PWTMTOTH people with too much time on their hands

Anytime two of us show up on a panel and they don't like it, they yank it. copied from previous post.

You mean like Clarence Thomas did in the Donofrio case?

Huh. I thought the whole idea behind "anchor babies" like Michelle Malkin was that anyone born on US soil (US Embassy, US ship, etc) was fully eligible to become President. Are these guys saying that ones ancestry is relevant? How far back does THAT go? Would we end up counting half & quarter ancestries like during the slavery days?

Donofrio's case is actually not over. All that happened was the Court turned down his application for a stay pending the filing of a cert petition. He can still ask the Court to hear the case, and I'm willing to bet he will do so. I'm also quite confident that if he does the Court will once again turn him down -- and then his case will be over.

Alas to the conspriracy minded SCOTUS turning down the case is just proof that they are 'in on it'. There is no reasoning with people like this.

The images of the protesters in front of the court from last week are one of the reasons I am convinced that the next major incident of terrorism on US soil will be home grown. I remember all to well the rise of right-wing militia groups in the 90s during the Clinton years and their links to radical hate groups.

Such people look at Obama as just this side of the Antichrist at best. At worst he IS the Antichrist. McCain/Palin's rhetoric during the campaign stoked their fears and gave them much broader legitimacy.

Mark my words we will see another Oklahoma City before we see another 9/11.

Steve, just to be clear, the SCOTUS case, as I understand it (and as your block quote seems to suggest) doesn't have anything to do with Obama's allegedly fake Hawaiian birth certificate. Rather, the argument is that he was born in Hawaii but because his father was a British subject, Obama held dual American and British citizenship at birth and is therefore not a "natural born citizen" within the meaning of the Constitution. I think that's wrong but it's actually a pretty interesting legal question, and not so easily dismissed as the birth certificate nonsense that the Slate article discusses. I'm glad the Court decided to leave this question to academics rather than stick its nose into presidential politics yet again, though.

The problem with the political discourse in this country is that it does not allow for honest disagreement. American politicians tend to long tended vilify their opponents. Of course in years past only their most naive supporters have been shocked at how chummy they become with their opponents after the election.

Vivification has been getting worse over the last few years as "God" has moved into the public arena. If God says someone is the enemy there is no way to give any quarter. Civil discourse is impossible in the presence of God fearing true believers. The normal post election wink and nod is unacceptable to God fearing fire breathers.

In addition there is a serious and growing feeling of helplessness and irrelevance genuinely gripping large parts of our society. Those people are ripe for those who make their livings promoting conspiracies.

not having a copy of the constitution handy -- and being to lazy to go find one -- how did they get around the fact that martin van buren (i think) was the first person born in the united states to become president (the rest having been born british subjects)?

These kooks want to build this into Obama's Whitewater. They'll spend eight years flogging this shit, hoping at the very least to distract the public and interfere with Obama's capacity to govern. But these nutjobs will never be satisfied with anything less than impeachment and removal from office.

It won't work. What we are witnessing here is the death rattle of a discredited and bankrupt political philosophy. It's sad, but they'll cling to this for dear life. It's all they've got.

Mellowjohn: the same eligibility clause said that anyone who was a citizen of the USA at the time of ratification of the Constitution was eligible to be President.

By the way, if wikipedia is right, Roger Calero is not only not a "natural born" citizen -- born in Nicaragua -- he's not even a US citizen now!

I love it that the kooks keep spending their money on this stuff, including full-page ads in crackpot newspapers. Besides, as long as they continue to practice *this* form of masturbation, they won't have time for the real thing. Idle hands....
. . . jim strain in san diego.

The SCOTUS has just strengthened the hands of lower courts to reject the challenges out of hand. They can say, look this case is like the one the SCOTUS rejected in points A-F except for C. They saw no need to deal with those points and I am extending that to see for various reasons. Dismissed.

Can these people be forced to pay back taxpayeerrs for wasting the court's time with this nonsense. Seriousl how the hell did this make it to the level of a Supreme Court case. Thousands of cases per year are skipped over and yet this RW hitjob of a case gets an airing to the highest court in the land. What a joke.

