"1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a 'lawyer.' He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges that he lied on his bar application.[SNIP]
"2 Michelle Obama 'voluntarily surrendered' her law license in 1993.
"3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady -- who don't actually have licenses to practice law. Facts."
Taking Poetic License
Ok, what assertions do we have so far? Obama lied on his bar application, and surrendered his law license to escape charges on the matter. His wife "voluntarily surrendered" her license, too -- suggesting something sinister afoot. And just in case you don't get the subtext, they add "the first black President," which seems to have exactly nothing to do with the "facts" of the matter, except to someone who thinks that "black" adds something. Don't need to spell this out for you, I hope.
The Illinois lawyer, whoever that is, and whether or not it is a lawyer (though probably not -- as lawyers don't tend to send around anonymous, poorly-written missives to strangers) claims to have checked out these claims. And whoever is really behind this knows that many of us will just pass this along without actually checking it out ourselves, or even bothering to go to that link.
In fact, Snopes, which is credible and really did check this out, concludes:
"Such claims are based on misreadings of information about license status and erroneous interpretations and assumptions about such information."
Snopes goes on to offer, in considerable detail, how and why the anonymous email is wrong. Just one example: Michelle Obama does have a license to practice law in Illinois. It is on inactive status because she has no reason to use it. The email falsely claimed that she was legal counsel for the University of Chicago Hospitals, and therefore should have an active license. But she was not legal counsel, and none of her jobs with the hospitals required her to have a law license.
Variations on this email have been circulating since 2008. What's much more interesting to me than the allegations is who is behind them -- because someone is, and that person or entity goes to the trouble of changing their own claims regarding their own identity. In an earlier version, featured on Snopes, the person making these claims is not a lawyer but rather a nurse, and both have very similar writing styles.
Never mind. Just step back and think: How likely is it that Obama was disciplined for lying on his bar application, and this has never made it into either the news or been raised by his opponents?
Birther Business
The claims about Obama being born abroad are as bad, if not worse.
A new twist to this has recently surfaced, and I'm a little shamefaced to even be drawing your attention to it, but here it is:
"Breitbart.com, founded by the late attack specialist Andrew Breitbart, has obtained a 1991 brochure from a literary agent who was then pitching a proposed book from a little-known Barack Obama. The brochure actually states that Obama was 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.'"
That's certainly a kind of a "WHOA" moment, since there it is, on the page. Still, in a remarkably restrained and responsible display, the editor of the site notes that they do not necessarily believe that Obama was really born abroad:
"Andrew Breitbart was never a 'Birther,' and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of 'Birtherism.' In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961."It is evidence -- not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times."
And that's fair game. We should be vigilant about politicians who say different things at different times.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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