Whack Job Scenario: SCOTUS to Decide Election?

[Stingo]

The whack jobs are trying to get the Supreme Court to review whether Barack Obama was really born in the US. They will fail, but they’re all excited. Clarence Thomas accepted the challenge to the conference of the SCOTUS, which pretty much seals his reputation as a partisan hack. It’ll be fun to watch regardless.

http://allspinzone.com/wp/2008/11/20/whack-job-scenario-scotus-to-decide-election/

[rurallib]

1. I heard that on the radio this morning. Some jackass truck driving overnight

network. I started laughing and woke myself up.
This guy said he was faily sure they could get 4 votes, but was unsure about any more. Sadly I think he was right about getting the 4 votes.

[Stingo]

2. Clarence will vote to overturn the election

Heck, he might have to hide from the riots after, but he's confident in his legal mind, however small it is.

[damntexdem]

3. What are they going to do? Expel Hawaii from the U.S.?

Barrack has a certified, state of Hawaii birth certificate.

[Stingo]

4. Perhaps that's the legal foundation

For Thomas and his mentor Scalia. Which means they ought to be kicked off the court.

[JohnWxy]

6. Hell, they don't need a legal precedent or foundation. Scalia can just make one up. and later say:

"Get over it!"

Antonin "the Reign Maker" Scalia.

[Virginia Dare]

7. We could probably get 2/3 of the Senate to do that at this point..

if he pursues it like he claims he's going to.

[rurallib]

5. the guy I heard was going into great detail about the birth certificate

Too white, not folded properly and a bunch of other stuff. Has a suit already been filed? Sounded like it had.
BTW if the Supremes act on this would this fit the RW definition of "activism"?
I should read before I open my mouth. Well I see Thomas gave this idiocy the blessing of certiorari. And I see Obama has until Dec. 1 to respond. What idiocy.

[Stingo]

9. Read the article, follow the links!

Man, this on DU is only a taste, you know?

[rurallib]

11. Yeah - sorry I opened my mouth before reading

I was going by what I heard overnight. I thought it was one of them Art Bell shows.

[riqster]

8. Gee, what would happen if...

Obama had been born in, oh, I dunno, Panama, or someplace like that...


:sarcasm:

[rsdsharp]

10. As I understand it

the suit was dismissed due to lack of standing. Even if the court grants cert (it requires 4 votes), that's all that will be addressed -- whether the Plaintiff had the right to bring the suit in the first place. SCOTUS will not address the "merits" (or complete lack thereof) of whether Obama is elegible to be President.

[Stingo]

12. Please provide some

citations.

[rsdsharp]

19. No. 08A407 Leo C. Donofrio, Applicant v. Nina Mitchell Wells, New Jersey Secretary of State

Read more about it, here:

http://themountainsage.wordpress.com/2008/11/10/obama-presidency-challenged-by-new-jersey-voter/?referer=sphere_related_content/

[Blue_in_Mass]

13. How does a Supreme Court justice get recalled?

Can that be done?

I've had enough with unaccountable aristocrats.

[Stingo]

14. The only remedy

is if he resigns out of shame. Clarence Thomace has less shame than does a coke can.

[Blue_in_Mass]

15. He strikes me as being nothing more than a placeholder. n.t.

[Stingo]

16. Which place?

The Uncle Tom place?

[Blue_in_Mass]

17. Possibly.

The GOP was good at finding ladder climbers that wanted nothing more than their own self-advancement. An Uncle Tom is simply a traitor to his social class, right?

[Stingo]

18. Are you talking about Michael Steele?

Please, I'm interested in the discussion.

[Blue_in_Mass]

20. I had no idea who Michael Steele is till you mentioned him.

At this point, my knowledge of him is limited to what the Wikipedia article says about him. It isn't very flattering.

[Stingo]

21. Well,

He is a Republican. How flattering could it be?

[Blue_in_Mass]

26. Some republicans I like.

For instance, members of my family, some of whom are republican.

[Stingo]

27. Tough to admit, isn't it?

I have in-laws who are Repubs. Love them dearly, glad they are in California where their vote usually doesn't count.

