Orly Taitz, along with perennial Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes, filed a lawsuit contending that California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger shouldn’t be allowed to certify the presidential election results for electors until Obama or his supporters provide proof of his natural-born citizenship in the United States.

Conservative bloggers maintained during the presidential election that Obama was born in Kenya and had citizenship in other countries, thus disqualifying him from the presidency. This despite the fact that several groups, such as FactCheck.org and Snopes.com, investigated the claims and determined that Obama did have a valid birth certificate from Hawaii. FactCheck even found a birth announcement for baby Barack Obama in a 1961 Honolulu newspaper.

Tatiz, however, remains undaunted.

“He should have never been on the ballot because there has never been proof of his eligibility,” she said.

Taitz went on to say that even if she were to see the birth certificate, she would not be convinced.

“Once we have the birth certificate with the name of the hospital, we can then go to that hospital to see his birth records,” she said. “There should be a huge file there.”

This is not the first time the conspiracy theory surrounding Obama’s citizenship has been given prominent play on Mickelson’s afternoon program. On Oct. 17, he interviewed Phillip Berg, who brought a similar lawsuit alleging that Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery and that the senator was in fact born in Kenya.

That suit was thrown out by a federal judge, saying Berg lacked standing to bring the case.

“I do not have an opinion on this subject,” Mickelson said, adding: “But what happens if their argument is true? What happens if they have a good case and Obama can’t demostrate that he’s a natural born citizen? Then what? Can you imagine what would happen in our culture if it happens and this is true and gets pushed to that point?”

The Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Guard Bureau, Washington, D.C., have ordered the 1133rd and 1168th Transportation Companies to federal active duty. The mobilization is part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Global War on Terrorism. The Soldiers will leave Iowa and report to Fort Bliss, Texas for additional preparation and training before departing for the Central Command theater of operation.

To honor the guardsmen, political dignitaries joined family and friends at the sendoff ceremonies in Audubon, Iowa City, Mason City, Perry and Marshalltown.

Audubon

Several hundred people crowded in to the Audubon High School to say goodbye to 65 members in Detachment 2 of the 1168th Transportation Company. They were joined by Gov. Chet Culver and U.S. Rep. Steve King, D-Iowa, who presided over the ceremony, the Caroll Daily-Times Herald reported.

“I’m here with a simple message,” Culver, a surprise guest, told the soldiers standing at attention in six ranks before him. “To thank the members of the Guard for your service to our country, to our state, and to join every Iowan in honoring you as you are deployed.”

“But as you depart, I want you to always remember you are not alone. We will always be here for you, and we will always be grateful for your service to the country that we love. Because our service members are Iowa’s heroes…”

King remarked that he was impressed by Thursday’s show of community support.

“I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when we came over the hill here today at Audubon,” he said, referring to the hundreds of vehicles parked outside.

“You come out, Audubon, Audubon County and the surrounding area. You come out to support our military men and women who have sent themselves up as volunteers to defend our freedom and promote freedom around the world. This is a powerful testimony to the best that America has to offer here in the heartland of America.”

Iowa City

Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, joined 25 members in Detachment 1, 1133rd Transportation Company at the Regina High gymnasium in Iowa City, commending them for being both members of a community and defenders of it, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported.

“You are true patriots and you represent the best of America,” Loebsack said. “You make Iowa and our nation proud.”

Not everyone was excited about the upcoming deployment, including Jennifer — the pregnant wife of Sgt. Nile Watkins-Schoening, who is preparing for his second deployment in three years.

Jennifer said she “was a little irate” when she heard her husband would deploy again. He also missed Eve’s [his 2-year old daughter] birth, returning when she was already 15 months old after serving with the Iowa Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry from September 2005 to July 2007.

Marshalltown

Hundreds of well-wishers gathered at the Babe Harder Gymnasium on the Marshalltown Community College campus in Marshalltown to say goodbye to 40 members in Detachment 1, 1168th Transportation Company, the Marshalltown Times-Republican reported.

Kaleb Morrow of Centerville, who was previously deployed from 2003 to 2004 to Iraq admitted that the second deployment was going to more difficult since he is leaving behind his two young daughters, including 2-year-old Emilia and 2-month-old Alexandria, and his wife, Bernadette.

“It’s going to be very rough to say goodbye,” he said before the ceremony.

Morrow said he feels they are better equipped this time around especially when it comes to more armor.

Mason City

Hundreds of family members and friends filled the Mason City High School gymnasium to help send off 115 members of the 1133rd Transportation Company, the Mason City Globe-Gazette reported.

Lt. Gov. Patty judge spoke on behalf of Culver:

“Once before you have traveled to Iraq to protect the people of America and Iraq,” said Lt. Gov. Patty Judge. “There isn’t an Iowan who isn’t grateful for your sacrifices.”

