Posted on 10/24/2008 7:31:37 AM PDT by presidio9
IF MONTGOMERY County lawyer Phil Berg has his way, Barack Obama won't be on the ballot on Nov. 4.
And if Berg's right, Obama could be struck from the ballot as soon as today.
Talk about an October surprise!
In August, Berg filed a federal suit alleging that the Democratic presidential candidate was not born in Hawaii, but in Kenya, and is not even an American citizen, but a citizen of Indonesia.
U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick has not ruled on the merits of Berg's suit, although he did deny Berg's request for a temporary restraining order.
This week Berg asked that his allegations against Obama be "admitted" since Obama had failed to respond within the 30-day time limit.
Berg's suit has been hot stuff in the right-wing blogosphere for a while.
Several similar suits have followed Berg's, including one in Washington state this week and one in Hawaii last week challenging that state's privacy law, which prevents officials from making the original birth certificate public.
Mike Finney, deputy clerk to Judge Surrick, says that their office has gotten a blizzard of phone calls about the suit.
"Within the past week the calls have instensified," Finney told us. "People from all across the country have been calling." He said we should expect a ruling soon.
Berg failed to return our calls, but he is no stranger to Clout.
In 1998, when he launched a run for governor against Tom Ridge, we offered this slogan: "Those who think Ridge is unsinkable should know there's a Berg up ahead."
He promptly printed it on campaign buttons, becoming the only politician ever to take advice from Clout. It was clearly a danger sign.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Berg established a Web site accusing the government of either planning the attacks or knowing about them in advance.
To fight the birth rumors, the Obama camp posted a document issued by Hawaii confirming his birth there. Critics call it a forgery, although the nonpartisan FactCheck.org examined the original document and declared it legit.
Also worth noting is a birth announcement in the Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961, Honolulu Advertiser listing Obama's birth there on Aug. 4.
Of course, it is possible that Obama's family, knowing he would seek the presidency one day, planted a false announcement.
And, if you enjoy conspiracies, isn't it interesting that Obama is cutting short his campaigning this week to visit his grandmother in Hawaii?
Is she really sick? Or is he trying to keep her quiet? Or is this silly stuff going to be kicked out of court forcing us to find better material next week?
Obama and the Phillies
Obama's declaration during the NL Championship Series that he was rooting for the Phillies prompted Todd Bernstein to produce the T-shirt you see on this page.
His inspiration goes back to 1992, when he was an aide to then-senator Harris Wofford, D-Pa., and they were campaigning for Bill Clinton in Colorado.
"In the Denver campaign office someone had a T-shirt that had Clinton-Gore with the Broncos logo and on the back, it said, 'Go Clinton! Go Broncos!' " Bernstein recalled. "I thought I'd like to do that back home when the time was right.
"It took 16 years for the stars to be aligned with Barack Obama and the Philadelphia Phillies."
Bernstein, who heads the Martin Luther King Day of Service project, made some up for his friends.
"Then more people started asking about it, so I made more, and then other people began hounding me and now I'm in the rag business," he said.
Bernstein is up to several hundred shirts by now, but says he doesn't want any more requests, which is why we're not printing his e-mail address.
Tayoun: Sales pitch
Obama's Pennsylvania political director, Kevin Washo, was sipping on a beer at the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee dinner Monday night, when someone introduced him to former Councilman and ward leader Jimmy Tayoun, now publisher of the weekly paper ThePublic Record.
"Will you guys buy a friggin' ad in my newspaper?" Tayoun said, as he shook Washo's hand. "Every committeeman in the city gets a copy of it."
We checked in with Tayoun at week's end, and he's still got zippo from the Big O.
Goo-goo: Street money is good
Ward leaders aren't the only ones who think Obama should pay "street money" to Philly's Democratic organization for Election Day turnout.
Marc Stier, a former City Council candidate and good-government type who's active in Neighborhood Network - a grassroots organization that many ward leaders regard as a threat - says that Obama should pay the machine.
"We're seeing an enormous number of Obama volunteers coming here who don't know the territory they're working," Stier said. "They don't know much about the voters they're talking to, and they don't know practical things, like where to rent a room for canvassers, something a ward leader can help with."
Stier said that it's true that most voters don't seek ward leaders' advice on presidential votes, but "in some parts of the city where voters may be a little uncertain, a word from a committee person they've known for years can make a difference."
O'Brien: A Repubmocrat?
When party chairman Bob Brady called Democratic candidates up to the stage at Monday's party pep rally, Clout did a double-take.
Is that House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, a Republican, up there?
Indeed.
Turns out that while running unopposed in the Republican primary in April, O'Brien also ran a successful write-in campaign to get on the Democratic ballot, too. So he's technically a Democratic candidate.
