I haven’t written much about the latest round of efforts to “prove” that Barack Obama is Constitutionally ineligible to be President of the United States because he isn’t a “natural born” American citizen, mostly because the arguments being advanced by the people making those arguments are as baseless as they were when I wrote about them back in August.
Now, though, two of those cases, including one that was dismissed by a Pennsylvania Federal District Court Judge right before Election Day, are before the Supreme Court:
When the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court meet on Dec. 5th, in their regular private conference to decide which cases to hear, two lawsuits that have captivated a segment of the blogosphere will be up for discussion.
Both urge the court to consider claims that President-elect Obama is not qualified to be president, because he is not a natural-born American citizen.
Persistent concerns about the qualifications of both major party candidates rank among the oddest aspects of 2008’s historic campaign.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution provides that “No person except a natural born citizen” is eligible to be president. John McCain’s status was questioned because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone and various theories have been advanced to cast doubt on Obama’s.
Lawsuits over the inclusion of their names on state general-election ballots popped up around the country and were quickly dispensed with by local courts. But two challengers have pursued their cases to the Supreme Court.
Pennsylvania lawyer Philip Berg claims that the circumstances of Obama’s birth are vague and that he may have been born in Kenya. Obama’s mother, Berg asserts, later flew to Hawaii to register the birth.
Leo Donofrio, a New Jersey lawyer, contends that election officials in his state failed to ensure that only legally qualified candidates were placed on the ballot. Obama may have been born in the United States, Donofrio argues, but “natural born” status depends on both parents being American citizens. Obama’s father was Kenyan.
Several bloggers seem to think that there is something extraordinary going on in the fact that the Supreme Court has taken these cases. As Eugene Volokh notes, however, there really isn’t any news here:
[T]he Court did not tell President-Elect Obama anything; the Supreme Court is not “ruling” on the subject except insofar that it has a certiorari petition before it (like thousands of certiorari petitions are filed before it each year); and Justice Souter has not agreed to anything. The docket sheet makes clear that all we have is a filed petition, a filed application for a preliminary injunction that was denied by Justice Souter, and a “[r]esponse due December 1, 2008″ — a notation that simply marks the date by which any response should be filed, and imposes no obligation on anyone to file a response. Anyone can file a petition. All we have here is action by some litigants, not by Justice Souter.
And the situation is similar in the Donofrio case:
[T]his other case simply involves an application for a stay denied by Justice Souter, refiled and resubmitted to Justice Thomas, and referred to the Court by Justice Thomas — something that is not uncommon, to my knowledge, with second stay requests, and that generally leads to a prompt denial by the Court at the relevant conference (in this instance, the December 5 conference). Search for “referred to the court denied” & date(> 1/1/2000) in Westlaw and you’ll find 782 such instances this decade; “referred to the court granted” date(> 1/1/2000) yields only 60, which should tell you how little you can read into the fact of the referral.
So, when you read something over the next few days breathlessly telling you that the Supreme Court is about to prevent Barack Obama from taking office, just ignore it.
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December 1st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
“Dirty Pool” at the Supreme Court apparently on behalf of Obama currently usurping YOUR Constitution: Leo Donofrio’s companion case, brought by Cort Wrotnowski, with fuller/better briefing showing Obama is not an Article II “natural born citizen” reportedly has been sidetracked to the anthrax lab to deprive the full Court from seeing those filings in connection with Donofrio’s case this Friday, Dec 5, 2008. DO SOMETHING AMERICA!!!
December 1st, 2008 at 9:24 pm
Ted,
Seriously, what are you smoking and is it legal ?
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:39 pm
On the contrary, I think you must consider all the cases that are being filed but more importantly, the fact that the Donofrio case is going to conference before SCOTUS is significant. I don’t think Justice Thomas would waste the Courts time if he didn’t think there was some merit to the case.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
David,
Read what Professor Volokh wrote, and then think for a second.
