OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL
Congress sued to remove
prez from White House
'Defendants had to ensure
the Constitution is upheld'
Posted: January 31, 2009
12:00 am Eastern
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
A new lawsuit is challenging Barack Obama's eligibility to be president, and this one targets Congress as a defendant for its "failure" to uphold the constitutional demand to make sure Obama qualified before approving the Electoral College vote that actually designated him as the occupant of the Oval Office.
The new case raises many of the same arguments as dozens of other cases that have flooded into courtrooms around the nation since the November election.
It is being brought on behalf of Charles F. Kerchner Jr., Lowell T. Patterson, Darrell James Lenormand and Donald H. Nelson Jr. and names as defendants Barack Hussein Obama II, the U.S., Congress, the Senate, House of Representatives and former Vice President Dick Cheney along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 193,000 others and sign up now!
As WND has reported, dozens of lawsuits have been filed over Obama's eligibility to assume the office of the president. Many have been dismissed while others remain pending.
The cases, in various ways, have alleged Obama does not meet the "natural born citizen" clause of the U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which reads, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."
Some of the legal challenges have alleged Obama was not born in Hawaii, as he insists, but in Kenya. Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.
Several details of Obama's past have added twists to the question of his eligibility and citizenship, including his family's move to Indonesia when he was a child, his travel to Pakistan in the '80s when such travel was forbidden to American citizens and conflicting reports from Obama's family about his place of birth.
Perhaps the most perplexing detail, however, has been Obama's refusal to allow the public release of a signed "vault" copy of his original birth certificate.
The new case was launched in New Jersey, and focuses on the alleged failure in Congress to follow the Constitution.
That document, the lawsuit states, "provides that Congress must fully qualify the candidate 'elected' by the Electoral College Electors."
In provides, the lawsuit said, "If the president-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the vice president elect shall act as president until a president shall have qualified."
"There existed significant public doubt and grievances from plaintiffs and other concerned Americans regarding Obama's eligibility to be president and defendants had the sworn duty to protect and preserve the Constitution and specifically under the 20th Amendment, Section 3, a Constitutional obligation to confirm whether Obama, once the electors elected him, was qualified."
"Congress is the elected representative of the American people and the people speak and act through them," the lawsuit said.
The defendants "violated" the 20th Amendment by failing to assure that Obama meets the eligibility requirements," the lawsuit said.
In the Russian publication Pravda, commentator Mark S. McGrew addressed the subject:
"The United States Congress is required, under the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, to count the Electoral College votes for president and vice president, ask if any member of Congress objects to the count and hear that Congressman's objection. This is under Title 3, Chapter 1, Section 15, 'Upon such reading of any such certificate of paper, the president of the Senate shall call for objections, if any,'" he wrote.
Several of the cases – including those brought by Orly Taitz, Cort Wrotnowski, Leo Donofrio and Philip Berg, already have been heard in conference at the U.S. Supreme Court, which has failed to have a hearing on any of the merits involved.
Taitz, in fact, is requesting information from the Supreme Court about a meeting eight of its justices held with Obama, a defendant in her case, before the justices reviewed the issues of the case in a private conference.
Several of the cases not scheduled for hearings at the Supreme Court still remain active at lower court levels, from which emergency requests to the high court were launched.
"I know that Mr. Obama is not a constitutionally qualified natural born citizen and is ineligible to assume the office of president of the United States," Berg said in a statement on his ObamaCrimes.com website.
"Obama knows he is not 'natural born' as he knows where he was born and he knows he was adopted in Indonesia; Obama is an attorney, Harvard Law grad who taught Constitutional law; Obama knows his candidacy is the largest 'hoax' attempted on the citizens of the United States in over 200 years; Obama places our Constitution in a 'crisis' situation; and Obama is in a situation where he can be blackmailed by leaders around the world who know Obama is not qualified," Berg's statement continued.
Go to WND for a partial list of pending cases. I have heard that there are now over 40 cases!
Article conclusion:
WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi had gone to both Kenya and Hawaii prior to the election to investigate issues surrounding Obama's birth. But his research and discoveries only raised more questions.
The biggest question was why, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists as his campaign has stated, Obama hasn't simply ordered it made available to settle the rumors.
The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?
Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born. There have been other allegations that Obama actually was born in Kenya during a time when his father was a British subject. A one point a Kenyan ambassador said Obama's birth place in Kenya already was recognized and honored.
