UPDATE: See the updates below. What appeared to my inexpert eyes to be an order (on account of saying ORDER and having the Judge's name on it) is not, in fact, an order according to Valerie. I've left the original text of the post unaltered, in recognition of my error (which I regret most deeply).
A much remarked, minor story in this election was the question of Senator Obama's birth certificate. We've all ignored it, except to try to shoot it down, because it sounded like a wacko conspiracy theory; and anyway, the campaign produced a birth certificate.
In ignoring this story, we may have made an error. Some of you will recall that the issue arose briefly a little while ago when a Clinton camp supporter filed a suit demanding that Sen. Obama produce various documents to prove that he is able to run for the Presidency.
US Federal District Court Judge R. Barclay Surrick has denied Sen. Obama's motion to dismiss the suit, and has ordered him to produce a certified copy of the original long version of his birth certificate. Presumably, Sen. Obama will comply.
However, the judge's order also states that, according to the law in effect in 1967, Sen. Obama lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. He has therefore also ordered Sen. Obama to produce a certified copy of his Certification of Citizenship and a certified copy of his Oath of Allegiance.
These must be produced within three days of the order, which was dated 29 September, 2008 -- I think that means, "tomorrow."
UPDATE: As I look at the document more closely, I realize that I may be using the wrong terminology -- I am not a lawyer, so I'm not sure if the whole document is the 'order' or if just the first page is the 'order.' I'll gladly accept corrections for any errors arising from my inexpertise in legal matters.
UPDATE: Valerie, in the comments, says that this is not an order, but a draft of an order showing what the plantiff would like such an order to look like. I'm going to assume she knows better than I do.
That's insane. How on earth would we deal with a non US citizen running for president? It's pretty clear Obama is an American, but still...
BTW: Sorry about the stolen identity, I had forgotten there was a poster using the grim handle. No harm was intended.
I have no idea. I mean, I never contemplated that there was anything to the story. I haven't wargamed this chain of events at all.
Oh, and no offense taken. I could tell from your posts that you were sincere. :)
I didn't even know that could happen.
What law is this, exactly?
Read the order at the link, and you'll understand as much as I do myself right now.
The order is a draft submitted by the plaintiff, along with the brief that sets out the reasons the order should be signed. The order is not signed, so this is no indication of what the judge did after he read the briefs.
This document does not show what, if anything, the judge has done in response to the motion to dismiss.
I am not familiar with the database, but it looks to me like the last item was filed September 29th, and the judge has not yet ruled.
Are you a lawyer, Valerie? Can you help me understand what I'm reading?
I'm finding no discussion of the issue at all in the press. Currently the Google News page for Berg v. Obama shows no story in the American press on the subject since the 26th, which is just a blog entry that mentions in passing that they filed a motion to dismiss.
I certainly accept that -- not being a lawyer -- I am at a serious disadvantage in trying to understand what these things are. I just wonder why it's being left to citizens like myself to try and muddle through. Is there no one who is interested enough in the subject to explain the issues, or to follow the case? It doesn't look like there's even a local newspaper reporter trotting out to the court to file reports on it, let alone a legal analyst who could tell us if the claims about the law could possibly be true (as Marcus said, I've never even heard of this concept before).
I'd greatly appreciate any insight (other than, 'Non-lawyers shouldn't write about the law'; I would be glad to defer to someone else, if there's someone better, but right now there seems to be no one at all).
Oops! I did not see the line, there.
First reaction: Why is Wikipedia cited in the order?
Grim: I started reading the complaint on the website and frankly it does not strike me as presenting credible arguments. Or if there are any, they are hidden by allegations like the Wikipedia entries in Italian and English give different locations for Obama place of birth.
I've Googled around a bit more, outside of the news section and on the internet generally, and I can't find anywhere that anyone has discussed the issues raised by the case -- except on dedicated anti-Obama pages. The few articles I can find from when the case was filed just mention the familiar, long-debunked birth certificate issues, which may mean that these claims are new.
I've made my feelings about the Senator clear, but I have also defended him when I feel he is right (as just the other day on the 'civilian expeditionary force'), and against slanders of various kinds, both on blogs and via emails. As you all know, there are a lot of those going around, and I try to set people straight when they send me something that's wrong.
Certainly I want to see the Senator defeated, and I deeply believe he would be a disaster for the country. Certainly I don't believe he's a very good man, or has been at all decent in any of his previous jobs; but leaving that aside, I think it's important for the country that he be beaten (if he is) based on the truth.
So, when I got this link in an email from a friend, and went and looked at it to see what it was this time -- and it gives every appearance to the untrained eye of being a court order from a Federal judge. I don't know what to make of the claims raised. I've read enough about the birth certificate issue to know it's a nonstarter, but this whole other issue is out of the blue.
When it appeared that a sitting judge had endorsed these claims, I was a little astonished. Well, more than a little.
I would have been more than a little astonished as well, if a sitting judge decided to even touch this.
Well, as I said, I was told to expect a court order by a friend, it looks like every court order I ever saw, and I was able to confirm that it was posted on a website that was a legitimate handler of legal documents. It's my mistake not to know the difference between a real order and a draft order, and not to be aware that anyone besides the judge or his staff would compose a draft order. That arises from my not being a lawyer.
If I had realized it was not actually written by the Judge or his staff, but only by the plantiff in this case, I would never have posted it. I was only interested because it looked like someone serious was taking a claim I had long ago dismissed with a genuine seriousness of purpose. I didn't understand it was just the original lawyer asking for a ruling. I apologize, again, for the error.
The issue is serious enough. Obama visited Pakistan in his 20th year on an Indonesian passport, for which he would have to be (still) an Indonesian citizen (resulting from childhood adoption by an Indonesian step-father.) To "rehabilitate" his American citizenship, he would have had to swear an Oath of Allegiance before an authorized official (like a judge) before the end of his 21st year. No evidence is extant that he ever did so.
