[mlo]

"Dicta are not part of the law of the case and thus are of NO FORCE AND EFFECT. If the dicta were that the day of the decision the sky was blue and cloudless, dicta are dicta and of no force and effect."

Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The reality is, the only reason it's dicta is that Wong wasn't trying to be President. If he had in fact been suing to validate his eligibility for President then the exact same text you dismiss as dicta makes absolutely clear that he would be eligible. That logic doesn't go away because it's dicta. It doesn't stop existing because he wasn't trying to be President. That same reasoning will lead to the same answer when it's applied to a Presidential candidate.

[BlackElk]

Roe vs. Wade exists. "Gay""Marriage" exists. A "ban on school prayer" exists even at football games. Kelo vs. New London exists. Most sensible Americans (aka conservatives) revile those usurpationist excuses for SCOTUS decisions but those are actual holdings and not irrelevant dicta. SCOTUS dicta are nothing more than blathering by SCOTUS justices and do not even rise to the level of harmful anti-constitutional case law in the above-mentioned cases.

Apparently we never knew you either. I practiced law for several decades and briefed a lot of cases. How about you? This is not "wishin and hopin" or philosophy class. Rather we are talking constitutional law. In legal terms, your argument about Wong not running for POTUS may be stated as follows. SCOTUS rules only on genuine cases in controversy and otherwise has no jurisdiction to rule (not that the modern SCOTUS might be phased by mere rules when they might have an opportunity to further destroy our civilization). Wong was not running for POTUS. SCOTUS had no jurisdiction to rule on a case not before it. Further, no party to Wong asked the SCOTUS to rule on POTUS eligibility. Further, no party to the case had standing (another jurisdictional prerequisite) to raise such a question on the facts in Wong. I know you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want to believe otherwise but what you REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want to believe is no substitute for the actual constitution. That is what the courts have been consistently HOLDING and not just in irrelevant dicta.

Not to be indelicate, but Wong was also handed down during a time when the USA was plagued by a national hysteria over what was called "The Yellow Peril" in which the alarmists of that time (perhaps a SCOTUS justice or two) were convinced that the yellow hordes of Asia and particularly of China would swamp America via mass immigration. It seems embarrassing to recall that mindset as with the WW II internment of Japanese Americans but we cannot change history. We can only make history in futuro and try to avoid previous mistakes.