Hat Tip: WorldNetDaily
*******
Update:
I have placed several helpful links in my sidebar under the title, "Why Natural Born Citizen For POTUS Matters."
The following are two comments that help to explain "natural born citizen" status requirement for POTUS in Section II, Article 1, clause 5 of the United States Constitution.
Quote:
There is a lot of fuzzy thinking in the legal opinions being rendered which seek to equate "Natural Born Citizen" of the Constitution's Article II, with the ever-changing "citizenship at birth" provisions of 8 U.S.C. 1401. This simplified analysis is to suggest that these terms should be seen as separate and distinct. The only way that Obama might claim he is a "Natural Born Citizen" is if his mother was, in fact, unwed at the time of his birth and he was, in fact, born in Hawaii or any other state where the U.S. has sole jurisdiction.
While his father might have "acknowledged" him, it would not have been enough under the British Nationality Act of 1948 to impart citizenship to him. That Act clearly had provision governing "legitimated children" which held that the offspring of British subjects would, even after birth, take claim to British citizenship rights effective with the date of the marriage.
Tracing NATURAL BORN CITIZENSHIP
Emerich deVattel's 1758 treatise "Law of Nations" can be proven to have been in extensive use by the framers from the time that they declared Independence up through the time they were drafting the Constitution (1787) and as per a letter from Benjamin Franklin to Charles Dumas, who had reprinted the treatise in 1774, thanking him for an additional copy and mentioning the uses to which copies were being put.
[blog.barofintegrity.us]
Here is that definition, as found in CITIZENS AND NATIONS chapter, paragraph #212, of de Vattel: "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society can not exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as a matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it."
The term "natural born citizens" was obviously meant to be defined differently that merely "citizens" since the Constitution uses the former term in describing part of what it takes to be eligible for POTUS, while it uses the latter term in carving out a "grandfathering clause" for the founding fathers and others born at the time of the Constitution's adoption (who would have been "natural born" as British subjects in colonial America pre-Revolution) and also in other Articles and clauses having a bearing upon "citizens" as solely such, including the requirement of only "citizenship" for those running for office in Congress.
Much is made of the 1790 law where "natural born citizen" again appears. The Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 (1 Stat. 103) provided, in part, that "the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens"
[memory.loc.gov]
This 1790 law is mentioned in the "research" put together by Laurence Tribe and Ted Olson which was intended to help John McCain argue his way out of his own ineligibility; and it was alluded to in the Senate Resolution 511 which Sen. McGaskill introduced with co-sponsors Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to assist McCain in April 2008, after the legally devastating (and probably accurate) research of Prof. Gabriel Chin had exposed the fact that McCain most likely wasn't even a citizen at birth, much less one who was natural born. How should the words "considered as" be interpreted? Are they to mean that only birth to two citizens is enough to make up the definition? Or, are they to be interpreted as having created an EXCEPTION and to have meant the children were to be treated as" natural born despite their manifest lack of a critical element: birth inside the country?
What got overlooked by Tribe-Olson and McGaskill, Clinton, Obama etc. was how short-lived the 1790 law was. It got repealed, and there may well have been a recognition that it had overstepped constitutional boundaries or that it created impermissible laxity for the one job where "natural born" criteria must be met -- POTUS. And so it was that the Naturalization Act of January 29, 1795 (1 Stat. 414) repealed and replaced the language of the Naturalization Act of 1790, so that the virtually identical sentence then read: "the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as Citizens." The two words NATURAL BORN were stripped out.
Flash forward into the 20th Century and one finds the case of Perkins v. Elg (1939) where female infant Elg is found, in the SCOTUS ruling (and not dicta), to be a "natural born citizen" because she was born in the U.S. (New York) of parents who were "then naturalized" as U.S. citizens. A layman reading the case might ponder if only the father was naturalized after the parents had emigrated from Sweden, since the factual recitation mentions that he became a U.S. citizen in 1906 and baby Elg was born in 1907 and no mention is made of the mother, other than that she was also a Swedish immigrant who returned to Sweden with the baby in 1911 while the father remained in the U.S. until the 1920's. But the court also states in the ruling that the parentS (plural) were "then naturalized" -- which prompts proper scholarship to do a look-up on
naturalization laws in effect. Prior to 1922, derivative citizenship was common and that was the case with Mr. and Mrs. Elg. The husband's naturalization operated to also "naturalize" the wife as a U.S. citizen.
