Posted on 10/23/2008 7:18:55 AM PDT by Born Conservative
The Federal Election Commission has joined Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee in asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Montgomery County attorney seeking Obama's ouster from the November ballot.
Philip Berg, who claims the Illinois senator was born in Kenya and can't run for president because he isn't a natural-born U.S. citizen, has no standing to make the claim, according to the FEC.
The motion, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, echoes one filed last month by Obama and the DNC that states Berg hasn't demonstrated how he personally would suffer even if his ''ridiculous and patently false'' claims were true.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcall.com ...
I guess I just felt an irresistible urge to call out stupidity and dishonesty.
LOL No, you just lost control of yourself again. Try anger management classes.
You also seem to fully agree with wasting time filing lawsuits that won't go anywhere so you can look like a lunatic instead of pressing Obama on the issues.
Sounds to me like any citizen would have standing, given that you need to be qualified to be a candidate.
Thanks, that makes sense once I get my head around it but.... there must be a way to force the DNC and the Candidate to follow the law. In the absense of someone in some government institution stepping up, how exactly do you file suit to halt this sham election or at least forst the other party to prove eligibility? Surely there's a way to move it forward???
Voila! Personalized Individual Harm.
>It also implies that a citizen has no standing to demand that elections be conducted according to the US Constitution unless that citizen can somehow prove quantifiable personal damage if the Constitution is violated?
Of course, if the average citizen cannot ask questions of the movings of politicians things will run so much smoother for the government.
>Are we in Catch-22 here?
Yes. But I’ll bet the Judiciary doesn’t see it that way.
>The FEC is against vetting a candidate for President of the USA. wtf?
Yep! Because, if anything, it would show them as incompetent.
I havae 5 mg audit tape who knows how to make available on Freepr? From todays Michael Savage todays show with Phillip Berg.
democrats Denial of service atttach on Michael Savage website.
Lloyd, I can think of a couple ways. The first would be a proper plaintiff, who would be someone like Hillary, or, perhaps McCain (though for obvious political reasons, McCain would stay out of this fight). A loser to Obama in the primary would probably have standing, too. Hillary is the strongest plaintiff in my mind.
A second way is through the political process. Congress is textually charged with counting the votes for President, so presumably, although the constitution is not clear on this point, Congress has the authority to determine whether a candidate is qualified and could thus receive votes. Again, probably won't happen here because of the majority democrat congress, but it's a vehicle to resolution.
You might be thinking that neither choice is going to provide a satisfactory resolution, and that's true. But some provisions of the constitution, as a practical matter, just aren't enforceable. For instance, Congress doesn't publish the budget expenditures of the CIA, despite that the Constitution textually requires all government expenditures to be published--there's been litigation over this that has been dismissed for lack of standing. No one has the right vehicle to bring a challenge, and that's just the way it is.
If you're interested more in this subject, take a look at Ex Parte Levitt, which involved a citizen challenging a Supreme Court appointment, and United States v. Richardson, which was a challenge to the CIA budget secrecy.
Not good enough. Your harm isn't particularized. It is not sufficient that you have suffered the same harm as the general public. Take a look at Ex Parte Levitt. In that case, Justice Black, while a member of the Senate, was appointed to the Supreme Court while having voted, during his Senate term, for a government funded pension for members of the Supreme Court. This violated the plain text of the constitution.
The Court held that this was nonetheless insufficient to confer standing because the plaintiff was only harmed as a member of the general public.
Oh Wait. . . They didn't ask me did they...
Thanks, really appreciate the time you took to help explain things.
My pleasure.
SCOTUS = Supreme COurt of the United States
POTUS= President of the United States
Publius Valerius said:
“Not good enough. Your harm isn’t particularized. It is not sufficient that you have suffered the same harm as the general public. Take a look at Ex Parte Levitt. In that case, Justice Black, while a member of the Senate, was appointed to the Supreme Court while having voted, during his Senate term, for a government funded pension for members of the Supreme Court. This violated the plain text of the constitution.
The Court held that this was nonetheless insufficient to confer standing because the plaintiff was only harmed as a member of the general public.”
Yet companies like Exxon have been able to be sued by people who have had no more particular harm then the rest of the general public. Many enviromental lawsuits are based upon harm that is not particular to the individuals that are bringing the case to court or even to any specific indicidual at all. Many of these suits are based upon the standing that it is harming society as a whole.
There is possible fraud and a crime being committed in this case that would bring future harm to Mr. Berg and to the nation as a whole.
I have to admit that I am really outraged at the motion filed by the FEC.
They claim that it is not there place to verify the eligibility of a presidential candidate and I offer no opinion on that but...
But if they are truely a bi-partisan commission that has no role in determining the eligibility of a presidential candidate then why do they take the side legally of the Obama campaign and the DNC?
This point really annoys me. It dosen’t seem right at all. How can we trust them to oversee that elections are free and honest if they do not believe that citizens even have a legal right to know that candidates are legally eligible?
For these types of cases, the Court has laid down some fairly particularized rules. Check out Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife and its progeny for more on environmental standing.
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