Supreme Court Silent on Obama Birth Certificate Lawsuit

Chicagoist ^ | December 5, 2008

[ckilmer]

December 5, 2008

Supreme Court Silent on Obama Birth Certificate Lawsuit

The Supreme Court made no announcement today whether or not it will hear Donofrio v. Wells, the lawsuit challenging the election based on Barack Obama's release - or alleged lack thereof - of his official birth certificate and his citizenship status. (The court did decide to hear two cases, one of which is the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, an Al Qaeda combatant seized on American soil.) Of course, there's no guarantee the Court will ever actually issue any statement on the Obama case since it was simply petitioned to the court and, along with hundreds of other cases, could be dismissed without any comment at all. But as Frank James, over at The Swamp, says, "the lack of an announcement doesn't mean the court definitely won't hear Donofrio." So either we will or we won't. Hmm.

Meanwhile, our comrades at our sister site DCist scoped out a protest held by supporters of the Donofrio cause at the Supreme Court this morning led by Roger Bredow, who claims Obama has duel citizenship.

The Supreme Court will announce whether it will actually consider the Obama lawsuit as early as today and as late as Monday. If (as expected) the Court tosses the suit, Bredow will start challenging Obama's legitimacy based on "foreign money that went into his campaign." Other protestors said they'd start contacting members of the Electoral College. Steve Brindle, who drove down from Pennsylvania, said he'd called his senators yesterday.

"There aren't a lot of people out here today," said Brindle. "There are a lot of people talking about this back home. Really, everyone's asking questions."

Of course, only 15 to 20 people showed so...yeah.

Either way, nothing will ever outweigh the rage we felt this morning when we read that Obama has allegedly chosen a Zune over an iPod. We're whipping up a petition as we speak and expect a protest very, very soon.

Photo by Dave Weigel courtesy of our pals at DCist

[kenboy]

This American, born in America. God, this must be how most Democrats feel when Al Sharpton shows up on TV: you're not helping our side.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“...but I can assure you that if it worked politically, Obama would NOT have been elected President.”

God does answer ALL of our prayers. But sometimes the answer is, “No” and it’s up to us to figure out why down the road. :)

[Sola Veritas]

“Bread and Circuses while the Constitution is being SPIT on!”

More accurately, being urinated upon or worse I’m afraid.

[Star Traveler]

You said — “I mean, except for the obvious step his mother took of putting a birth announcement in a Hawaii newspaper, just in case he ever wanted to run for President someday despite being, you know, born in Kenya.”

This is where people are mistaken in their “assessment” of why the mother would have put that announcement in the paper. People make it out to be that the mother is somehow looking ahead to Obama being a Presidential Candidate. No, she’s not. She’s merely trying to get it so that he’s a “citizen” of the United States, and therefore has the benefits of being that citizen. It’s nothing more than that, otherwise, he would be an immigrant.

That’s all she was doing, nothing more...

The problem comes in later, when Obama does decide to run for President. Then the facts start coming out.

[seekthetruth]

Rev. Manning on now.:)
http://www.plainsradio.com/

[fightinJAG]

The beauty of Leo’s case is that it potentially could be remanded to NJ for further briefing or even trial. This is because NJ seems to be one of the few states that actually imposed more than a ministerial duty upon its SOS to ensure eligible candidates are on the ballot.

The chorus of “not my job” ringing out of Secretaries of State offices all across this land is deafening. And sickening. Because, in fact, it seems that it is no one’s job to actually, with competence and expertise, according to some known standard, with a public result that can be challenged, verify that the President-select (much less all the candidates on the ballot) are natural born citizens.

Hells bells, NO ONE actually knows what a natural born citizen is. Sure, people think this and that, but the answer isn’t an answer until the Supreme Court says it is-—and that Court hasn’t spoken to this exact situation ever.

Since NJ had a statute imposing some duty on the SOS, and at least arguably the SOS did not fulfil that duty, it seems the SCOTUS could find some way to send it back and tell the NJ courts to define the scope of the duty imposed by the statute and find whether or not the SOS fulfilled it. Somewhere in that process, the SOS might actually be required to verify Obama’s eligibility and that process could be amenable to review by the SCOTUS.

[Sola Veritas]

“Do you know if it is true that Obama said on his website that he was a “citizen under the 14th Amendment”?”