The conference on 12/5 isn’t anything extraordinary, but merely exactly what would happen to any case filed in the manner that Donofrio’s was.
I’m willing to bet that the Supreme Court will not accept Donforio’s appeal, or the one in Berg’s case.
December 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
This is all so silly. Why doesn’t Obama just show his birth certificate? Why has he spent millions in legal fees to avoid showing his birth certificate?
If there is nothing to hide, show it!
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Doug, I think you are missing the whole point here. If the US Constitution is not upheld in THIS instance, then what do we have to rely on as a basis for our laws?
I mean seriously dude. The onus is on OBAMA to prove to ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ that he is eligible to hold the office of POTUS…NOT for US to PROVE HE ISN’T!
…BUT, that what it come down to, huh? It’s no wonder then, that ALL these seemingly ‘thown out’(on technicalities) lawsuits are coming up through the court system to the US Supreme Court.
Don’t you think that there is at least a little ‘merit’ to ANY of these cases…think about it!!
…and then go drink some more ‘kool aid’
December 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Paul,
Obama has provided all the proof he needs to. The evidence to the contrary is entirely unpersuasive and considering that it’s being advanced by tin-foil hat morons like Philip Berg (who is a 9/11 Truther, by the way), it’s not really worthy of consideration.
I’m just hoping that a Federal Judge somewhere imposes serious sanctions on the morons who filed these lawsuits
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Obama has put forth only a “Certification of live birth”, which is NOT A Birth Certificate!
After months and months of unrequited requests, the Obama campaign did finally present a document which they claimed validated his eligibility (per the Constitution of the Unted States, Article II, Section I) as a “Natural born citizen” to have his name on the ballot in contention for the office of the President of the United States of America.
However, what the Obama campaign supplied was not, in fact, a “birth certificate”. What they supplied was actually a “Certificate of Live Birth.” There is a major difference between a “birth certificate” and a “Certificate of Live Birth.”
Aside from the level of detail differentiating the documents (hospital of record, doctor, height, weight, etc) - in the state of Hawaii, one authenticates natural born citizenship, and the other doesn’t. This part is important; - it has nothing to do with tin foil hats.
Per the State of Hawaii’s Department of Health, “Amended certificates of birth may be prepared and filed with the Department of Health, as provided by law, for 1) a person born in Hawaii who already has a birth certificate filed with the Department of Health or 2) a person born in a foreign country.” (For citation purposes, please feel free to visit their site: http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/vital-records/index.html).
The “Certificate of Live Birth” provided by Obama, is in fact, a derivative of the “Amended certificates of birth” they site. Why is that important? Because of that second clause in the above citation. While you may show citizenship via such a document, you do not necessarily prove “natural born” citizenship. “Natural born citizenship” is what is required to be eligible to be considered for the Presidency, per the United States Constitution.
The form Obama posted wouldn’t even be acceptable to make an application in Hawaii’s Home Lands Program!
From: http://hawaii.gov/dhhl/applicants/appforms/applyhhl
In order to process your application, DHHL utilizes information that is found only on the original Certificate of Live Birth, which is either black or green. This is a more complete record of your birth than the Certification of Live Birth (a computer-generated printout). Submitting the original Certificate of Live Birth will save you time and money since the computer-generated Certification requires additional verification by DHHL.
THIS is a HI Birth Certificate:
http://snarkybytes.com/?p=521
And this is the Certificate of Live Birth posted on Obama’s website:
http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate
Notice any differences?
Hospital of birth? Residence address of mother? Birthplace of parents? SIGNATURE OF ATTENDANT AT BIRTH?
What Obama has posted IS NOT A BIRTH CERTIFICATE!
There is a further complication, however. His subsequent adoption by Lolo Soetoro and resultant INDONESIAN citizenship is a bigger fly in his ointment. (I laugh whenever reference is made to “citizen of the WORLD’… Obama truly is a WORLD CITIZEN!)