Oops.
Grim: No reason to beat yourself up. I thought the fact that a lawsuit had been filed was interesting in and of itself.
And I didn't realize a similar lawsuit had been filed against McCain because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The McCain lawsuit was dismissed on the grounds that a citizen does not have standing to challenge whether a candidate is a natural born citizen. Obama is asking for the same result. Also, a lawsuit claiming Bush and Cheny were inhabitants of the same state was dismissed eight years ago.
I think these are good results. If people think that McCain or Obama have divided loyalties, I would encourage them to vote against that candidate.
Is there no one who is interested enough in the subject to explain the issues, or to follow the case?
Sure. They're just not journalists, because journalists run in excess 90% Democratic.
I think these are good results.
They are terrible results. Clauses of the Constitution should not live or die based on whether judges think them good policy, and should not be rendered moot by denying everybody who might want them enforced to lack standing.
If McCain is elected, he will be my President. That's enough to give me standing to complain about his being elected in violation of the Constitution. If I must live under a law, it's enough to give me standing to complain that it was adopted unconstitutionally.
This is of a par with the courts' refusal to enforce the Constitution's quorum requirements, their refusal to enforce the requirement that the same language must be passed by both houses for a bill to become law, or any of the other 'trivial' procedural rules the courts have been refusing to enforce. It's the Constitution's death by a thousand cuts.
For PD Shaw at #16, Sen McCain was born in the PCZ as a result of his father, a serving USN officer be stationed there. There is no doubt about McCain being a native born American, or if there is, every child of US service personnel, of diplomatic personnel born other than on US soil, is not an American citizen.
Tell that to the thousands of people born in the Phillipines, Japan, Korea, Panama Canal Zone, Gitmo, various parts of Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, the Pacific as a result of their parents' serving their country.
What kind of bogus BS is this? First that IG report with corrupto "Qualcomm John Shaw" as the author trying to smear Obama on some "guilt by having met someone" issue, and now this lawsuit based on rumors by Berg.
I hope someone has complained to the Penn. bar about Berg - the "facts" and "law" which this lawsuit is based on should earn him disbarment.
#20:
Berg actually once tried to get the pro-Bush SCOTUS justices disbarred following Bush v. Gore. He's also sued to try and force the government to admit it was behind 9/11.
Like I said, if I had understood he had drafted this, I would never have linked to it. I only did so because I thought the judge, having looked at it, decided it was serious enough to consider. As I said in #2, I never contemplated that there could be anything to this (and therefore was shocked to believe, erroneously as it turns out, that a Federal judge thought otherwise).
#16 / #18:
I think I agree with #18: it may be that it's not reasonable to say that just anyone can challenge your citizenship, just because that could lead to like 50 million separate lawsuits v. Obama or McCain. At the same time, though, somebody should be in charge of establishing -- for the record, according to official documents -- that the Constitutional provision is upheld.
It bothers me that this isn't being done. The Constitution sets a very low bar here: a certified birth certificate would satisfy both of the requirements (natural born citizenship, age 35). It should be a normal part of the process to prove, at an early stage, that you qualify. Someone -- a US attorney? A Federal Court? -- someone should be in charge of doing this.
I don't really worry that Obama has divided loyalties as some people do. That doesn't strike me as the truth about him. What I worry is not that his loyalties are divided, but that he has no loyalty to anything at all. My only concern is that he could no more disown America's interests than he could his white grandmother.
Etc.
Still, a failure to have a capacity for loyalty to anything but yourself is not a disqualifying factor for the Presidency. As Mr. Shaw says, the right way to deal with that is to vote against him, not to sue him.
Berg is obviously a self-promoting nut. Being an allegedly bipartisan self-promoting nut does not make him a better or a lesser nut.
I believe the ethical rules for lawyers require some sort of sound factual basis for filing a lawsuit or making statements to a court. Legal arguments must be supported by citing a statute or case.
When your factual sources are Wayne Madsen repeating hearsay and Wikipedia, you do not meet the ethical standard. When you say without citation that "the law at the time" would have stripped Obama of US nationality when he moved to Indonesia as a small child, you are on questionable ethical grounds as a lawyer.
That's Berg - as I said, he should be sanctioned under the ethical rules, fined and reprimanded, suspended or disbarred.
When Grim repeats this crap, what does that say about him? I'm always suspicious of people who post crap, and when called on it, meekly assert that they merely made a mistake when they did no due diligence.
I did check to see that it was a legitimate legal document. I've admitted my mistake in not understanding that it was a draft of an order by the original lawyer, which is all a man can do. If it had been what it appeared to me to be, it would have been a very important story; but men make mistakes, myself not less than others. When that happens, it is important is to take responsibility for your errors, as I have tried to do here.
As for 'what it says about me,' it says that I didn't know how to tell the difference between a court order by a judge and a draft submitted by a lawyer. I regret that fact, but will learn the lesson for the future.
link
The doc you are referring to is a response not an order, however you you go back to the website and research OBAMA the case will come up, click on it and you should get a list of all the docs/motions etc. There has been an update click on #19 at the bottom. A Notice Of Motion to intervene has been filed on October 15th (see the court seal)basically Obama is not cooperating and did not supply the requested docs, this is a motion requesting the court intervene and order him to do so as to protect the rights of American voters etc.
All we can do is sit back and wait at this point. Also-there are other lawsuits popping up as well, Another person is suing their Secretary of State to either have his citizenship verified prior to election day or remove his name from the ballot in that state.
at this point, i'd have to question what he is hiding. if he is eligible to be president he should put a stop to this. I know I will not be voting for him because I feel we should not just "take a chance" with our country or our constitution.
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