Sorry to say, MNPundit, but that just won't work. It's well-established (and I mean, the Supreme Court has said it over and over and over) that denial of certiorari implies nothing on the merits. This wasn't even denial of cert, it was denial of the even more extraordinary relief of a stay. So while it is tempting to think that the district courts have now been signaled, really any court that said what you say would be about as wrong as one could be.

Believe me, these cases are silly enough that the courts will easily reject them without resorting to the reasoning you suggest.

One of the arguments from Obama-needlers that was offensive to me: The policies of other nations should dictate our own treatment of citizenship. For example, Obama maybe having been "a British subject" (not only if born in Kenya, but even if not due to his dad's citizenship!) etc! (And there's Donofrio's utterly baseless gender-biased view of citizenship rights: it matters which was father versus mother.)

Hey, we write our own citizenship rules and it isn't for other nations' policies to distort that, even per "dual citizenship" (which the USC does not reference.) Really, what if another country just declared one of our candidates "a citizen of Wingistan" and by fiat made him or her "a dual citizen"? To hell with them ... (and the cranks who keep pinging on this to the disgust of anyone who isn't, er, a crank. You should see the dangerous brassy diatribes in comments at those sites, how we may need a new civil war etc. to defend the Constitution.!)

Wow. I assumed that by "natural-born" the Constitution meant "not born by C-section" thus keeping at bay any future American Caesars.

Just goes to show how you can learn something any day from the blogs.

As for the Birth Certificate - sure, I can't see any reason why BHOs mother would go or had wherewithal to go to Kenya in '61, but I still thing someone should settle the issues about "birth certificate" image as shown various places. For example, at http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/BO_Birth_Certificate.jpg there is a copy with a faint, backwards "Jun 6 2007" (maybe Jan) on it - what is the story behind that? Was that on the original image, did someone plant it, what? It isn't good to have that stuff running around out there.

BTW the backwards date can be seen near bottom center of the image at Obama's own website, so it must have been there (and they presumably noticed and didn't care):

http://fightthesmears.com/articles/5/birthcertificate

Is that an artifact of preparation of a copy, what?

The Weigel and Koppelman articles are incomplete and inaccurate. Neither of them explains why Obama has never released his original typewritten 1961 birth certificate, which identifies the place of birth, hospital and delivering physician. Nor do they explain why that certificate is currently locked up in a secure vault. All we have is a 2007 print-out of information allegedly generated by a state computer. No journalist attempting to provide an honest account of the controversy would have omitted these key facts.

After state officials invaded the privacy of Joe the Plumber by searching and releasing information from his governmental records, Governor Strickland made various statements about the results of the searches that we now know to be false. The statement from Hawaii government officials regarding the contents of Obama's 1961 typewritten birth certificate may also be false. Only releasing an unredacted copy of the certificate will put the controversy to rest.

Obama is quite obviously hiding something significant or he would have released the 1961 original a long time ago.

It is sad to see so many people afflicted with Obama Derangement Syndrome. This is the exact counterpart of Bush Derangement Syndrome and leads otherwise intelligent people to ignore facts that get in the way of what they know to be "true." See, e.g., Dan Rather.

Obama won the election fair and square. I didn't vote for him but he's going to be the president until January 2013. End of story.

Obama is quite obviously hiding something significant or he would have released the 1961 original a long time ago.

Or maybe he just doesn't have it.

I don't have the original, only a fairly recent "certified copy" (which isn't a copy in the sense of a duplicate image, but a certification of the substantive information), of my birth certificate, and my early life was a lot more stable and less tumultuous than Obama's.

I don't have the original, only a fairly recent "certified copy" (which isn't a copy in the sense of a duplicate image, but a certification of the substantive information), of my birth certificate,...

Ditto.

When I needed to apply for a passport, I filled out a form and sent it with a $15 check to the NYC Department of Health. They sent me a piece of paper that bears no resemblance to the original ... but the passport people took it.