Does that mean O'Brien, who was also elected speaker with Democratic support, backs Obama? O'Brien would say only that he's "a proud Republican." *
His family is not in their right mind. She wanted to fly back before the birth which she supposedly tried to do because US citizenship is worth a lot. She tried before the birth but she was too far along.
A birth certificate issued by a local health department does not typically list the witnesses to the live birth, only a recording of the birth, and would usually require simply a statement by the parent and a witness. Hospitals provide their own certificates of live birth and that information is normally used by the government entity.
I find it very plausible that if Obama was born in Kenya efforts were made by his mother to have his birth registered in Hawaii to maintain a US citizenship -- however fraudulently.
What you really want is that hospital certificate, with the attending physician statement -- or the original statement of witnesses.
Nothing of the sort has ever been produced by the Obama camp, and the certified birth statement floating on the net compliments of factcheck.org is very suspect since it was modified using photoshop back in June of this year when questions arose.
The lack of curiosity of the media (including conservative media) is unexplainable. I believe there was more questioning of McCain's eligibility because he was born in the US Territory of the Canal Zone, than there has been in regard to the eligibility of Hussein.
If he was born in Hawaii, then why doesn't the Obama camp just produce a real document proving it? My guess is that if he was born in Hawaii, that the birth certificate does not say "Barak Hussein Obama". I'd be willing to bet that his name is something like "Barry Stanley Dunham". OK, he'd be eligible, but he'd be shown to be a fraud. They will release it AFTER the election. The public has a right to see the documents BEFORE the election.
I see your point. But nobody is asking the BIG question. You can’t tell me that Hillary and Bill were in the dark on this. Why didn’t she bring this up and just boot him from the primaries?
As it should be. He's not president until sworn in.
Also worth noting is a birth announcement in the Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961, Honolulu Advertiser listing Obama’s birth there on Aug. 4.
voila
And why would someone who was nine months pregnant decide to fly halfway around the world (in 1961, before the age of the big, long-range jets) to a third-world country? There is a big logical hole in the born-in-Kenya theory.
The birth announcement is questionable as it is in a type font different than the rest of the page on microfiche.
If Obama had a US birth certificate he would have produced it by now. But his medical records and college admissions records - both containg his birthplace - have not been opened to public scrutiny either.
The junior Senator from Illinois is hiding something.
This isn't unusual, actually. The judge makes the ultimate decision as to whether or not to sign something, but parties in litigation often draft the orders they want the judge to issue. It saves time for everyone involved.
A crazy 18-year old girl who has just discovered her Kenyan “husband”, the father of her newborn son, is already married and a father to a child in Kenya.
“Birth announcement doesn’t state place of birth.”
It does have an address, but the question is that the grandparents house?
I just don't think it will be resolved before the election and then it will be deeply buried regardless of who wins. He should be discredited forever if he has deceived America in this fashion.
The key is to get a ruling after Nov 4, but before the electoral college meets ==> President Hillary.
“One other thing. Has anyone even asked the name of the doctor who delivered him? That seems like it would be standard info on a birth certificate.”
Yep, it’s a feature on mine as well as having the signature of the registrar. Mine also has a certificate number as well as a records number. And it has an embossed seal......And that’s just the certified copy of my birth certificate.
I think that the “copy” that barry has posted is indeed a forgery, because as someone pointed out earlier his father’s race would have been listed in 1961 as “Negro” as opposed to the more PC and modern “African”.
It has been that this newspaper only took birth announcements from hospitals, but is that true? Why couldn't a family send in an announcement?
I wonder if someone could order a few certificates with serial numbers in sequence just before and after Obama’s. While they are at it, order one with Obama’s exact number as well and see what you get.
Actually attorneys do it all the time. I’m a paralegal, not an attorney, but I’ve seen judges ask attorneys to “write an order to that effect” after granting a motion.
Frequently, attorneys include an order in the papers they file. Then the judge can sign whichever one he chooses when he makes an order.
— Jane Reinheimer
In order to assure US citizenship. It counts for a lot. ;^)
“Given the Leftie nature of the Dunhams, the ability of their grandson to avoid the draft by just going to Kenya for a couple of years must have occurred to them.”
He was born in 1961. The draft ended in 1973, and he wouldn’t have been 18 until 1979.
I thought I read somewhere that Indonesia did not recognize dual citizenship and that to travel as an Indonesian citizen, after the age of majority, on an Indonesian passport, one would have had to renounce his American citizenship.
Anyway to look up what the requirements were for Americans traveling into Pakistan when Obama was traveling? I know there was alot of turmoil.
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