Sunshine Week, Except in Hawaii
Originally published as: Hawaii considering law to ignore Obama ‘birthers’
Reuters – President Barack Obama delivers remarks on health insurance reform at Walter F. Ehrnfelt Recreation and …
by Mark Niesse, Associated Press Writer
Wed Mar 17, 2010
HONOLULU – Birthers beware: Hawaii may start ignoring your repeated requests for proof that President Barack Obama was born here.
As the state continues to receive e-mails seeking Obama’s birth certificate, the state House Judiciary Committee heard a bill Tuesday permitting government officials to ignore people who won’t give up.
“Sometimes we may be dealing with a cohort of people who believe lack of evidence is evidence of a conspiracy,” said Lorrin Kim, chief of the Hawaii Department of Health’s Office of Planning, Policy and Program Development.
So-called “birthers” claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States, and therefore doesn’t meet a constitutional requirement for being president.
Hawaii Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino issued statements last year and in October 2008 saying that she’s seen vital records that prove Obama is a natural-born American citizen.
To Make Informed Decisions, Public Must Have Access
by Jack Greiner, Esquire
Hat tip: Sunshine Week
3/12/2010
As a young lawyer, I worked for a little while on some of the litigation that grew out of the collapse of Home State Savings Bank (and much of the rest of Ohio’s saving and loan industry) in the mid-1980s. That’s not much of a surprise, since virtually every firm in town was involved in one way or the other. But it was an exciting case to be part of. I remember learning so much from some of the best lawyers in town. And I still recall Marvin Warner’s criminal sentencing.
Warner had been the head of Home State, and by the time the dust settled, he was about as popular as Old Man Potter from “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Warner was convicted on a number of charges related to the debacle. When he came before Judge Robert Ruehlman for the announcement of his sentence, he got a taste of what the local folks thought of him. Among other pronouncements, Judge Ruehlman told Warner, who had owned a substantial horse farm, that “[w]hen I get through with you, the only horse you will be riding is one of those horses in front of the K-mart on the little merry-go-round.”