The reverse date is the stamp from the back of the cert saying when it was copied, Neil.

When you make a copy, you have to mark it as a copy and as official.

No, there is absolutely NO dispute -- none whatsoever -- that Obama's long-form, typewritten certificate exists. As I indicated above, Hawaii officials have moved it to a vault to avoid disclosure. Obama has simply refused to release it.

I wonder if any of those wingnuts could produce what they are demanding from Obama:

Documents that must be produced include; (a) a certified copy of "vault" (original long version) birth certificate; (b) certified copies of all reissued and sealed birth certificates in the names Barack Hussein Obama, Barry Soetoro, Barry Obama, Barack Dunham and Barry Dunham; (c) a certified copy Certification of Citizenship; (d) a certified copy Oath of Allegiance taken upon age of maturity; (e) certified copies of admission forms for Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law School; and (f) certified copies of any court orders or legal documents changing his name from Barry Soetoro.

Just replace ALL their names, surnames, nicknames, etc.. since birth....

We may think this is rather silly, but is it really all that much different from the last time we had a Democratic President?

Really... All the Republicans and conservative wingnuts couldn't stand it that there wasn't all that much to be found on Bill Clinton - that is until it had to do with sex...

Luckily the Republicans aren't in a position to demand a special prosecutor to investigate the matter ala Ken Starr. That is the ONLY difference this time around.

This just goes to show, people can say, "I don't have a prejudiced bone in my body."

Based on the above comments, this is totally false.

It's sad, a black man, that has won this election fair and square has to go through such hell.

Obiviously, he's much smarter than the majority of the people in the this administration, he's even working for free trying to get ready for his administration in January, the sitting president is sitting on his A** letting the country go down the tubes and you just whine about him.

There are illegal immigrants coming in here everyday taking jobs from U.S. citizens, you don't know their names, where they come from, no physical exams (t.b.), no drug test, nothing about them. They are coming in here raping your kids and daughters, killing citizens behind the wheel then leaving the country - and you want to demonize this man.

Wow, I guess the statistics were right, there's a lot of mental illness here in the states.

BTW, they have the terminator is Cal - sounds like he says KellyPhonia instead of California.

And Bush, well, we won't even go there.

I guess Sarah Palin & John McCain can be credited for letting people say what they've wanted to say all along - "we're racists, facists"

Bruno,

Silly. There's no such thing as a "vault copy". What happened it that Hawaii took the precaution of putting Obama's original long-form certificate in a vault to protect it unauthorized public disclosure. It's just the original they keep for many citizens, and Obama (or a family member) could easily obtain a copy on demand. No doubt Obama already has, which is precisely why he doesn't want anyone fo see it.

Of course Obama can produce only what is available. Nobody is asking him to do otherwise. But we know that 1961 certificate is available, and he should produce that. You try to make it seem oh-so-onerous, but Obama would be quite incompetent if he were I capable of signing a simple release form. Plus, there is likely someone from his campaign who could handle the paperwork is he can't, given the volume of financial disclosure forms the campaign produced.

Interesting, it's the white man screwing people over, not the black man.

Instead of sitting back drinking and using drugs to deal with the misery, by the time people wake up there will be no more U.S. of A.

It's sad, the illegal immigrants have more guts and balls than Americans. They know how to cause marches down our streets, stage walk-outs to demand rights, and Americans would rather sit back and wish things go away.

WAKE UP!!!!!

The Secretary of the State of Hawaii never confirmed that Obama was born in Hawaii, only that the state has his original birth certificate on file and that she has seen it. The State of Hawaii registered births from other states and foreign countries back in 1961.

Perhaps Obama has not produced his original birth certificate showing he was born in the USA because he can't. Why else would the DNC and Obama have their lawyers argue in the 3rd federal district court that Berg doesn't have standing to sue Obama over his eligibility to run for president? Why would they argue in court at all? It would have been much cheaper for Obama and the DNC (and would have been helpful for him in the election) had he just released his original birth certificate.