Can Lawyers Rely On Case Law Databases For Legal Research On Obama's Eligibility?

Leo Donofrio has made an interesting discovery in his futile effort to educate the American people about what it means to be a natural-born citizen. In the most direct case touching on the issue of what it means to be a natural-born citizen, Minor v. Happersett, the U.S. Supreme Court stated unequivocally that there was no doubt that a natural-born citizen as that term is used in our Constitution to ascertain a person's eligibility to serve as president means a child born within the United States to U.S. citizen parents. The decision, which also made clear that the term's meaning was not altered by the adoption of the 14th Amendment, raised doubts as to whether a child born within the U.S. to an alien parent could lay claim to natural-born citizen status. That's always been the rub for many of us who have questioned Barack Hussein Obama's eligibility to serve as president. Because his father was a Kenyan, a commonwealth of Great Britain at the time of his birth, Obama held dual citizenship at birth, a fact some legal scholars contend makes him ineligible to be president. What Donofrio has discovered is that Justia.com, an online legal search engine, has been concealing references to Minor v. Happersett in relative searches on the natural-born citizen topic. The online search resource has even removed references to the case in reported Supreme Court decisions. Donofrio writes:

They are removing the case name “Minor v. Happersett” from other cases which quote Minor…AS TO THE CITIZENSHIP ISSUE.


For example, in Boyd v. Nebraska ex Rel. Thayer, 143 U.S. 135 (1892) we see the US Supreme Court, in a case on citizenship, quoting Justice Waite in Minor directly as precedent for his holding regarding US citizenship:

“As remarked by Mr. Chief Justice Waite in @ 88 U. S. 167:

‘Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these states when the Constitution of the United States was adopted became ipso facto a citizen — a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the persons associating together to form the nation, and was consequently one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship if they were.’ “

Notice how Justia has removed the case name, “Minor v. Happersett” from the citation in the case. They have actually re-written a Supreme Court case by leaving the case name out. I uploaded a current screenshot of the Justia Page for the BOYD case here. This is Orwellian in the extreme.

Now look at the same exact passage from the same exact case, but from a different link at the Find Law site:

“As remarked by Mr. Chief Justice WAITE in Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 167: ‘Whoever, then, was one of the people of either of these states when the constitution of the United States was adopted, became ipso facto a citizen,-a member of the nation created by its adoption. He was one of the persons associating together to form the nation, and was, consequently, one of its original citizens. As to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship if they were.’”  . . .
 
This 1892 US Supreme Court Case directly relies upon, and cites as precedent, the citizenship issues discussed by Chief Justice Waite in Minor. Such reliance is further Supreme Court proof that Minor is precedent. Justia appears to be attempting to rewrite history. I have screengrabbed this garbage and so should you. This is wrong, America. They are trying to wipe Minor off the books in order to protect Obama.


The Way Back Machine at the Internet Archive has a snapshot of the Justia page for Boyd from Feb. 19, 2008 which contains the full reference to Minor v. Happersett. And all prior snapshots at the Way Back Machine prior to Feb. 19, 2008 have the same correct reference. But then on October 2, 2008 the Justia page was edited to remove the reference to Minor v. Happersett . . .

This is now the second example I have seen in the last 24 hours where Justia is scratching out the case name, “Minor v. Happersett”, and simply leaving a link. There is another, yet more egregious instance which I picked up on last night. Before I bring that to your attention, here is the complete passage – not deceptively edited in any way – from POPE v. WILLIAMS, 193 U.S. 621 (1904), hosted by Find Law where Justice Waite and Minor v. Happersett are mentioned as to citizenship issues:


The privilege to vote in any state is not given by the Federal Constitution, or by any of its amendments. It is not a privilege springing from citizenship of the United States. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 22 L. ed. 627. It may not be refused on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, but it does not follow from mere citizenship of the United States. In other words, the privilege to vote in a state is within the jurisdiction of the state itself, to be exercised as the state may direct, and upon such terms as to it may seem proper, provided, of course, no discrimination is made between individuals, in violation of the Federal Constitution. The state might provide that persons of foreign birth could vote without being naturalized, and, as stated by Mr. Chief Justice Waite in Miner v. Happersett, 21 Wall, 162, 22 L. ed. 627, such persons were allowed to vote in several of the [193 U.S. 621, 633] states upon having declared their intentions to become citizens of the United States. Some states permit women to vote; others refuse them that privilege. A state, so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, might provide by its own constitution and laws that none but native-born citizens should be permitted to vote, as the Federal Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and the conditions under which that right is to be exercised are matters for the states alone to prescribe, subject to the conditions of the Federal Constitution, already stated; although it may be observed that the right to vote for a member of Congress is not derived exclusively from the state law. See Fed. Const. art. 1, 2; Wiley v. Sinkler, 179 U.S. 58 , 45 L. ed. 84, 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 17. But the elector must be one entitled to vote under the state statute. Id., Id. See also Swafford v. Templeton, 185 U.S. 487, 491 , 46 S. L. ed. 1005, 1007, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 783. In this case no question arises as to the right to vote for electors of President and Vice President, and no decision is made thereon. The question whether the conditions prescribed by the state might be regarded by others as reasonable or unreasonable is not a Federal one. We do not wish to be understood, however, as intimating that the condition in this statute is unreasonable or in any way improper.

