Posted on 08/27/2008 6:13:21 PM PDT by Dajjal
08/27/2008
Obama document motion denied
A motion to file a restraining order preventing Sen. Obama's Presidential run was denied today. The suit has not been dismissed and lawyer Phil Berg is continuing legal actions. Check back here for the full story tomorrow and in the print edition of The Times Herald.
This is different from the denial on last Friday.
http://kevinunderhill.typepad.com/Documents/Pleadings/Berg_v_Obama_TRO_denied.pdf
In interviews over the weekend, Berg said that when the federal judge denied the TRO on Friday, he told Berg he would be happy to hear the case, but to come back after papers had been served to all of the parties. Berg said that he was working with people all across the country, and they were serving papers toeveryone.
There is currently no news past 8/25 at Berg's own lawsuit website:
http://www.obamacrimes.com
Someone at the Hillary Clinton Forum says that "the TRO was denied, but the lawsuit is still active." They probably mean denied today; but at the moment I'm not sure.
http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=25814
When you ask for a TRO it is your obligation to prove to the court that you have notified all interested parties. Failure to do that is automatic grounds for denial of the motion for a TRO. This is Lawyering 101. Berg doesn’t sound like he has gotten past Lawyering 1.
The Complaint was an abomination from a lawyering standpoint. I find it hard to believe a lawyer of even moderate talent and experience could have produced such a beast. That leads me to the conclusiuon that if Berg has ever been a candidate for anything law-related, it has to be on a Looney-Tunes ticket.
Berg takes the shotgun approach that "on the internet, some say he was born in Kenya, some say he was born at two different hospitals in Hawaii, some say the Hawaii COLB is a forgery, some say he was born in Canada, some say he was and may still be an Indonesian citizen, etc., etc., etc."
He does not assert any conclusion. What he asserts is that there is so much confusion, a federal judge needs to look at all the evidence and theories and determine whether BHO is eligible to run.
He "invites" BHO to step up and provide the paperwork to settle the argument.
I fully think boma is at least a dual citizen but I would like better proof than what berg offers.
The risk is he will get the wrong judge who will just throw it out for lack of specificity.
It is too bad that somebody with real credentials doesn’t look into this. I don’t know if there is any “there” there, but it ought to be possible to tell or else to put this to rest. Lord knows, there is plenty of stuff on which to attack Obambi.
I think that the bottom line is that if the judge agrees that Obama’s citizenship is questionable, any case will have to be forwarded to the SCOTUS, which is not unthinkable because this is a “case in fact”. Either Obama has legal citizenship papers or not. If the judge forwards, most likely Obama does not.
Whichever Supreme Court justice gets the case, they will probably decide among themselves whether Obama is a natural citizen. If they decide he is not, they will meet and issue an injunction against his nomination or election in the electoral college.
That is, only the SCOTUS could do this, because the electors never meet as a group, but remain in their home States, and only the SCOTUS has jurisdiction over all the States. So no inferior federal court could enjoin them all.
All Berg "proves" is that there are several different, conflicting stories about Obama's citizenship.
That should be enough to show that either Obama himself needs to clarify things, or a judge needs to make a pronouncement on his status.
Title link doesn’t work for me.
Arghh! Looks like they might be in the process of posting the full story right now. Go to their homepage; the story is on the upper right, but currently there is no "full story" -- just the same three sentences I posted.
I don’t know what kind of lawyer you are but you don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
A TRO is generally an Ex parte (one party) motion that is heard before service to the other party because of emergency circumstances. A TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) is an immediate restraint until a full hearing after service can be had.
Please, if you don’t know anything about law, don’t be sarcastic about someone who does. Philip Berg is a Democrat but he is a damn good lawyer.
Virtually no judge will grant a TRO, even in an emergency, unless the party seeking the Order has made an effort to contact the other side and get that party before the Court. So while technically a TRO is ex parte, as a practical matter that is rarely the case. I saw nothing in the "Complaint" to suggest any great urgency or any likelihood of irreparable harm, which I assume you know are two of the required elements for granting a TRO.
FYI, I practiced law (commercial litigation) in Philadelphia for 17 years before moving to Washington, where I practiced for another 18 years. I was not unfamiliar with Montgomery County when I practiced in Philadelphia. I never heard of Berg, which may or may not mean anything, but there were very few "damn good lawyers" in the Philadelphia area I didn't know at least by reputation.
More to the point, the Complaint I read, which I understand to be the one filed, is an abomination. If a law student handed that to me in a Civil Procedure class, he or she would not get a very good grade.
My wife's an employment lawyer and has to occasionally defend suits filed by pro se plaintiffs. She forwards the pro se filings on to me sometimes so I can get a chuckle out of them. Berg's filing reads like many of those filings.
As I understand it, Berg is a former Pennsylvania Assistant Attorney General. The quality of people in the PA AG's office has varied widely over the years, and I would venture a guess that he was not a star. Also, many of the Asst AGs don't do litigation. I don't get the impression Berg has drafted many Complaints in his career. I see he is also a "911 truther." That bunch is not known for rational thinking.
He is also supposed to have been the Montgomery County Democrat Chairman at some point. I grew up in Montgomery County and know it very well. It has become more Democrat in recent years, but there was a time when it was rock solid Republican. In those days, running the Democrat party in Montgomery County would be about as prestigious as serving as Chair of the Kucinich campaign.
I will agree with you that I did not like the complaint at all.
Apparently there was an Ex parte TRO hearing though because there was an order concerning a prelim injunction.
In any case, we will certainly see if this lawsuit has legs. I’m more excited about Palin.
I agree about Palin. McCain hit a home run when he picked her.
I would have bet my eternal soul that the TRO would be denied. NO Judge is going to just stop the convention until he can fully hear the issue! Lifetime appointment or not, that would bring hell down from on high.
I still think he can make a case for standing, and he has a prima facia case for disqualification if his bare allegations have any substance.
It will be interesting, but Gov. Palin made this a back burner issue in one big hurry.
She even has Biden back-peddling so hard he is out of breath!
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