Sunday, October 05, 2008

Berg Promises To Take Obama Challenge To Supreme Court If Necessary

It's a basic requirement of our U.S. Constitution that a president be a "natural born citizen" in order to qualify to hold our nation's highest office. Less than thirty days before our national election, Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee are fighting legal efforts by a prominent, Democratic Pennsylvania attorney to compel Obama to prove he satisfies the basic constitutional requirement. Philip J. Berg filed a lawsuit in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania almost two months ago claiming that Obama is not a "natural born citizen" within the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. Berg has offered to drop his lawsuit if Obama would simply produce the requisite proof he has requested. Obama and the DNC, instead, have sought to have his lawsuit dismissed. Berg insists that a birth certificate posted online by the Obama campaign is a forged document based upon the analysis of it by several document experts. World Net Daily's Drew Zahn writes:

Berg told WND the longer the DNC tries to ignore his lawsuit or make it go away – instead of just providing the documents – the more convinced he is that his accusations are correct.

Despite assertions by the Washington Post, FactChecker.org and other organizations that Obama has produced a certified Hawaiian birth certificate, Berg told WND he
remains "99.99 percent sure" that the certificate is a fake and he wants a court, not a website, to determine its validity.

Earlier last week, lawyers for Obama and the DNC filed a joint motion to dismiss Berg's lawsuit. The fact that the DNC joined in the dismissal request has Berg fuming, believing his party's leaders have ignored his pleas for proof in order to favor their chosen candidate over a rank-and-file constituent.

"I think it's outrageous," Berg said. "The Democratic National Committee should be
ensuring the Democratic Party and the public that they have a qualified candidate up there. To file a joint motion is like they're in cahoots.

"Since then, I have asked by way of press release that Howard Dean resign, because (the DNC members) are not fulfilling their duties," Berg said.

"The DNC has a responsibility to all Democrats in this country to make sure that all of their candidates are properly vetted and properly qualified," Berg added. "I think
it's really an outrage to the 18-plus million people who voted for Obama and the people who donated more than $425 million to him under false pretenses."

Berg thinks our current process for electing a president is flawed because there is no check in the current system to ensure that a candidate for president is actually a "natural born citizen." The real outrage is that there's nothing in our system that provides that a candidate must provide that his qualifications are true and correct before he or she runs, and that safeguard should be put into our system by law," Berg said. Berg said he is prepared to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

The Obama campaign now acknowledges that Obama was a citizen of Kenya under that nation's laws until he reached the age of 21 because of his father's Kenyan citizenship. Obama's school records from Indonesia also list him as being an Indonesian citizen, suggesting that Obama may have held citizenship to no fewer than three different countries at the same time. Obama's current Indonesian citizenship status is unknown. It is absolutely astounding that this profound issue has received virtually no coverage by the mainstream media. The Clinton campaign made a disastrous decision in refusing to press this issue during this year's primary campaign. The McCain campaign is now repeating that same mistake. Americans will likely go to the polls on election day having no idea what Obama's true citizenship status is. A permanent resident in the U.S. seeking to become a U.S. citizen is required to furnish a number of documents to the government, take an exam and submit to an interview in order to qualify for naturalization. A candidate for president is required to produce no evidence of his citizenship status before taking the oath of office for the most powerful job in the world. How frightening.

13 comments:

Gary R. Welsh said...

The Obama hit people will not be allowed to post their typical nasty comments, accusing anyone who says anything they don't like about Obama of being a racist bigot. This blog has registered more traffic recently than at any point in its existence. You Obama people can do all you want to trash me. It won't work. I'm not letting up on telling the people the truth about Obama. The mainstream media may have chosen to commit journalistic malpractice this presidential election, but blogs like this one will not dodge the issues the American people must be told about.

Chris Worden said...

AI:

The Constitution requires only that the president be a "natural born" citizen. If Obama was born in Hawaii, is he not a "natural born" citizen? (Basically, I'm trying to find out if you believe he is lying about being born in Hawaii, or if you are using some "technical argument" to contend that Obama has citizenship in multiple countries, which somehow makes him NOT a "natural born" citizen, despite the fact he was, ya know, actually natural born).

If it's the latter, I'm amused because you have repeatedly bashed Obama for getting a political opponent disqualified for not complying with Illinois election laws. You're either eligible to serve, or you're not, right?

But the more important question is this: if your party REALLY believes Obama cannot serve as president, why didn't the RNC file a lawsuit? I'm thinking they don't traffic in conspiracy maybe.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Chris, You obviously don't understand the meaning of "natural born citizen". It does not mean born on U.S. soil. It is loyalty and allegiance to the United States. Quoting Justice Swayne from a precedent-setting case, U.S. v. Rhodes, explaining Article II: “All persons born in the Allegiance of the King are Natural- Born subjects, and all persons born in the Allegiance of the United States are Natural-Born Citizens. Birth and Allegiance go together. Such is the Rule of the Common Law, and it is the Common Law of this Country…since as before the Revolution.” People who have had citizenship in another country are not eligible because they have had allegiance to another country.

Lawyer said...