Now look at the same exact passage from Justia which edits out the case name, “Minor v. Happersett” and it edits out more than half of the damn paragraph including that part which mentions Chief Justice Waite’s statements concerning citizenship from Minor:

The privilege to vote in any state is not given by the federal Constitution, or by any of its amendments. It is not a privilege springing from citizenship of the @ 88 U. S. 491. In this case, no question arises as to the right to vote for electors of President and Vice President, and no decision is made thereon. The question whether the conditions prescribed by the state might be regarded by others as reasonable or unreasonable is not a federal one. We do not wish to be understood, however, as intimating that the condition in this statute is unreasonable or in any way improper.

What the hell is going on? Where did the rest of the paragraph go? Here is a link to the current screenshot of the Justia page for the Pope case. This is actually frightening. And it is more proof than anyone needs to see that Minor v. Happersett is scaring the crap out of Obama supporters. These are United States Supreme Court cases being edited/revised to protect Obama.

The history of these revisions is also documented at the Way Back Machine which contains a snapshot of the Pope case at Justia dating from November 13, 2006… and guess what – that snapshot contains the entire passage. Then on July 25, 2008, the Way Back machine shows that Justia.com edited the page for the Pope case again.

Justia.com edited their page for the Pope case to erase the references to Minor and citizenship. So, again, it appears that the Obama team were way ahead of us on this. This is direct evidence that somebody with a very sharp legal mind ordered these revisions at Justia… ALL THE WAY BACK IN 2008.

Justia.com is the main resource on the web for all things related to United States Supreme Court holdings. And this may, in fact, be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It’s the cover up that tends to bring down tyrants more often than not. These revisions did not happen – just prior to the 2008 election – by accident.

THIS MUST BE INVESTIGATED.

Justia's website also devotes much more attention to focusing those who attempt to use the site as a research tool on the natural-born citizen requirement to the question of Sen. John McCain's eligibility to be president, with several articles doubting his eligibility because he was born to two U.S. citizens in Panama while his father was stationed at a naval base there during his service in the U.S. Navy. Some commenters on Donofrio's blog notes that Justia's founder, Tim Stanley, is a big Obama supporter.

Even Congress has engaged in the cover up. A memorandum that was prepared for members of Congress discussing the natural-born citizenship debate makes absolutely no mention of the Minor v. Happersett decision, even though it is binding precedent for establishing the meaning of what the term means in the context of the constitutional eligibility requirement for presidential candidates. The memorandum is extremely misleading and chalked full of factual misstatements on the law in this area, including the repeated blurring of the distinction between a citizen and a natural-born citizen. Naturally, the document casts more doubt on McCain's eligibility--perhaps saved only by an Act of Congress, while giving the green light to Obama's eligibility. Perhaps the only thing of meaning that can be found in the memorandum is its admission that there is absolutely no federal or state law that provides a mechanism for vetting or requiring candidates for president to produce proof of their constitutional eligibility before assuming the office of the presidency. The congressional memorandum contains this bald-faced lie relying on a misinterpretation of another Supreme Court decision, Wong Kim Ark, involving a case where a child born on U.S. soil to foreign parents was found to be a citizen by virtue of the 14th Amendment:

The court thus implicitly adopted a meaning of the term “natural born Citizen” in the presidential eligibility clause which would include not only the narrow “common law” (based on apparent British common law) and the later United States constitutional designation for 14th Amendment purposes, that is, one born “in” the United States (jus soli), but also the statutory designation by Congress of one entitled to U.S. citizenship “at birth” or “by birth” transmitted from one’s parent or parents (jus sanguinis).

Donofrio has provided an excellent analysis here explaining why Minor v. Happersett, which was the first Supreme Court decision to hold that women were equal to men as citizens of the United States, is the only binding precedent we currently have upon which to rely on the meaning of the term natural-born citizen. The case is often misunderstood because it did not confer the right to vote for women, a right the U.S. Constitution extended only to men prior to the adoption of the 19th Amendment.

UPDATE: A story in the Boston Globe today gives new meaning to Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father. If it had been up to his bigamist father from Kenya, Barack Obama, Sr., our illegitimate president would have been put up for adoption through the Salvation Army:

In the spring of 1961, President Obama’s father revealed a plan for his unborn son that might have changed the course of American political history.

The elder Barack H. Obama, a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife. When he was questioned by the school’s foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya. Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child - who would be called Barack Obama II - Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption.

“Subject got his USC wife ‘Hapai’ [Hawaiian for pregnant] and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,’’ according to a memo describing the conversation with Obama written by Lyle H. Dahling, an administrator in the Honolulu office of what was then called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Obama, the Subject, and his USC, or United States citizen, wife, obviously, did not put their baby up for adoption. Whether the young couple actually considered such a step, or the elder Obama made the story up in order to appease immigration officials who at the time were considering his request for an extension of his stay in the United States, is unclear. Family members on both sides of the marriage now say they never heard any mention of adoption.

But his statement provides a unique glimpse into the relationship between the president’s parents and the fragility of his connection to the father whom he would little know . . .