Born in the USA

As of Monday December 8th, the Supreme Court has decided it is not going to entertain a case questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship and subsequent eligibility to serve as President of the United States. Obama’s campaign made his birth certificate public in June; the certificate shows Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii at 7:42 pm on August 4, 1961. The Hawaii Health Department Director, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, verified the birth certificate as real. Independent auditors from Factcheck.org, a non-partisan political website, examined the birth certificate and verified it was indeed valid.

Still, there are claims around the internet that the certificate is false, it doesn’t have a raised seal, it isn’t signed, etc. Conservative pundits are still to this day making claims Obama is not a citizen. Leo Donofrio, a retired attorney from East Brunswick, New Jersey claimed, “Since candidate Obama was born to a Kenyan father, he is not eligible to the office of the President since he is not a natural born citizen…” in a petition he filed to the Supreme Court. Donofrio originally petitioned the court for a stay on November 3rd but Justice David Souter rejected it. Then Donofrio sent the petition to Justice Clarence Thomas who passed it along for consideration. Pennsylvania attorney Philip J Berg, a former state deputy attorney general, has also filed a lawsuit challenging Obama’s citizenship. Berg has also filed other lawsuits including a conspiracy theory lawsuit alleging George W. Bush had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.

It takes a consensus of at least four Supreme Court Justices for a case to be put on the docket to be heard. Donofrio’s case was wholly rejected by the court. The court has not yet debated Berg’s lawsuit although a federal judge in Eastern Pennsylvania already threw the case out on the grounds Berg has no legal standing to file such a suit. In other words, even the Supreme Court, which is more conservative now than in recent memory, thinks the Donofrio case is ridiculous and does not deserve to be heard. So, it should be safe to assume the Supreme Court will throw Berg's case out as well.

For any reasonably intelligent human being, this case is settled. Constitutional law is specific on the requirements for US citizenship; the law states anyone born inside the US, anyone born in a US possession if one parent is a citizen and lived in the US for at least one year, and anyone born outside the US to at least one US-citizen parent who has lived in the US for a minimum of five years is a natural born US citizen. So even if Obama was born in Kenya, his mother was a US citizen and had lived in the US for at least five years. If Hawaii was supposedly not a state as some have claimed (which is ridiculous, Obama was born in 1961, Hawaii became a state in 1959), his mother is STILL a US citizen and had lived in the US for at least a year.

So how do any of these arguments hold water? How can conservative activists and pundits think their arguments are valid? Do they think Constitutional Law only applies to candidates they like? Aren’t some of these pundits the same pundits who have opined that the guvahnatah in California should be allowed to run for President…DEPSITE the fact he was born in Austria to Austrian parents and is NOT a natural born citizen? Maybe we can make the argument the conservative movement is populated by conspiracy theorists who should put their foil hats back on. Come on fellas, take your anti-psychotic meds and come back to reality, ok?