[Blue_in_Mass]

36. To be honest, I avoid political discussions with them.

They are stupid, basically. They think that Armageddon is upon us, they have a shrine to 9/11 in the basement, they own lots and lots of guns, and so on and so forth. I am not exaggerating, by the way.

But, other than that, they're cool :D

[Chan790]

25. Actually they can be impeached by Congress...

exact same procedure as impeaching the President. 50% of the House votes to send articles to Senate...Senate hears arguments for the articles and following arguments, then votes the articles. Passage requires a 2/3 majority.

Overturning an election for partisan reasons would probably garner the necessary votes in both houses to impeach, if it did not pull down the government altogether.

I doubt that SCOTUS would vote that way anyways, as it would change nothing. Even if SCOTUS determines that Obama is ineligible, because the American people elect the electors and not the President, the EC (as comprised by the election result in Obama's favor) would still vote. Most likely outcome would be a Biden Presidency.

[KKlin]

30. Hillary would (most likely) be President, not Biden

[Chan790]

31. I would concede that possibility...

my point was that I don't see a motivation for a partisan SCOTUS vote as nothing they rule is going to result in a Republican President.

Given I don't put it beneath Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and a wild-card (out of the other 3 Justices appointed by GOP Presidents: Kennedy, Souter or Stevens) to make a partisan ruling only out of ideology, spite and general assheadedness...I just see it as unlikely.

[Demeter]

22. Justices Can Be Impeached

Is the procedure by which “the President, Vice President, and all other civil officers of the United States,” including members of the federal judiciary, can be removed from office if guilty of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Articles of impeachment, or accusations of misconduct, are drafted in the House of Representatives and approved by majority vote; the trial is before the Senate, with a two‐thirds vote needed for conviction. In cases of presidential impeachment, the trial is presided over by the chief justice. Conviction in a case of impeachment can result only in removal from office and disqualification from holding office in future, but does not prevent the guilty party from being held further accountable in regular courts of law. Finally, the presidential pardoning power does not extend to individuals convicted in cases of impeachment.

Impeachment once prevailed in England as an important mechanism to check abusive, high‐ranking ministers, but in the United States it has mainly become a device to remove corrupt lower federal court judges. The chief, and highly controversial, exceptions to this overall evolution have been the impeachment of Chief Justice Samuel Chase, and the impeachments of President Andrew Johnson and President Bill Clinton. As English usage developed, Parliament not infrequently employed impeachment as a means to charge and try high royal officials, including judges, with conviction ordinarily resulting in the death penalty. The framers of the Constitution reduced the consequences of conviction to mere removal from office, yet appear to have borrowed the process primarily as a means of checking the president. From the beginning, however, the Constitution's extension of the process to other federal officers was understood to include members of the judicial branch.

http://www.answers.com/topic/impeachment

[Stingo]

23. So this matter here how?

Are you suggesting Clarence Thomas committed treason? I'll agree, if he acts to steal this election, but. . ..

[Demeter]

24. I think the 5 from 2000 Selection SHOULD Be Impeached, Frankly

One may be dead and one retired, but I don't think even that matters. Obama could get 3 decent people on the court that way, and let Ginsberg and Stevens retire at last for another 2.

[Stingo]

54. How about

we throw them all out and start again?

[KKlin]

55. www.naturalborncitizen.org (that's what it sounds like they want to do here)

[DUlover2909]

28. The Justices can be impeached just like the President for high crimes and misdemeanors ONLY.

[Cobalt-60]

46. If they try to pull this, they need te recalled to hell.

I volunteer to punch their tickets.