If the Republicans thought this argument had merit, then there would be lawsuits filed across the country. Early on, the web abounded with rumors that the Republicans had documentation regarding Obama's citizenship and it never materialized.

Berg is a flake and it is time to give-up on this baseless argument.

Go Obama/Biden!

Chris Worden said...

AI:

I know you use Wikipedia as a reference, and it had an interesting note on "natural born citizen." It says the idea for a restriction came from John Jay, who wrote:

"Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen."

Respectfully, if Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, he's more an of "American" than John McCain, who wasn't even born in the United States. In fact, only by an act of Congress is John McCain a citizen of the United States.

But what I noticed is you still didn't answer my question. If Obama was born in Hawaii, does that end your claim, or are you contending has dual citizenship (which he never did anything to acquire) to make him ineligible to serve as our President.

Gary R. Welsh said...

You are completely misreading Jay's comment, Chris. Even if Obama was physically born in Hawaii, it is still possible for him not to be a natural born citizen because of his citizenship in other countries, particularly the Indonesian citizenship his mother consented to him acquiring, along with the changing of his name from Obama to Soetoro, suggesting an adoption by his Indonesian step father. Obama will not even provide the original birth certificate to clear up the issue of whether he was actually born outside the U.S. and his mother later registered his birth in Hawaii.

Gary R. Welsh said...

And the McCain birth in the Panama Canal Zone while his Navy admiral father was in service to his country is a non-starter. The founders made clear that in the case of military and ambassadors stationed overseas in service to their country their natural born status could not be questioned.

M Theory said...

Gary & Readers:

I caught someone posting nasty comments to the HFFT blog (which I went ahead and published) all last week. On Friday, I traced the comments via our stat tracker to a U.S. Congressional office!

I wrote about it last night on the blog. I encourage everyone to go read about it and spread the word. I would love for the media to get a hold of it because the nasty comments were coming during the week that Congress computer bandwidth and phone lines were jammed.

Here's a link:
http://hoosiersforfairtaxation.blogspot.com/2008/10/harassing-intimidating-comments-on-this.html

bobisimo said...

As said, McCain has no problems, although wikipedia makes it sound like it has nothing to do with the founders:

They state that "Although the Panama Canal Zone was not considered to be part of the United States,[6] federal law states: 'Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.'[7] The law that conferred this status took effect on August 4, 1937, one year after John McCain was born — albeit with retroactive effect, resulting in McCain being declared a U.S. citizen.[8]"

Reading over the wikipedia page on natural-born citizens, I don't see any reference to Obama having problems, or any reason not to believe ipopa's assertions:

"All persons born in the United States, except those not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government (such as children of foreign diplomats) are citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. Persons born in the United States, and persons born on foreign soil to two U.S. parents, are born American citizens and are classified as citizens at birth under 8 USC 1401."

They even go on to reference a candidate for the republican party who was born in Mexico, because it fits what's written above:

"George Romney, who ran for the Republican party nomination in 1968, was born in Mexico to U.S. parents. ... Romney was 32 years old when he arrived in Michigan."

The article does go on to suggest that because there's not a bazillion clauses there is some argument - but even there the thought is that only citizens born within the US can be natural born.

Berg keeps saying that he wants the constitution enforced, and I don't see how that isn't the case. :\ Even at his site, it seems like he's saying that if Obama's birth certificate is accurate, then there's no issue. His problem seems to be that there is evidence to suggest that his certificate is a forgery.

bobisimo said...

I know a lot of what I wrote, you wrote your article. I had no issues with the article so my intent was to respond to the comments between AI and ipopa.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Berg arguably talks out of both sides of his mouth in his lawsuit. Unfortunately, he hasn't really bothered to research the law much. He, instead, has relied upon what others have written on the Internet. As I previously said, if he was going to make the case that the birth certificate was forged in his lawsuit, he should have included an affidavit from one of the document experts who concluded that. He confuses that issue with the constitutional requirement. That's really a lesser important issue than the multiple citizenship issue and what that means to Obama's "natural born" status. There is one thing for certain. The government of Indonesia has a lot of records on him and knows his status there. If Obama does not want us to know what's in those records, then he is subject to blackmail by one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. The same is true in the case of Kenya. If the government there knows something he is not telling us, then there is a risk of him being blackmailed.

bobisimo said...

Well, I hope Berg wins the case - regardless. I'm really curious to find out what happens if Obama isn't eligible and/or if it turns out that Obama is indeed hiding something.

And you almost have to assume something fishy is going on; I don't understand why Obama is dragging on this one at all. I mean, this isn't the police coming to his house and demanding him to let them snoop without a warrant. This isn't a violation of his rights.

The constitution has a few clear (I think) requirements for a candidate. If he wants to run, I'd think he'd need to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he's eligible. Yeah, you can say he just needs to prove it to the parties, but I don't truly trust either of them and besides, isn't the constitution for us, the people?

So yeah, here's hoping Berg can get this figured out one way or the other.

Becca said...

You might want to check this out..

http://glnnflwrs.blogtownhall.com/2008/11/08/scotus_orders_obama_to_produce_birth_certificate_by_dec_1.thtml