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." *
Funded by the same Annenberg Foundation with which Obama was intimately affiliated. I get so tired of this.
And how hard would it be for a newspaper to make a mistake in such listings.Or how hard would it be for someone to *fool* a newspaper in such a matter?
>>>Am I the only ne that saw this posted briefly on FR a few minutes ago?
Now it is gone
I saw it... the thread was pulled because the title and link was an unconfirmed statement of fact... they jumped the gun saying something had happened when it hasn’t.
Then why do you worry about it so? I don’t think people, especially Republican’s, since this wasn’t a claim made by the GOP, are going down any rabbit hole.
Most of us are just watching it play out and haven’t taken our eye off the ball.
Unlike radical liberal justices (Florida Supremes), no judge is gonna try turn over a presidential election. It is a wet dream if you think that is gonna happen. Probably won't happen earlier
It would be a kick if there was some “there” there. There is something being hidden, but what who knows.
Not at all. Berg thinks she flew back from Kenya and this is just a birth announcement. They filed a cert of live birth COLB but that is not proof the baby was born in Hawaii. Berg knows what he is doing. He may end up getting us Hillary but Berg is not a fool.
If Obama’s grandmother is on her death bed (God forbid. The statistics for survival of a broken hip for a woman her age isn’t good. Prayers.), why aren’t Michelle and their daughters there too?
I’ll take Biden over Obama anyday of the week.
I’ll take Biden over Obama anyday of the week.
Or...more plausibly....it's possible that Hussein's family,wanting to gain him recognition as a US citizen, planted a false announcement.
You're willing to make the supreme sacrifice, eh?...:-)
The ONLY people who will even hear about this controversy are those like us who closely follow what is going on and have already made up our minds. The ‘undecideds’ who still don’t know what the hell is happening and get their news from the drive-bys on TV and from Yahoo news online will never hear a word about it.
I have not heard this before - It would seem to make this lawsuit look silly.
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Why haven’t we seen a copy of it? Should be easy to get.
But WHY, in 1961, would anyone want to fool anyone? That’s a big conspiracy jump.
At this point I would rather have Hillary than Obama. Wow...what kind of crazy alternate universe is this, that I actually said I preferred Hillary to anyone?
Is it jut me or does it seem that when Left-wing organizations file law-suits they get the wheels of justice moving a whole lot faster.
Also is there just one lawyer pursuing this case? Once again if this was something the left were pursuing they’d haave 30 lawyers working together on this matter.
That's certainly possible....*very* possible....but if he was born in a US hospital there would be records there.The question is how long do Hawaii hospitals....or hospitals in general....keep birth records?
It was reported that when the family vacationed in Hawaii, he went to visit grandma but the daughters did not see her. What type of person would prevent grandma from seeing her granddaughters?? A question of character there IMO.
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