Guilty verdict in Obama trial: more questions than answers

May 19, 2:14 AMConservative ExaminerAnthony G. Martin

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    Dr. James Manning's now-famous trial of Barack Obama in Harlem, New York has ended.  The jury found Obama and Columbia University guilty on all charges.

The trial, however, unveils many more questions than it provides answers.

(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais).

But first, a few observations are in order about the nature of this event.

Obviously the event was a 'public' rather than a 'court' trial.  No court sanctioned it.  The legality of public trials apart from court sanction has not been established.  While the Constitution does, indeed, maintain that the ultimate power of government rests with 'we, the people,' and while a case can be made that under the 10th amendment the people, acting under the auspices of local and state authorities, can engage in certain acts of self-governance apart from the sanction and control of the federal government, it has not been established that any local entity in Harlem granted state or local legal status to the trial.

In that sense the trial and the verdict have no binding legal authority.

However, should a legal authority, a court, a law enforcement agency, an Attorney-General either at the state or national level, decide that the evidence presented at the Manning trial is overwhelming enough to launch a full investigation, then ultimately the results of the trial could carry the full weight of legal authority.

Dr. Manning has stated that he intends to present the evidence and the verdict to U.S. Attorney-General Eric Holder.  At that point the ball will be in the 'court' of the Department of Justice.  If no action is taken on the verdict, then there is not much further that can be done.

But if action is taken and an official investigation ensues, then perhaps the goal of this event will have been met.  The problem is that under the present circumstances it is next to impossible for that to happen.  Holder is Obama's choice and Congress is held in the grip of Obama's Party.  End of story.

Serious, unanswered questions remain, however--questions that the trial did an excellent job of bringing to the surface.

These questions are as follows:

Why didn't Barack Obama have a Social Security Number issued in his name when he was first employed as a 14-year-old in Hawaii?  Why was there such a long delay after his first job before an application was made for a Social Security Number?  And why was he given a Connecticut Social Security Number previously used by a man born in the late 1800s, given that Obama never lived in Connecticut to begin with?

The first instance of Obama's use of the Connecticut number was when he started to work as a Community Organizer in Chicago--a very long way from Connecticut.

Further, why was Obama given a degree from Columbia University when no one in Harlem ever remembers him being there, and although witnesses have testified that he was never a student on campus?  And the address given by Obama as the one that he used while a student in Harlem does not exist.

But perhaps the most telling question of all is, why did Obama use a Kenyan passport to travel to Pakistan in 1981?  Wouldn't a U.S. citizen normally be given an American passport?  It seems to be  standard procedure--and the law--that passports are given only to citizens of the country in which they reside.

And what has the CIA got to do with all of this mess?

The fact is we may never know for sure unless somebody in authority in the government decides to investigate and discover the answers.

But one thing is for sure--Obama is an enigma, a shadow, a persona created out of the murky circumstances of his past, which is being carefully hidden.  Why would it even need to be hidden?

These questions are disturbing to anyone who takes our Constitution and our way of life seriously.  Our form of government, as delineated in the Constitution, is dependent upon the honesty and transparency of those who hold public office.  And if a fraud is elected, a charlatan, a person who presents himself as something he is not, then the entire American system of government is in grave danger.

Better to err on the side of utmost caution than to glibly dismiss all of these questions as 'mere coincidences.'  Coincidences do happen, no doubt, but this many and this often--all revolving around one man?

The odds are that the country is in grave danger.

For commentary on the issues of the day, visit my blog at The Liberty Sphere.

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A deep hole on the moon that could open into a vast underground tunnel has been found for the first time. The discovery strengthens evidence for subsurface, lava-carved channels that could shield future human colonists from space radiation and other hazards.

The moon seems to possess long, winding tunnels called lava tubes that are similar to structures seen on Earth. They are created when the top of a stream of molten rock solidifies and the lava inside drains away, leaving a hollow tube of rock.

Their existence on the moon is hinted at based on observations of sinuous rilles – long, winding depressions carved into the lunar surface by the flow of lava. Some sections of the rilles have collapsed, suggesting that hollow lava tubes hide beneath at least some of the rilles.

But until now, no one has found an opening into what appears to be an intact tube. "There's sort of a chicken-and-egg problem," says Carolyn van der Bogert of the University of Münster in Germany. "If it's intact, you can't see it."

Finding a hole in a rille could suggest that an intact tube lies beneath. So a group led by Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency searched for these "skylights" in images taken by Japan's Kaguya spacecraft, which orbited the moon for almost two years before ending its mission in June.

Deep cave

The team found the first candidate skylight in a volcanic area on the moon's near side called Marius Hills. "This is the first time that anybody's actually identified a skylight in a possible lava tube" on the moon, van der Bogert, who helped analyse the feature, told New Scientist.

The hole measures 65 metres across, and based on images taken at a variety of sun angles, the the hole is thought to extend down at least 80 metres. It sits in the middle of a rille, suggesting the hole leads into a lava tube as wide as 370 metres across.

It is not clear exactly how the hole formed. A meteorite impact, moonquakes, or pressure created by gravitational tugs from the Earth could be to blame. Alternatively, part of the lava tube's ceiling could have been pulled off as lava in the tube drained away billions of years ago.

Radiation shield

Finding such an opening could be a boon for possible human exploration of the moon (see What NASA's return to the moon may look like).

Since the tubes may be hundreds of metres wide, they could provide plenty of space for an underground lunar outpost. The tubes' ceilings could protect astronauts from space radiation, meteoroid impacts and wild temperature fluctuations (see Can high-tech cavemen live on the moon?).

"I think it's really exciting," says Penny Boston of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. "Basalt is an extremely good material for radiation protection. It's free real estate ready to be exploited and modified for human use."

Blocked passage?

But even if astronauts were to rappel into the hole, they might not be able to travel far into the tube it appears to lead into. "I would bet a lot of money that there's a tube there, but I would not bet nearly so much that we could gain access to the tube," says Ray Hawke of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who has also hunted for lunar lava tubes.

Rubble or solidified lava might block up the tube. "It could be closed up and inaccessible," Hawke told New Scientist.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which should be able to snap images of the area that are at least 10 times as sharp, could help reveal more about the hole. And more lava tube openings may be found.

The Kaguya team is still combing over images of other areas in search of additional skylights. And Hawke says a proposal is in the works to use LRO's main camera to snap oblique shots of the lunar surface. This could help reveal cave entrances that are not visible in a bird's-eye view.

Journal reference: Geophysical Research Letters (in press)

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