If he did....I wasn’t aware that Mr. Obama had been a slave in the US. Isn’t that the intent of the 14th???? Protect former slaves????

[ckilmer]

there was a senate resolution back in May that granted mccain citizenship...if you can believe it.

the sense of the senate resolution included a line inserted by obama to the effect that whereas presidents in the past were not born in the united states.

[livius]

People put birth and death announcements in my local paper all the time for people who neither died nor were born here. Grandparents frequently put in a birth announcement of grandchildren born elsewhere just as a way of letting people know.

If it was the hospital that submitted the announcement, however, that would be a different matter. When my kids were born in San Francisco in the 1960-70s, the hospitals used to release the birth announcements. I don’t know what Hawaii did.

[fightinJAG]

Say whaaaa?

Yeah, I knew that. But I didn’t know Obama said that. How could he say that?

Plus, is Obama claiming that the British citizenship he attained by descent from his father automatically became citizenship of Kenya because his father’s citizenship status was changed? How would that happen under the circumstances?

Also, IIRC, the new Kenyan citizenship for father did not come into existence until 1963 (again, IIRC)-—at which time he was already divorced from Obama’s mother or she may have already remarried Sotero?

IOW, it seems more likely that Obama was a British subject by birth and whatever happened to that citizenship had nothing to do with what happened some years subsequent to his birth to his biological/no longer legal father’s citizenship.

[Churchillspirit]

you're not helping our side.

How is "our side" helped by ignoring the doubts about The One's birthplace and/or nationality?

[Huskrrrr]

God’s justice is like a Mill wheel...slow grinding, but very fine.

[sam_paine]

Everyone has a responsibility to respect and abide by the Constitution.

If Berg had won at a lower court, or if Obamanation himself had admitted his Kenyan status in front of the Roman Columns, do you really think he still would've lost the election?

65 million Americans don't care if we just gave Kruschev his wish to bury us. 65 million Americans are perfectly happy to do whatever they want regardless of the Constitution. Yes they can!

The Constitution was written for an honest, intelligent and moral people. It only protects the minority if the majority agree to follow it.

Anyone thinking 9 lawyers in robes can save the Republic is whistling past the graveyard.

This country wasn't lost on 11/4/2008, nor in 2006.

It was lost a little bit at a time, every last week in May over the past 40 years when another batch of Seniors graduated government school.

Welcome to what Ben Franklin warned us about.

FRegards.

[Huskrrrr]

God’s justice is like a Mill wheel...slow grinding, but very fine.

[kenboy]

First, I doubt that his 18-year-old mother would have been aware that she was one year too young to qualify her son for citizenship under the current law; hasn't everyone always believed that a US citizen's baby, born anywhere in the world, is automatically a US citizen (and, of course, may or may not also be a citizen of the country in which he is born?)

Second, I don't think the timeline makes a lot of sense -- his parents married in February, and he was born in August. I can't imagine a young pregnant woman deciding to travel to Kenya -- pretty much on the exact opposite side of the world from Hawaii -- especially in 1961. (And I don't think I've ever heard of evidence she DID travel to Kenya then, though I also haven't heard stories of people standing up to say "oh, I was her hospital roommate when she had Barack in Honolulu, look, you can see her in the corner of this old family photo." (Haven't been looking for such, either.)

Finally, there's the inconvenience of the birth certificate that lists his place of birth as Honolulu, along with the maybe corroborating evidence of the birth announcement. I realize it's a 2007 printout, so aside from the unlikeliness of it actually being a forgery, we'd also need to account for the fact that he would also have had to forge his birth certificate on PREVIOUS occasions, such as to get a US passport. Since this CURRENT forgery, produced while running for President, is apparently so clumsy that random anonymous experts on the internet can determine so, how is it that the state department fell for his previous, likely even clumsier forgeries?

I'm sorry, it's just all too much, and requires way too much belief in bad faith by everyone from his 18 year old mom to the city clerk in Honolulu. I don't buy it.

[Smokeyblue]

“The chorus of “not my job” ringing out of Secretaries of State offices all across this land is deafening. And sickening. Because, in fact, it seems that it is no one’s job to actually, with competence and expertise, according to some known standard, with a public result that can be challenged, verify that the President-select (much less all the candidates on the ballot) are natural born citizens.”

