KUHNER'S ARTICLE IN THE WASHINGTON TIMES: America may be facing a constitutional crisis. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., has made a startling declaration: President Obama's birth certificate is fraudulent. If true — and I stress if — then this scandal dwarfs Watergate. In fact, it would be the greatest political scandal in U.S. history. Recently, Sheriff Arpaio held a news conference. He said that his team of independent investigators — composed of former law enforcement officials and reporters — have for months meticulously examined the computer-generated birth certificate that Mr. Obama revealed to the public in April 2011. Their stunning conclusion: The document is a forgery. His chief investigator, Mike Zullo, says that the document is full of errors and omissions. In particular, Mr. Zullo claims that numeric sections are not filled out that otherwise would have been in birth certificates from Hawaii during that time. But other sections, such as those dealing with Mr. Obama's race and his father's work and field of study, are completed. Hence, Sheriff Arpaio's investigative posse definitively believes the birth certificate is not authentic, but was manufactured to provide Mr. Obama with a veneer of constitutional legitimacy. Sheriff Arpaio's findings threaten to plunge America into an unprecedented crisis. For if — and again, I emphasize if — he is correct, then Mr. Obama has perpetrated the most elaborate hoax in U.S. history. A fraudulent birth certificate would mean that Mr. Obama is ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief. His presidency would therefore be legally and constitutionally illegitimate. The consequences would shake the country to its very foundations. It would mean that he should be immediately removed from office — impeached. Moreover, every law and executive order passed under his administration — Obamacare, the economic stimulus, the Dodd-Frank financial reform, the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, the granting of amnesty to nearly one million illegal immigrants, the National Defense Reauthorization Act, the drone assassination list — would be null and void. The logic is inexorable: Should the president's legal authority be deemed invalid, then everything resulting from it is also baseless. The Obama presidency would be overturned. Mr. Obama himself would be facing criminal charges — and possible jail time — for committing fraud. Yet, the birth certificate issue would repeal more than the Obama administration. It would bring down the entire liberal regime. The ruling elites — the establishment media, the Hollywood left, the federal bureaucracy, the myriad regulatory agencies, the public sector unions, big banks and the financial sector — have refused to seriously examine Mr. Obama's background. In fact, they have repeatedly propped him up. He defends the liberal corporatist status quo, constantly expanding government power. This is why they are determined to destroy anyone who seriously challenges Mr. Obama's constitutional authority. To simply inquire into the status of his birth risks being called a "birther" — a kook and conspiracy theorist akin to Holocaust deniers. Having coddled and protected him, the ruling class could not survive if Mr. Obama was exposed as a slick con man. Their moral and intellectual legitimacy would be discredited as well. The topic has become toxic. Even Fox News refuses to touch it. Many leading conservative radio talk-show hosts ignore it. The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal mock so-called "birthers." Meanwhile, the liberal media continues to vilify Sheriff Arpaio. He is being accused of racial profiling, committing civil rights abuses and having failed to effectively prosecute sex crimes. Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute. Read more: http://times247.com/articles/82kuhner-arpaio-probe-could-be-bigger-than-watergate6#ixzz21J42T4rf

• published: 21 Jul 2012
• views: 1612