For those who would argue that the definition of Natural Born Citizen has never been decided, or is somehow cloudy, the response should be: "No, it isn't. What more do you need than a U.S. Supreme Court ruling?"
Tracing CITIZENSHIP
Citizens are mentioned in the original Constitution. The power of Congress to devise a "uniform rule of Naturalization" to create citizenship is also one of the explicit functions laid out in the Constitution. Prior to the time that the 14th Amendment was passed, it was often the case that the individual states
established who constituted their citizens while the federal statutory schemes dealt with immigrants and periods of necessary residency (originally 2 years per the 1790 law, then 5 years per the 1795 law, and even 14 years per a 1798 law) prior to qualifying to "naturalize" -- along with protocols of giving prior notice of "intent" to naturalize. The aftermath of the Civil War found the Congress grappling with a situation that was unusual -- recognition of former slaves as citizens. It could not be argued that these former "non-citizens" were "immigrants" since they had been born on U.S. soil over many generations. And thus there arose the need to pass the 14th Amendment which defined the term "citizen" explicitly. All legislative enactments which further refine the terms for citizenship would appear to draw upon the 14th Amendment as their wellspring.
It is noteworthy, moreover, to find that the "subject to the jurisdiction" clause of the 14th Amendment found Native Americans excluded from citizenship despite their birth within the confines of the United States' borders, and by reason of their not meeting the terms of the "subject to the jurisdiction"
clause whose author described it in Senate debate as meaning "sole jurisdiction" and "sole allegiance." Tribal jurisdiction and allegiance was felt to be the kind of impermissible duality which excluded American Indians -- a situation which remained the case until 1924 when laws were passed that allowed Indians to become U.S. citizens.
If any of the "natural born" cases should ever reach a Court willing to rule on the merits, it is to be expected that those who would argue in favor of looser eligibility standards will trot out the statutes at 8 U.S.C. 1401 and claim that the statutory term "citizen at birth" is synonymous with "natural born citizen."
Those who would like to see the originally intended eligibility restrictions envisioned by the Framers enforced will argue that a "citizen at birth" is simply one form of a person able to take "citizenship" and that "natural born" has followed its own separate path of definitional integrity from 1787 into the 20th Century.
It is interesting to note that Barney Frank introduced a proposed Constitutional Amendment in 2000 to remove the "natural born" requirement for POTUS eligibility while, in 2003, and possibly with an eye to his friend John McCain's fragile eligibility problems (which were first brought to light in a 1998 item in the Washington Post, prior to McCain's first foray of 2000 into the GOP primaries),
Orrin Hatch introduced another proposed Amendment to remove the "natural born" restriction. Neither went anywhere.
Since Bobby Jindal will face the same impediment, this should serve as fair warning if the GOP trots him out as their candidate of choice. People who believe in "rule of law" and in the notion that Americans should be just as outraged by end-run games around the Constitution as they would be by an
alteration of the rules of baseball at the bottom of the 9th should be prepared to challenge Jindal or any candidate of any party who is simply NOT ELIGIBLE.
Or, if people believe it's time to let the voters decide based on the known public record of candidates, and some period of residency and naturalization sufficient to foster "attachment" to this country, then get busy and change the rules of "political baseball" the right way. Amend the Constitution.
Posted by: Forseti
Dec 30, 09:32 AM
Second comment - Quote:
Copied with permission from www.vibe.us
Mr. Obama claims that he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. As his only evidence that he meets the Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a President be a natural born citizen, he produced a document called a "Certification of Live Birth," which he posted on his website under the title: "Barack Obama's Official Birth Certificate."
At first blush, it is case closed. A closer examination of the facts, however, reveals that Mr. Obama failed to point out on his website that his posted "Official Birth Certificate," as he called it, is actually a 2007 computer-generated, laser-printed summary document of his 1961 birth record on file with the Hawaii State Department of Health. To date, he has refused to produce his 1961 birth record, despite numerous lawsuits (Keyes v. Bowen, Berg v. Obama, Donofrio v. Wells, and Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz).