Bingo. No way a citizen or citizens can do anything about it before the election nor after. Talk about run-arounds and catch-22’s.

“Hells bells, NO ONE actually knows what a natural born citizen is. Sure, people think this and that, but the answer isn’t an answer until the Supreme Court says it is-—and that Court hasn’t spoken to this exact situation ever.”

Exactly why you would think the SCOTUS would take up the issue. It is so very relevant for both Obamafraud and McCain.

“The beauty of Leo’s case is that it potentially could be remanded to NJ for further briefing or even trial. This is because NJ seems to be one of the few states that actually imposed more than a ministerial duty upon its SOS to ensure eligible candidates are on the ballot.”

God I hope so, at the very least, but this still doesn’t clear up the matter of “staying” the national election or electoral college but we’ve got to get to the truth somehow or other.

This is NOT going away. Criminal and civil defense attorneys start your engines.

[Star Traveler]

You said — “If Berg had won at a lower court, or if Obamanation himself had admitted his Kenyan status in front of the Roman Columns, do you really think he still would’ve lost the election?”

Yes..., absolutely and definitely, he would have not only lost, but I believe the Democrats would be scrambling for a quick replacement and not have him running.

The only thing that keeps this from being a real issue right now is that many people can’t believe that it is actually the case that Obama is not a natural-born citizen. If they did *know* that this is the case — then that would be a *dynamite issue*.

It’s only this — “it’s a conspiracy idea” — that keeps it as something “on the side”...

[fightinJAG]

I don’t know who you may think is advocating an extra-constitutional standard.

If the case presented meets the Court’s requirements for action, I am confident they will take action appropriately.

True, there is not a word in the Constitution about how to “prove” eligibility. So what? There is a constitutional standard for eligibility and, if that standard is not clear, it is perfectly legitimate and not activist for the Court to explain the standard or explain that the Congress needs to explain it-—and implement procedures for vouchsafing it, including procedures for challenging eligibility, appealing decisions on eligibility, and providing a remedy should a President-select be ineligible to serve.

If there is a question of whether the SOS in NJ fufilled a statutory duty to ensure only those eligible “by law” were on the presidential ballot, it is not activism for the Court to remand or return the case to NJ for the courts there to explain the statutory duty and make findings of fact as to whether that duty was satisfied.

And so on.

Do you know who now is in charge of vouchsafing the constitutional standard that a President be a natural born citizen? The POLITICAL PARTY OF THAT CANDIDATE. Do you not find that constitutionally abhorrent and just plain gross?

Gross and ripe for abuse as that is, that informal procedure may still work reasonably well in most cases. However, what about the case in which, as here, there are all kinds of factual and legal permutations that, really, no one knows the answer to.

I really am not skeptical at all that Obama has a Hawaiian BC and was born in Hawaii (although, of course, it’s possible he wasn’t; the facts surrounding his birth and early life are not usual in the least).

However, you should be aware that that is not, conclusively, the end of this discussion. For one thing, we have never in history had a President-select who had a foreign father—and who, therefore, was himself also a British subject at birth. (Arthur had a naturalized father, although there is some controversy there as well.) In fact, this was exactly who the framers didn’t want to take the job as Commander in Chief-—those born with “natural” and “perpetual” (under British law) “allegience” to England.

You know, just saying, that might make a difference in the “natural born citizen” status. Wouldn’t it be best for the nation and for Obama to find out, regardless if Obama ends up qualified?

In sum: it’s simply not clear that being a citizen by reason of birth in the U.S. in all cases and circumstances makes one *eligible to be president.*

If this is one of those few and far between exceptional cases, we should know that. Moreover, it’d be very helpful for the Supreme Court to clear this up for the future, again, regardless of how Obama’s situation plays out.

[America2012]

Maybe this is the calm before the storm.

[fightinJAG]

I don’t believe that either.

I have confidence in our system of government. We do transfer of power very well. Even if (on some remote chance) Obama were found ineligible, it would not be a constitutional crisis. We have procedures in place for filling the office of President if the President becomes unable to serve (which an ineligible person certainly would be). Those would be followed and we would do what we have to do.

There might be some social unrest, but most Americans would support the rule of law.