Government Corruption and Treason

Obama's Related to Palin and Limbaugh

October 13, 2010

AP – President Barack Obama has family ties to none other than Sarah Palin, according to the genealogists at Ancestry.com, a discovery the family history site made when looking for connections between political foes.

And that's not all — Obama also is apparently related to conservative radio host and relentless critic Rush Limbaugh.

A genealogist at the Utah-based Ancestry.com, Anastasia Tyler, said Obama and Palin are 10th cousins through a common ancestor named John Smith, a pastor and early settler in 17th-century Massachusetts. Obama is related to Smith through his mother, as is Palin, Tyler said.

"Smith was against the persecution of the Quakers," Tyler said in an interview. "He was a very socially conscious man."

As for Limbaugh, he's also a 10th cousin of the president — one time removed — through a common ancestor named Richmond Terrell, who Tyler said was a large landowner in Virginia, also in the 17th century.

"His history is a little more nebulous," Tyler said.

How do the genealogists come up with this stuff? Tyler said they start by picking the people they're interested in, then examine their family trees, going back further and further into history, looking for common surnames and locations.

In the recent project, genealogists looked at the trees of Obama, Palin, and Limbaugh but also a few others, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Fox News pundits Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. They didn't find anything much with the latter three.

But former President George W. Bush? He's related to both Obama and Palin, the site found. Obama and Bush are 11th cousins through common ancestor Samuel Hinckley, and Bush and Palin are 10th cousins one time removed, also through Hinckley — who, and stay with us now, was John Smith's father-in-law.

Ancestry.com has revealed in the past that Obama is related to investor Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt. It has also found that Palin, the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate, is a distant cousin of both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Princess Diana.

The site isn't the only source of this sort of celebrity genealogy information — in 2007, Cheney's wife, Lynne, discovered ancestral ties between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Obama while researching her book. She said the relationship was eighth cousin, though the Chicago Sun-Times traced it as ninth cousins once removed.

And one other thing from Ancestry.com: It also found that Palin is distant cousins with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and conservative author and pundit Ann Coulter, through John Lathrop, who was exiled to the United States from England for being a pastor of an illegal independent church.

Obama, Palin, Limbaugh Related? You Betcha!

October 13, 2010

McClatchy Newspapers - Rush Limbaugh calls President Obama "imam," even though he knows the president isn't a Muslim. Sarah Palin has openly doubted the president's "cojones."

Turns out these two conservative firebrands have been dissin' their own cousin.

The online genealogy service Ancestry.com now reports that Obama and Palin are 10th cousins, and Obama and Limbaugh are 10th cousins once removed. In both cases, the ties date to the 1600s.

Obama's distant family ties to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney surfaced during his presidential campaign. Obama also is a distant cousin of billionaire investor Warren Buffett and actor Brad Pitt, according to Ancestry.com.

Anastasia Tyler, the lead genealogist on the latest project, said in an interview:

"It just shows how all of these politicians, they're on different sides of the political spectrum, but in the end they're all part of what makes America great, and they all go back to deep American roots."

The ties run through Obama's white, Kansas-born mother's side of the family. Obama's Kenyan father's background is harder to document as far back, and likely would have fewer connections to early American settlers. Genealogists say it's typically harder for African Americans and many minority populations in the U.S. to trace their roots because of a lack of written historical documentation.

Palin's tie to Obama is through early Massachusetts settler John Smith, a Protestant pastor in the 1670s who opposed the persecution of Quakers. Smith's wife was the sister of one of the first governors of the Plymouth Bay colony, Thomas Hinckley. Hinckley's father, Samuel, it so happens, is the familial link between Obama and Bush.

Obama's and Limbaugh's common ancestor is Richmond Terrell, who settled in Virginia around 1656 and acquired a large amount of land.

One might argue that everyone's related if you go back far enough, but Tyler said that 350 years isn't nearly far enough to connect most Americans to one another.

Ancestry.com says it has 1.3 million paying subscribers who have built 19 million family trees over the years. The company has publicized many of the celebrity connections it finds.

When Tyler's team began this latest research on Obama about six months ago, researchers were looking for links among political foes in this polarized era of tea-party protests and false assertions about Obama's birthplace and religion.

They found that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, is distantly related to conservative author Ann Coulter, as well as to Palin.

They tried but failed to connect Obama to conservative talk-show hosts Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.