As expected, a federal judge in Philadelphia late Friday dismissed a challenge to the campaign of Barack Obama to produce yet another copy of his birth certificate. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick ruled that the plaintiff, screwball attorney Philip J. Berg, lacked standing to sue.
Appearing to take his inspiration from the Monty Python character, the Black Knight, Berg promised to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of the U.S.
Among reputable media, only the Philadelphia Daily News took note of the dismissal early on:
Obama and the Democratic National Committee had asked Surrick to dismiss Berg’s complaint in a court filing on Sept. 24.
They said that Berg’s claims were “ridiculous” and “patently false,” that Berg had “no standing” to challenge the qualifications of a candidate for president because he had not shown the requisite harm to himself.
Surrick agreed.
In a 34-page memorandum and opinion, the judge said Berg’s allegations of harm were “too vague and too attenuated” to confer standing on him or any other voters.
Surrick ruled that Berg’s attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were “frivolous and not worthy of discussion.”
The judge also said the harm Berg alleged did “not constitute an injury in fact” and Berg’s arguments to the contrary “ventured into the unreasonable.”
For example, Berg had claimed that Obama’s nomination deprived citizens of voting for Sen. Hillary Clinton in November. (Berg backed Clinton in the primaries.)
Berg could not be reached for comment last night.
Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, and the campaign posted a document issued by Hawaii on its Web site, fight thesmears.com, confirming his birth there.
Berg said in court papers that the image was a forgery.
The nonpartisan Web site FactCheck.org examined the original document and said it was legitimate.
Further, a birth announcement in the Aug. 13, 1961, Honolulu Advertiser listed Obama’s birth there on Aug. 4.
Dozens of bloggers bought new rolls of aluminum foil to make protective hats, and questioned the dismissal, or jumped to other equally unwarranted conclusions. Near total insanity.
Resources:
- Some documents are listed here, at Justia; the judge’s ruling is not available without a paid subscription, yet; a .pdf of a fax of the final order in Berg v. Obama is available here
- Paper Chase blog notice of the dismissal, with links to similar case against McCain.
- National Archives listing of notice from White House of Surrick’s appointment to this bench, April 11, 2000 (Gigi! Look! Another Dickinson alum!)
- The “Clout” column on politics, from the Philadelphia Daily News, October 24 — with more details, including Judge Surrick’s own do-si-do with strange conspiracy hypotheses, earlier
- The Black Knight guards a tiny bridge (YouTube version)
- Press release from crank lawyer Terry Martin, about his suit in Hawaii, insisting that he must see “the original” Obama birth certificate because he’s writing a book (Press release? See the “7 signs of bogus history”). Hawaii’s courts have already slapped him down.
- Newsday mentioned the dismissal of Berg’s suit
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Update, 10-27-2008: Here’s an example of how lunatic this issue is, and how bizarre are the arguments. This blog argues that Judge Surrick had the decision dictated to him from someone else in the Obama camp — the same lunatic argument creationists made against the decision of Judge Jones in the Dover, Pennsylvania, “intelligent design” trial. Could it be that all lunatics are creationists? Or is it just that lunatics all stumble into the same lunatic arguments?
Anecdotal, but still fun; a co-worker was actually born in Hawaii, and regaled me with the difficulties he had in getting a copy of HIS OWN birth certificate…which was required to obtain a drivers license. So, why in the world would anyone think that the State of Hawaii was just going to hand over such a document to complete strangers and non-residents?
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Pro Obama Thugs Attack Elderly McCain Supporter
http://mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com/2008/11/pro-obama-thugs-attack-elderly-mccain.html
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Berg’s arguments are all a bit nutty, too. It really doesn’t matter where Obama was born, as his mother was a U.S. Citizen. He could have been born wholly off the planet in a Russian space station and still be a natural born U.S. citizen.
He also claims that if Obama was born a U.S. citizen, he lost that citizenship when his step-father, a non-citizen, enrolled him in an Indonesian school that allegedly only accepted Indonesian citizens. Ergo, Obama lost his U.S. citizenship (if he ever had it). But that ignores the fact that the U.S. government doesn’t strip it’s citizen-children of their citizenship just because they gain citizenship in another country. In fact the U.S. allows dual citizenship (See http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1753.html).
So even if this guy’s suit was allowed to go forward on the merits, he would have no chance of winning since each of his arguments ignores relevant U.S. law.
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Hard to tell what makes these lunatics, lunatics. These lunatics give a bad name to the rest of us in Pennsylvania. Please don’t judge the rest of us by these crazy folks.
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Handled right, the Fed District Court throwing out Berg for lack of standing can present a political check-mate “win” on appeal for the anti-Obama side (if not in law, in the Court of Public Opinion). Here’s how: SIMPLY SPREAD AROUND OBAMA’S APPELLATE BRIEF HAVING TO ARGUE AGAINST AN AMERICAN VOTER’S RIGHT TO RAISE THE QUESTION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION. Should be a PR disaster for the Dems and Obama!!!
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Hermetically sealed minds.
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