job and investigating what was stolen and who had access to it. I think this is the most blatant miscarriage of justice we have seen since Bush v Gore.
Speaking of miscarriage of justice the Supreme Court, which is now packed with conservative Christo-fascist judges who lied their asses off in their confirmation hearings by claiming they would never overturn Roe v Wade have done exactly that and taken away the fundamental right of every woman in America to control their own bodies. They should all be removed from the bench but we know that is not going to happen. Now Chief Justice Roberts and head Christo-fascist Justice Samuel Alito are both whining about people questioning the legitimacy of the Court. In reality it is they who have pissed away any legitimacy this court might of had.
Next this activist and dangerous gang of holier than thou thugs are going to go after voting rights, legitimate elections, affirmative action and birth control. In many ways the Court represents more of a threat to Democracy than Trump. That’s because Trump is never going to be elected again (at least legitimately) and this Court is going to be around a long time.
I am sorry to be such a Debbie Downer but honestly I have never been more pessimistic about our future in my lifetime. However, that does not mean I am giving up. This country is worth saving but we need to be realistic about what we are up against. As someone who battled the lying, racist, Birthers from mid 2008 to the end of the Obama administration I know how deluded and intractable conservatives can be. I have come to realize there never was much of a distinction between Republicans and Birthers. They were largely one and the same. Trump just made it OK for them to bare their racism and hatred.
Please check in with a comment and let us know how you are doing and what your views are on where this country is headed.
Our friend John Woodman has just released an important new book titled How We Fix America: A Course and a Plan It is available in paperback form on Amazon. The book is styled as a course with 13 “lessons” and is over 400 pages long.
I am currently taking the course and I will have more to say when I have completed it. John, as you would expect from him, has put a lot of research and soul searching into this effort. As I have been reading this the thought that occurred to me is How did we let this happen to ourselves? John makes a strong case that America has over the last 40 years or so transformed from from The American Dream Economy that our parents enjoyed to one of Fat Cat Capitalism in which the average American family is forfeiting thousands of dollars every year to enrich a small number of billionaires even more. Mr. Woodman backs up his claims with facts and figures.
John explains how it happened, what is wrong with our politics, and why our politicians are not responsive to our needs.
The good news is that it is not too late. We can fix America. I highly encourage all of you to get you hands on a copy.
Today I updated the blog comment policy. I still encourage free and open discussion. I have been quite tolerant of those who disagree with me and most of my readers over the years but there are limits. Some issues like the place of Barack Obama’s birth and his eligibility to have been President have long been settled. Anyone wishing to question these facts in 2022 is crossing the line into the land of the trolls.
3/28/2022 Update:
I will not longer allow anyone who supported the January 6, 2021 criminal insurrection or supports politicians who participated in the insurrection to comment here. The comment policy has been updated to reflect this change.
I would like to wish everyone a very happy 2021 holiday season and a healthy and prosperous New Year. This has been an interesting year. We saw Birtherism whimper to life last year when Joe Biden named Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2020 and that resulted in 2 or 3 lawsuits being filed that all predictably failed.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 is still around although the vaccines have cut the death rates down from what we were seeing at this time last year. We still see a great deal of misinformation being spread about COVID, mostly by the same folks who brought us Birtherism and Trump. The COVID anti-vaxxers are packing our hospitals and making things terrible for our already overburdened health care workers. Thankfully we have a President who believes in science and listens to experts like Dr. Fauci instead of fringe kooks.
Finally I recently ran across this video and it made me think of my 13 year long interaction with Birthers in various venues like this blog. I am not going to point out any particular commenters or others who may have been subjects of various articles I have written.
The most rewarding thing for me about writing this blog and hosting the radio show is that I have been graced with various guests, commenters and callers who have taken the time to patiently and accurately point out the facts on the subjects we have discussed. I will readily admit my patience has worn thin at times over the years. You are what has made this endeavor enjoyable and worth doing.
I think that we made a difference in beating back myths about Barack Obama’s birth certificate which polluted the internet in 2011 (2008 if you consider the initial birth certificate release) and the ongoing attempt to push the myths about the meaning of the natural born citizen requirement in the US Constitution. In particular, the work of people like bloggers John Woodman, Doctor Conspiracy, NBC, Patrick McKinion and others. There were Justin, Brian, and Foggy who started Politijab, which became the Fogbow with its cadre of wonderful attorneys who explained the Birther cases and the shortcomings to us. I also acknowledge the many folks who battled in comment sections of articles and blog posts who are too numerous to list.
It has been my pleasure to meet many of these people either in person, via email, or on the phone. They will have my unending gratitude for giving their time, energy and in some cases money to a cause for which they had nothing to gain other than getting out the truth and preventing unchallenged falsehoods from festering and growing.
We learned a few days ago that Birther attorney Mario Apuzzo had passed over the weekend from complications associated with COVID-19. Apuzzo was 65 years old and had been hospitalized with COVID and pneumonia.
Apuzzo filed one of the early Birther lawsuits against then President Barack Obama on behalf a handful of plaintiffs as Obama was about to be inaugurated as the first black president in 2009. The lawsuit, Kerchner v Obama, was of course dismissed at the district court level and failed on appeal to the 3rd Circuit and in the Supreme Court.
You can read Mario Apuzzo’s obituary here. Apparently he was quite active in his local Italian American community.
Apuzzo was the second or third attorney (Orly Taitz may have been the second but Orly was such a copycat it is difficult to tell) to use what was later described as the “two citizen parent” theory for the definition of the term natural-born citizen as used in article II of the US Constitution. New Jersey attorney Leo Donofrio had included this argument in a lawsuit filed in New Jersey about the time of the November 2008 election.
Birther blogs like the Post & Email are praising Apuzzo as an “expert Constitutional attorney”. Let’s get that straight. Apuzzo was no expert on the Constitution. He tried to argue on his blog, in comment streams, and in actual cases his theory that to be eligible to be president one had to have two US citizen parents. He lost every case in which in tried to make this argument.
Apuzzo never wrote or published a single article in a reputable, vetted, law journal. The overwhelming majority of real constitutional experts disagreed with him. In short, he pushed a crackpot theory not accepted by real experts. His appeal in the dismissed Kerchner v Obama case in the Third Circuit was ruled to be frivolous. It was only after Apuzzo groveled before the court in a response to the OSC that monetary sanctions were waived. The ruling that the appeal was frivolous stood.
We learned a few days ago that Birther attorney Mario Apuzzo had passed over the weekend from complications associated with COVID-19. Apuzzo was 65 years old and had been hospitalized with COVID and pneumonia.
RC Radio Blog 
RC Radio Blog Comment Policy
I remind Birthers like paraleaglenm that there is a comment policy posted here that was updated almost exactly two years ago to handle people like him:
I think the rules are pretty clear and are why paraleaglenm joined Rambo Ike in moderation. He violated most of these rules within a few comments.
I should have clamped down earlier on paraleaglenm but since he followed a link over here that Doc C posted and he let me comment there I cut him some slack. He is done though.