Indonesia, at the time Obama lived there and was deemed an Indonesian citizen, did not recognize dual citizenship, and neither did the US recognize dual citizenship with Indonesia. Thus, whether he held dual citizenship with the US and Kenya, whether he was born in the US or Kenya, or even - as some suggest - CANADA, is irrelevant as the ONLY legitimate citizenship he held once his adopted father moved him to Indonesia was Indonesian! His US Citizenship would be forfeit!
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/breaking-photo-documents-barry-soetoro-indonesian/
Whether and when Barry Soetoro/Barack Obama might have regained US Citizenship thereafter, it would be thru NATURALIZATION and that is SPECIFICALLY and EXPRESSLY ineligible to serve as President of the United States under Title II. (Could this be why he uses the politically risky name Barack Hussein Obama instead of the more innocuous “Barry Soetoro”? Perhaps Barry Soetoro is STILL an Indonesian citizen? Perhaps there are naturalization papers in the name of Barry Soetoro? I’m just asking…)
December 4th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
[...] that the legal and factual merit of these cases is pretty much non-existent, I fully expect that the Court will [...]
December 11th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Re: “What Obama has posted IS NOT A BIRTH CERTIFICATE!”
Who told you that? Go to a dictionary and look up “birth certificate.” Go to several dictionaries. All you will find is that it is an official document showing some details relevant to a birth, such as names of parents, date of birth and location of birth.
In Hawaii, the Department of Health issues the only legal birth certificates, and these days they issue only certifications of live birth (the computer-generated summary of the birth facts contained in the file in Hawaii). How do I know this? Because I have been in e-mail contact with them DOH, and they tell me that:
Quotes
It is possible that we have records with more information but we issue only certified computer-generated certificates with certain necessary information to confirm a birth. We are the only agency that issues certified birth records for Hawaii
Aloha,
(Name removed)
End Quote
That being the case, unless Obama has the original birth certificate from the time of his birth or the hospital birth document, all that he can get, and all that he has already shown, is the certification of live birth.
But no problem with that. The Certification of Live Birth is a legal birth certificate, used for getting drivers licenses and accepted by the US state department for issuing passports.
This fellow puts it very well:
A posting from Andrew Walden, publisher of the Hawaii Free Press, a right-wing blog based in Hawaii.
http://www.hawaiifreepress.com/main/ArticlesMain/tabid/56/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/92/Barack-Obama-Born-in-Hawaii.aspx
Barack Obama: Born in Hawai`i
by Andrew Walden
It is time to focus on REAL issues, not imaginary ones.
A fairly impressive internet industry has sprung up claiming that Obama was born in either Kenya or Indonesia. This is nonsense, which distracts from the broadly unexplored story of Obama’s upbringing. This kind of nonsense has emerged because the McCain campaign chose not to raise the many questions about Barack Obama’s numerous hard-left alliances. Barack Obama was born in Hawai`i, August 4, 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu.
Obama’s birth certificate posted online is exactly the same birth certificate everybody in Hawai`i gets from the State Department of Health. It is not forged. There is nothing unusual about the design or the texture. In addition to the birth certificate, the August 13, 1961 Honolulu Advertiser also carries an announcement of Obama’s birth. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin also carries the same announcement. Both papers require submission of a copy of the birth certificate to print a birth announcement.
End Quote
December 25th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
We WON! Finally we’re gonna see that cursed birth certificate!
January 5th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
The trouble with all of these arguments about the validity of Obama’s citizenship is quite simple. The people promulgating them for the most part are not trained to do legal research. Even without such training,the arguments are naive. Where is the hospital employee who searched the records and didn’t find a record of Obama being born at the hospital? (You know that someone has looked, hoping to find no record). Who has come forward and said, “Obama was not born in the USA?” Why has no one put forth an affidavit stating, “I was there when he was born?” If the arch conservatives on the court thought there was any merit to the cases, they would not have denied the petitions. By the way, where are the people who complain about the misuse of the court system when they are really needed?
Three strikes, YER OUT!
February 21st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
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