[KKlin]

29. The Donofrio case agrees he was born in Hawaii

This case has nothing to do with Berg and nothing to do with a birth certficate. It seeks to throw both Obama and McCain (and Calero) off the NJ ballot for reasons I have not seen mentioned in this thread. That supplied link fuses the Berg and Donofrio cases and they are completely different. This is the correct case information:
http://www.blogtext.org/naturalborncitizen/

[BlueMTexpat]

32. My opinion of Clarence Thomas is unprintable ...

if there were only one reason for despising Bush I, nominating pond scum Thomas to the SCOTUS following the death of that truly great man Thurgood Marshall would be it. But there are plenty of others which I won't go into here. :mad:

As most already know, the case focuses on the issue of "natural-born" American for purposes of eligibility to the Presidency of the US and as noted by one poster here in his link, McCain's status is also in question. Wiki has a summation of the "natural-born" issues. Here is the first para:

"The United States Constitution requires that Presidents (and Vice Presidents) of the United States be natural-born citizens of the United States. While it is undisputed that people born in the US are qualified to hold the office of President, and that naturalized US citizens are disqualified from holding that office, it is disputed whether people born to US-citizen parents outside the United states are natural-born citizens or not.<1>"

Further down, Wiki notes that "Three United States District Courts have ruled that private citizens do not have standing to challenge the eligibility of candidates to appear on a presidential election ballot: Robinson v. Bowen, 567 F. Supp. 2d 1144 (N.D. Cal. 2008); Hollander v. McCain, 2008WL2853250 (D.N.H. 2008); Berg v. Obama, 08-04083 (E.D. Pa. 2008)<8>. In dicta in each of these cases, it was also opined that if the plaintiffs did have standing, the likelihood of success on the merits (which is part of the legal test for the issuance of a preliminary injunction) would be low. This law suit has been sent to the supreme court after dismissal, next ruling December 2008. The opinion in one of the cases also cited to a statutory method<9> by which the eligibility of the President-elect to take office may be challenged in Congress."

As everyone here knows, Obama was born in HI in 1961. HI became a US State in 1959. Unless my math is incorrect, that means that Obama was unquestionably born IN the US, which makes the citizenship of his parents totally irrelevant. I have seen some people go on and on about how his American mother Ann hadn't resided in the US long enough in the five years immediately prior to his birth (because HI was a territory) so that Barack somehow is not a natural-born American. That is hogwash.

The Wiki article also notes that "John McCain, who ran for the Republican party nomination in 2000 and was the Republican nominee in 2008, was born outside of the Panama Canal Zone in Colon, Panama, to U.S. parents.<12> In April 2008 the US Senate approved a resolution affirming McCain's status as a natural born citizen.<13> And in September of that year a Federal District judge said obiter that it was "highly probable" that McCain was a natural-born citizen of the United States owing to the citizenship legislation existing at the time.<14>"

Of the two, McCain's status, if based only on the geographical circumstances of his birth (he wasn't even born IN the Canal Zone, according to this information), is iffi-er than that of Obama, so much so that the Senate felt that it had to affirm McCain's citizenship by special resolution.

The suit in question requested a stay of the national election (now water under the bridge) and, if anything, has been superseded by the facts that the election has already taken place and that an overwhelming majority of the US population voted for Barack Obama. Thomas is rushing in where angels fear to tread; let's hope that the full SCOTUS has more sense than this fool.

[KKlin]

33. Please don't use Wiki as a source

Please read the actual case. McCain does not qualify, and technically, neither does Barack.
This case is serious, and it needs to be discussed. You guys may want to put the blame on Clarence Thomas and the other Justices, but I have to tell you, I think the case has merit. Besides, even if they are both removed from the ballots, Democrats still own the electoral college votes. It would still be a Democrat...no way a Republican.

[KSDiva]

34. How does Barack not qualify? Born to a citizen and actually in a state?

I don't understand where there could be a problem unless a some point he had renounced his citizenship, which he hasn't.

At worst, he could possibly have dual citizenship - but we don't/didn't have that agreement with Kenya like we do with Canada for example, right?

[KKlin]

35. Dual citizenship is the basis of the case. Doesn't matter what country...

[SentientStorm]

37. Dual Citizenship at Birth by Obama's Own Admission

Unfortunately the problem here for Obama is by his own admission of having British citizenship at birth from his father, even admitted on his own fightthesmears.com site.