To understand what this 1961 birth record is that he refuses to produce, one needs to understand Hawaiian "Birth Certificates." An analysis of Hawaiian Birth certificates is made in the Keyes v. Bowen lawsuit. Paragraph 75 of the Keyes complaint reads, in part:
In Hawaii, a Certificate of Live Birth resulting from hospital documentation, including a signature of an attending physician, is different from a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth. For births prior to 1972, a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth was the result of the uncorroborated testimony of one witness and was not generated by a hospital. Such a Certificate could be obtained up to one year from the date of the child's birth. For that reason, its value as prima facie evidence is limited and could be overcome if any of the allegations of substantial evidence of birth outside Hawaii can be obtained. The vault (long Version) birth certificate, per Hawaiian Statute 883.176 allows the birth in another State or another country to be registered in Hawaii. Box 7C of the vault Certificate of Live Birth contains a question, whether the birth was in Hawaii or another State or Country.
Therefore, the only way to verify the exact location of birth is to review a certified copy or the original vault Certificate of Live Birth and compare the name of the hospital and the name and the signature of the doctor against the birthing records on file at the hospital noted on the Certificate of the Live Birth.
To sum it up, Mr. Obama produced a 2007 computer-generated, laser-printed Certification of Live Birth (a summary), and posted it on his website. He called it his "Official Birth Certificate," but did not disclose that it derives from a 1961 birth record on file with the Hawaii State Department of Health. Furthermore, it is not yet publically known whether this Certification of Live Birth derives from a 1961 Certificate of Live Birth (resulting from hospital
documentation, including a signature of an attending physician), or a 1961 Certificate of Hawaiian Birth (result of the uncorroborated testimony of one witness and was not generated by a hospital, and could be obtained up to one year from the date of the child's birth). Moreover, Mr. Obama refuses to release this 1961 birth record to clear this up, despite numerous lawsuits asking him to do so. Furthermore, neither the FEC, the DNC, the RNC, nor any court in the United States has subjected his birth certificate evidence to any level of scrutiny. For all intents and purposes, they have just accepted the 2007 computer-generated, laser printout of the summary document Certification of Live Birth as conclusive evidence that he meets the Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a President be a natural born citizen.
Mr. Obama’s birth certificate does indeed call into question his eligibility to be President. However, the most important foundation question is what is any candidate's burden of proof that he meets the Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a President be a natural born citizen?
In determining which standard of proof applies, it important to remember that the goal is to set a stable standard of proof that ensures that, we the people, will get a qualified presidential candidate, now matter who he is, no matter
which party he is from, no matter what political climate dominates the times, and no matter in which election year he runs for office.
Turning now to the foundation question of what is any candidate's burden of proof that he meets the Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a President be a natural born citizen? Burden of proof refers to both the burden of production, and the burden of persuasion.
Burden of production is the obligation to come forward with evidence to support a claim. The burden of persuasion is the obligation to persuade the trier of fact of the truth of a proposition.
The answer to this burden of proof question lies with who has this burden of proof, the candidate, or the people? Allocating the burden of proof, ‘is merely a question of policy and fairness based on experience in the different situations."Keyes v. Sch. Dist. No. 1, 413 U.S. 189 (1973). The burdens of pleading and proof with regard to most facts have been and should be assigned to the plaintiff who generally seeks to change the present state of affairs and who therefore naturally should be expected to bear the risk of failure of proof or persuasion. 2 J. Strong, McCormick on Evidence §337, 412 (5th ed. 1999). Moreover, in most cases, the burden of proof rests on those who claim something exists.
It seems apparent that a presidential candidate is seeking to change the present state of affairs by wanting to become the new President. The candidate is also the one who is claiming that something exists, which in this case, is that he is a natural born citizen. Furthermore, he is also applying for a job. As such, the burden of proof rests on him.
It takes no stretch of the imagination to understand that it has been a commonly accepted and expected fair practice for any candidate applying for a job to produce evidence that he meets its eligibility requirements. Typically, he produces a resume, certified copies of education transcripts, documents his work history and residences since age 18, and, in cases of classified government jobs, submits to and produces without reservation, documentary evidence such as a birth certificate for use in an extensive and thorough background check. Since the greater includes the lesser, it follows then that a more important job, like being President, would include at least the aforementioned production of documentary evidence of sufficient persuasion. Arguably then, it follows that a presidential candidate has a similar burden of production and persuasion that he meets the eligibility requirements for President. To create a presumption of eligibility that shifts the burden of proof to the People would otherwise defeat the search for the truth about the candidate’s eligibility. This is especially true when the candidate locks down the evidence of his eligibility.
Once some evidence has been produced, the question becomes does the evidence submitted persuade the trier of fact that a candidate meets the natural born citizen requirement of Article II, Section 1, Clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution?
