Following the release of President Barack Obama's birth certificate Wednesday, Mission Viejo dentist and Rancho Santa Margarita resident Orly Taitz says she will continue to ask courts to decide the legitimacy of the president.
Taitz was fined $20,000 by a federal judge in Georgia in 2009 for pressing a lawsuit against Obama's citizenship in that state. After paying the fine, $17,000 of which came from supporters, Taitz will join Monday morning in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena for oral arguments.
A phone message left for Taitz this morning by Mission Viejo Patch was not immediately returned. Various news agencies report she is challenging the birth certificate because Obama's father's race is identified as "African" rather than "negro."
"I do have a census from 1960 and the only options are white, Asian or Negro," Taitz was quoted by City News Service as saying. "I know it's not politically correct today, but in 1961 they did not write the race as African -- they would write the race as Negro."
On a radio talk show Wednesday, Taitz said that in the early 1960s, "They did not use the term 'African.' They wrote either black or white or Asian. The word 'African' was not available to them to put down as a race."
She also said the release of the certificate does not settle the issue of Obama's birth country.
“It’s just a computer image that was made from a microfische copy," she said of the released record. "Just like Watergate tapes... what he's released have to be analyzed."
Both the current governor of Hawaii, a democrat, and former Republican Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle have confirmed the validity of the president's birth certificate.
