North Country man challenges President Obama’s American citizenship

(See the update at the bottom)

Bob Schulz from Queensbury — a self-described tax protester and head of the We the People Foundation — has taken out full page advertisements in the Chicago Tribune this week.

He’s demanding that President-elect Barack Obama produce an original birth certificate to prove that he’s an American citizen.

Schulz told the Glens Falls Post-Star that the ads cost “tens of thousands” of dollars. Here’s the paper’s treatment:

Schulz earlier ran afoul of the federal government by distributing an informational packet detailing how to avoid federal tax withholding on paychecks.

He recently attempted to stop the bailout of Wall Street firms by suing on the grounds that the plan was unconstitutional.

He has also taken on local causes, such as opposing the project to dredge the Hudson River and the ill-fated proposal to create a sewer district in Lake George.

You can view the full ad here. It basically questions whether Obama is “a Natural Born Citizen of the U.S.”

“Are you legally eligible to hold the Office of President?”

Claims about Obama’s citizenship have been thoroughly debunked — he was born in Hawaii — but Schulz’s campaign has drawn a lot of interest.

In addition to local press coverage, he’s been interviewed by Slate, Politico, and had a treatment by the Associated Press.

Here’s our coverage of Mr. Schulz’s battles with the IRS.

Update: “Anonymous” argues that I’m wrong to suggest that Mr. Schulz’s allegations have been thoroughly debunked. (See his comment below.)

Anonymous is simply wrong. The St. Petersburg times and Politifact pursued this question tirelessly and independently.

Here’s what they found:

On June 13, 2008, Obama’s campaign finally released a copy [of his birth certificate]

When the birth certificate arrived from the Obama campaign it confirmed his name as the other documents already showed it.

Still, we took an extra step: We e-mailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real.

“It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,” spokesman Janice Okubo told us.

When conspiracy theories continued to bubble up, about the document being forged, Politifact then asked more questions.

When the official documents were questioned, we went looking for more answers.

We circled back to the Department of Health, had a newsroom colleague bring in her own Hawaii birth certificate to see if it looks the same (it’s identical).

But every answer triggered more questions.

And soon enough, after going to every length possible to confirm the birth certificate’s authenticity, you start asking, what is reasonable here?

Because if this document is forged, then they all are.

If this document is forged, a U.S. senator and his presidential campaign have perpetrated a vast, long-term fraud.

They have done it with conspiring officials at the Hawaii Department of Health, the Cook County (Ill.) Bureau of Vital Statistics, the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois and many other government agencies.

As a journalist — and a citizen — that’s good enough for me.

–Brian Mann