The degree of proof required depends on the circumstances of the proposition. In this case, the standard that applies should ensure that the candidate meets the eligibility requirements to be President of the United States.
The President of the United States is one of the three branches of government. He is the Executive branch. The nation speaks to all people through one voice, the President's. The President can make treaties, grant pardons, sign and veto legislation, appoint a Cabinet, as well as Supreme Court Justices. In addition to these duties, the President knows the nations' most important and secure secrets, and as the Commander in Chief of the military, has the military's nuclear launch codes at the ready, and who can arguably, either take steps to weaken the nation or even destroy it. In the words of Vice President Dick Cheney, "The president of the United States now for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. He could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen. He doesn't have to check with anybody. He doesn't have to call the Congress. He doesn't have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in."
So which burden of persuasion should apply to the evidence submitted by a President elect given the job for which he is qualifying? There are at least three major burdens of persuasion - preponderance of the evidence, clear and
convincing, and beyond a reasonable doubt. Let's examine each standard and choose the one that is best suited to ensure that only a qualified President elect becomes President.
Preponderance of the Evidence - (lowest level) This is the lowest standard of proof that uses a more likely than not test. The standard is met if the proposition is more likely to be true than not true. Effectively, the standard is satisfied if there is greater than 50 percent chance that the proposition is true. It is used in civil cases, e.g., personal injury lawsuits.
If this standard is accepted, then arguably the President elect will get the opportunity to prove that he meets the requirements to be President by a little more than the odds of a coin toss. Using this standard also seems to equate the importance of a candidate meeting the Constitutional requirements to become President with giving the right private litigant a chance at winning a lawsuit.
The ramifications and consequences of being wrong in each one are at opposite ends of the spectrum. This standard therefore does not seem high enough.
Clear and Convincing Evidence - (medium level) The person must convince the trier of fact that it is substantially more likely than not that the thing is in fact true. This standard of proof is used in termination of parental rights, and restraining orders, among other civil actions. This standard also does not seem high enough.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt - (highest level) The proposition being presented must be proven to the extent that there is no "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a reasonable person. This standard has been traditionally applied to criminal defendants to ensure that an innocent person is not deprived of his life or liberty. True, the Presidential candidate is not a criminal, but the justifications for applying the beyond a reasonable doubt standard are not for proving the guilt of a criminal defendant, but rather to ensure that an innocent person does not lose his life or liberty. Ensuring that these freedoms of life and liberty are given the highest protections rings throughout the justifications for the beyond a reasonable doubt standard being applied to presidential candidates so that the citizens do not lose their lives or liberties at the hands of an unqualified President. For the highest office in the land, and for arguably the most powerful leadership position in the world, it follows that the highest burden of proof that he is qualified to be President of the United States of America should be required of him.
At this point, I would like to conclude that the beyond a reasonable doubt standard should apply to the President elect, but unfortunately, I do not get to decide this issue. Who then, should determine which standard applies? Moreover, who gets to interpret it?
Should the states get to decide this question? If you look to state law for deciding which burden of persuasion applies, then a problem arises because one might foresee not all states using the same burden of persuasion. One might also expect to wind up to 50 different interpretations for each of the three burden of persuasion standards. This could result in as many as 150 different interpretations for the three standards. It's arguable then, that having as many as 3 different standards with up to 50 different interpretations of each one could lead to 150 different possible ways to qualify a presidential candidate.
Arguably, this outcome would favor some candidates over the others, with each election year providing for unequal treatment of the candidates depending upon from which state's record the each candidate seeks to establish his birth (or age), and resulting in unequal risk to the nation that an unqualified President would be elected.
Imagine if one state uses a preponderance of the evidence standard while the other state uses beyond a reasonable doubt standard. Who has the advantage here and what are the risks to the nation and its citizens? Let's assume that two states require clear and convincing evidence, but one state interprets clear and convincing to mean less than the other state's interpretation. The end result would be unequal treatment of the candidates resulting in different states having the power to gain an advantage over the other state's candidate by lessening or lowering the burden of persuasion and weakening its interpretation.
Furthermore, there would be an increased opportunity for planting fraudulent birth records in the states with the weakest burden of proof that have the highest incidents of uncontrolled illegal immigration.
So where does this leave us? Should each state decide what is their native candidate's burden of persuasion? Or should each state agree to have one standard for all candidates? Who gets to decide which standard applies, and who gets to interpret the standard?