“On behalf of Gov. Culver, myself and our families, we want you to know that we will be thinking of you, following your work and you will be in our prayers every day,” she said.

Several of the soldiers are serving their second deployment, including Staff Sgt. Scott Dunning, whose wife is expecting their first child, a boy, on Sunday.

“I’m due on Sunday,” she said. “That’s in three days.”

Looking at his wife, Dunning’s voice cracked, saying, “It makes it very, very difficult to leave.”

Perry

A sendoff ceremony was also planned for 65 members in the 1168th Transportation Company Perry High School gymnasium in Perry.

Iowa Independent: He’s been to Europe more than once?

Axelrod: Yeah, he’s very well traveled.

In the interview in Carroll, Axelrod made the case that Obama’s experiences and broad worldview equip him well for the presidency.

“I think that if you’d speak to people who aren’t running against him and asked them about his grasp, his knowledge, of the world, they would say it’s first-rate,” Axelrod said in an interview before Obama’s speech. “That’s why he’s got so much of the foreign policy establishment, particularly the group that opposed the war in Iraq, all gravitating to him. They understand we need to change not just the war but the mentality that led to it.”

Iowa Independent asked the Obama campaign for a more detailed accounting of Obama’s travels in Europe, both in an official capacity and as a private citizen.  Nearly 48 hours later, we have not received any such information.

This issue has been explored recently in The Washington Note and The Huffington Post.

“I’ve lived in Muslim countries even though I’m Christian,” Obama said.

The line was a winning one that night with the audience in the southwest Iowa town of about 2,200 people 30 miles south of Carroll.

But with only days until the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, some of Obama’s Democratic opponents are stressing that his foreign-flavored biography and family (he has an Indonesian sister named Maya Soetoro-Ng) are no match for the foreign policy credentials of more experienced pols with their stamped-up passports and long lists of nations visited.

“Fresh doubts over Barack Obama’s foreign policy credentials were expressed on both sides of the Atlantic last night, after it emerged that he had made only one brief official visit to London — and none elsewhere in western Europe or Latin America,” The Times of London reports.

When asked about this in a phone interview this afternoon Obama said he’s quite familiar with Europe.

Here is Obama:

I’ve been to Europe multiple times. I haven’t taken an official congressional delegation meeting to Europe, but I have to tell you, official delegation meetings to Europe, that’s not how you get to know Europe. You get to know Europe by its people and its culture and its traditions. Obviously, knowing some of the players there is important. This is sort of the silly season in politics where people try to make assertions like this just to underscore their point which is that there are others who have been in Washington far longer than I have.

When asked specifically about Obama’s foreign policy experience — and the Times report on European travel that Obama disputes — on Christmas Eve, presidential candidate and veteran U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., said he had some thoughts on it because “problems are mounting up by the hour.”

“This is not a time for on-the-job training and I say this with all due respect for people who have just sort of arrived on the scene without any proven ability to bring people together to make a difference,” Dodd said.

Added Dodd, “This is not a time for celebrity here. Iowans know that. They’ve managed to cut through that fraud in the past of celebrity and choose candidates who can go on and win a general election.”

Dodd said he was not making the comments on a personal level but rather as fact.

“If anyone thinks that you’re not going to hear that being wrapped around the neck of a candidate come next fall here, about the lack of experience, they’re deluding themselves here,” Dodd said. “Be prepared as we look at these issues here of having people who have experience, the ability to produce results.”

Some bloggers critical of Obama are making the case that if elected the Illinois senator would be the first president since Calvin Coolidge to have so little European experience.

Former Iowa Lt. Gov. Art Neu, a Republican, said U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton has more experience than Obama. No question there, Neu said in an interview.

“On the other hand we’ve seen people with experience who weren’t very good presidents.”

Clinton frequently notes that she has visited more than 80 nations as First Lady and a U.S. senator from New York.

“That’s certainly one point Clinton has over Obama is on foreign policy experience,” Neu said. “There are so many intangibles you really don’t know who would turn out in the end to be the best president.”

Pedro Rodriguez, an Hispanic activist in Denison, says Obama has a bird’s-eye view of many cultures — something no other candidate in the field has.

“He’s got a knowledge of how to approach things from a different cultural level,” said Rodriguez, 51, a supervisor with a packing house in Denison.

For his part, Obama can make the case that he doesn’t need to travel to understand foreign nations, that through the less formal, deep bonds of family, he connects with the hustle and flow of life outside of the United States.

“As the child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who’s half Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some blood relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, so that family get-togethers over Christmas take on the appearance of a U.N. General Assembly meeting, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race, or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe,” Obama writes in his best-selling book, The Audacity Of Hope.