When did he live in Indonesia? The US surpreme court ruling that says you can hold dual citizenship is 41 years old, and even if it wasn’t the case when he first moved there, it certainly was by the time he was an adult and would have to have picked his citizenship under the laws that preceeded.
Obama lived in Indonesia when he was a young child (between the ages of about 6-10, if I recall correctly).
He was never a citizen of Indonesia, dual, or otherwise, nor would anyone have had the ability to strip him of his US citizenship when he was a child.
He was born in the US, it’s he only citizenship he’s ever held. End of story.
AFAIK dual citizenship isn’t new…at least not that new. Since he was born in Hawaii it would have been his CHOICE at 21, even if he did grow up in another country. Even if your parents are both foreign born (even illegal) immigrants it doesn’t matter if you were born on US soil…which he was.
It’s a non-starter and really those pushing this ARE getting desperate to drag this thing out.
-XT
That the lawsuit was tossed is not a bombshell, but the reason it was tossed seems shocking to me. As I understand it, the judge says that an everyday citizen is not harmed by someone not meeting the constitutional requirements for presidency, so they may not file such a suit and have it taken seriously. If that is the case, I don’t understand what is to prevent someone who obviously doesn’t meet the criteria from running, say like the current governor of California.
I am hoping a lawyer will pop in and explain it.
I thought the suit would be dismissed for lack of evidence.
I think the judge was saying it was a frivolous lawsuit, perhaps?
Courts use the doctrine of standing to fulfill two ends: conserving judicial resources and, more importantly, to prevent overstepping the boundaries of their power which for federal courts is limited to “cases and controversies.” In short, if no one is being hurt by a violation of the law, there’s no sense using very limited judicial resources to examine the issue, and there really is no controversy to be settled.
In this case, the judge said that even if Obama were ineligible, the harm done to a single random voter is entirely speculative and attenuated. It isn’t a good enough reason for the court to step in and sort things out.
Presumably someone like McCain or the RNC would have standing.
What would prevent Arnold from running is that someone who does have standing would sue.
OK, now I’m curious. If someone is ineligible to run for an office (any office, from dogcatcher on up), only his/her opponent(s), or possibly an opposing party has standing to sue?
Not that I’m necessarily disagreeing with that, but I’m very curious.
No, standing might not be limited to the opponent. I was just suggesting the opponent as the likeliest candidate (no pun intended).
Who else might have standing? Hmm. Hard to say, really. I doubt there’s much precedent here. I’ll take a look and check back in.
A brief review of the precedent doesn’t turn up any cases of someone other than the candidate, his party, or an individual voter challenging a candidate’s eligibility. I’m not sure who that would be. A prospective appointee? Probably too speculative. A big donor maybe? I can’t think of too many possibilities.
I did find a New Hampshire case from July 24th applying this same standing argument to a voter challenging McCain’s eligibility. I hadn’t heard about that one.
The only thing I can find at the moment is this part of the ruling from Surrick:
Taken from America’s Right so take it for what it is worth.
Well, it makes sense that the other candidate (or, stretching it) their party would have standing to challenge a candidate’s eligibility.
Thinking further about it, it doesn’t really make sense that if I had evidence that a candidate running for the Senate from Missouri actually lived in Illinois, I couldn’t sue. Ah well, I guess I’d have to take the evidence to the candidate.
I would have preferred that the suit against Obama be tossed out on the grounds of “too stupid to live”, but, whatever.
From that decision,
CMC +fnord!
Part of what made it frivolous is that, unlike your example above, there was no evidence to show that Barack Obama might be from anywhere other than Hawaii. The burden of proof falls on the plaintiff, and it is not up to the defendant to “prove” his innocence. Mr. Berg had no evidence, just a stated “doubt”. The judge said sorry, :dubious:
At least, that was how i read that part.
I haven’t been able to find Surrick’s ruling online, so I can’t speak to it.
But we’ve been here before as to McCain. Click here for a Northern District of California case ruling on his eligibility.
The judge first pointed out the the likelihood of success was very low, but then went on to discuss standing. The opinion stated that the plaintiff was in the stead of a taxpayer/voter, which is a low level of standing to begin with. And nothing in McCain’s eligibility has stopped the plaintiff from campaigning, voting for, or supporting his candidate of choice.
The judge went on to discuss the Constitutional (Article ii, 12th Amendment, 20th Amendment) and legal (3 USC 15) clearly provide an avenue for determining the qualifications of someone to be President. The judge felt that, given that the actual election by electoral votes and determinations of eligibility have been clearly given to Congress; the judiciary should not involve itself during the campaign.
“Judicial review – if any – should occur only after the electoral and Congressional processes have run their course.”
When I can find Surrick’s ruling, I’ll try and check it out too.
See post #110 where I quote the relevant section of the ruling. The website there also has a pdf download of the ruling.
Here is the download link.
The Governor of Hawai sealed Obama’s birth cirtificate until after the election? Doesn’t that just add to the conspiracy theory that Obama is hiding something? Doing it while Obama was visiting his grandmother is really poor timing.
What Birth Certificate?
That’s not his birth certificate.
Well, strictly speaking, it’s a JPEG image of a reproduction of his birth certificate. But, y’know, you can’t put an actual birth certificate on a website, cuz the paper molecules won’t fit through the cable.
Or are you referencing the silly rumors about the document represented in the image being a forgery? As PolitiFact related (see the link for links to the documents mentioned):