Perhaps we should look to the federal courts to establish a standard instead? Keep in mind that the constitutional requirement to be a natural born citizen is a federal one. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution makes federal law the supreme law of the land. Furthermore, the office of President is one of the three federal branches of government. Perhaps that as such, there should be a federal standard of proof that ensures that only a candidate who meets the Natural Born Citizen requirement of the U.S. Constitution could become President.
Once again, problems arise. There are 13 federal circuit courts in the U.S. Each one could cause the same selection and interpretation problems that were just discussed with the states. Only this time, the candidates would get their advantage or disadvantage by being born in a particular circuit, thus making circuits more or less appealing to the candidates and their respective parties. Furthermore, circuits with a history of identification document fraud by foreign nationals might be more likely to erroneously qualify a foreign born national to be a Presidential candidate. Again, different circuit standards would result in unequal treatment of the candidates, and unequal risks to the nation that an unqualified candidate would become President.
Should we leave it to the Federal Election Committee (FEC)? No. The FEC filed a motion to dismiss in the Berg case admitting that it has no oversight over the Constitution's Presidential Qualifications Clause.
What about leaving it to the candidate’s respective party? Should such a bias organization decide the issue of their candidate’s eligibility? Allowing such a process would be tantamount to the fox guarding the henhouse.
What about leaving it to the Electors? Are they any less bias than their respective parties?
What about the United States Supreme Court? The first paragraph of their own website makes the following promise to the American People - “As the final arbiter of the law, the Court is charged with ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and, thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.”
If the Court has this duty to function as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution, then when must it act to qualify the President elect? Before, during or after the election? Should it be barred from deciding this issue
because of timing, i.e, the candidate has already won the election, so it’s too late? Perhaps we should turn to the 20th Amendment for guidance.
“If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.”
Section 3 of the 20th Amendment does allow for the possibility that a President elect might not qualify. The language of the Amendment suggests that the qualification period can come between the period when the candidate wins the election and when he is sworn in. As the guardian and interpreter of the
Constitution, it's arguable that the Court must scrutinize the President elect's natural born citizen evidence during this time period. If the Court, instead, turns a blind eye to it, then just who will be the judge of "if the President elect shall have failed to qualify,...?" Furthermore, what will be the fate of the Constitution, the Court, and the country if it is later discovered that Mr. Obama is not a natural born citizen? Will every treaty, law, military act become void ab initio? Will the nation be launched into a state of civil unrest and unyielding division?
As of this post, the Court has not granted a writ to hear the Berg v. Obama case. While we are waiting for this historic news, perhaps we should at least look at Mr. Obama's only submitted evidence of being a natural born citizen - the posted 2007 computer-generated laser-printed "Certification of Live Birth" on his website. So let’s review the facts and his evidence, and then apply the burdens of persuasion. I used my general interpretations of each burden of persuasion since there is no clearly defined one being applied by anyone else, anywhere.
Preponderance of the Evidence - No. What is a computer-generated printout like Obama's Certification of Live Birth? It is a hearsay document that is susceptible to the perils of computer viruses, trojans, spyware, hackers, and chain of custody issues? Read about Computer Records and the Federal Rules of Evidence on the Department of Justice's website.
Furthermore, since it is not clear from which 1961 document this printout derives from, the one with the doctor's signature and other traceable evidence (Certificate of Live Birth), or the one fraught with he potential for fraud, including registering an out of the country birth as an in state birth after the birth (Certificate of Hawaiian Birth), it's arguable that either source is no more likely than the other, so it does not appear to satisfy this more likely than not standard.
Clear and Convincing Evidence - No. If the Certification of Live birth doesn't satisfy the lesser burden of persuasion then it follows it can not satisfy this heightened one.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt - No. One would need to feign ignorance and act with the utmost bad faith to argue that a Certification of Live birth proves that he was born in Hawaii beyond a reasonable doubt. Furthermore, since it doesn't even satisfy the lesser burden of persuasion then it follows it can not satisfy this heightened one.
This is where the road to the White House should end for Mr. Obama. He can not meet any burden of persuasion for becoming President with only a 2007 computer-generated, laser-printed Certification of Live Birth. Unfortunately however, to date, not one single person or agency in the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches of government has subjected his Certification of Live Birth to any burden of persuasion scrutiny to determine if he meets the United States Constitution's natural born citizen requirement to be President.
I'll close this post with a quote: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Posted by: No Free Lunch
Dec 23, 02:26 PM/quote