Given this, Obama has divided loyalties, even as defined by Dept. of State official Foreign Affairs Manual. Under 7FAM082 "Dual Nationality and US Law", "a person may have dual nationality and be subject to responsibilities of both countries."

Founders Washington and John Jay were both born in America but both were subjects under Britain. These founders denied themselves ability to be President under "natural born citizen" clause of Article II, and thereby had to be grandfathered in to be able to be Presidents.

If these founders were unable to be President, can someone please explain by what special means Barack Obama is able to be President?

Btw, there is no doubt whatsoever that McCain does not qualify as "natural born citizen"

[Stingo]

38. Seriously?

If the Supremes were to overturn this election there would be rioting in the streets. Perhaps there is an interpretation of the constitution that allows them to do so, and I've no doubt Thomas will find it if there is such an interpretation. But that interpretation is wrong morally. Obama's mother was American, which makes him American. He was born here. End of story.

[SentientStorm]

40. Its not about Thomas nor "American"

Justice Thomas did nothing wrong in admitting the case. The original problem was Souter's clerk botched the case because even though Donofrio filed with Souter, the emergency stay should have gone directly to conference.

Since it is a stay Justice Thomas didn't review it for conference. Even though it was filed under justice Thomas it still bypassed his desk. Since the case is asking for a stay an emergency stay it goes directly to conference so the case doesn't get bogged down with preceding cases. And, yes, it is going to all 9 justices for conference.

Its not about being "american".

It's not about mere "citizenship"

It's not about being "born American"

It's not about being a "citizen at birth"

It's about being a "natural born citizen" which had more 440 years of static and specific use even before the foundation of this country.

[Stingo]

41. Your advocacy of this position

and if it is held by the SCOTUS, will prove disastrous to this country far more than the recent economic crisis.

[SentientStorm]

42. Whim and Worry

Do you think the SCOTUS should disregard the constitution that was bought and paid for in blood to satisfy immediate whim or worry? That would be very short sighted.

Do you imagine Barack Obama, with is law education, has not known all along that he's not a "natural born citizen"?

Regard for country didn't seem to stop him.

[The Hope Mobile]

51. troll

[Stingo]

52. Agreed, we have a troll.

[BlueMTexpat]

47. Wiki is sourcing to the law and the cases in its footnotes

and makes sense accordingly. In exactly what way was it incorrect? Please be precise.
I am a US citizen by birth. My first husband was not at the time that I married him, although he later became a naturalized US citizen. Our first son was born in the continental US and is a natural-born citizen by mere birth geography, as is Obama. There was not then, is not now, and will never be, any doubt about that. :argh: "technically" ... my foot!

Our second son was born outside the US and at a time when his father was not yet a US citizen. But my second son has also been considered to be a US citizen from birth, was registered as a US citizen by virtue of my own citizenship at the US consulate in the country of his birth at the time and has never had to do anything else to maintain that US citizenship, although it is true that he has resided in the continental US since he was three years old, except for two years in the 1980s. He is now in his 40s. Whether "natural born" citizen for purposes of running for US President (or Veep) would be considered to apply to his case is arguable perhaps, but that is certainly not something that either of us will lose any sleep over.

In my opinion, the bright-line test for "natural born" citizen should be whether an individual attained his/her US citizenship by birth or whether that citizenship was attained by some administrative action such as naturalization. The fact is that one is always considered to be some nationality at birth, unless one is truly stateless. The US is not necessarily unique, but it is among those countries where mere birth within the country's borders automatically confers citizenship. In the country of my second son's birth, the requirement for citizenship to be conferred is that the father (NOT the mother) must be a bond fide citizen of that country, so merely being born within that country's borders does not confer citizenship at all. Both of my sons have actually been dual-nationals from birth, although they have never taken steps to secure the second and consider themselves to be US citizens only.
And Clarence Thomas is still a putz, in thrall to an administration of putzes. What a sad day when such as he was ever nominated and an even sadder one when he was confirmed!

[BlueMTexpat]

49. I should correct one statement just a bit.

Both of my sons HAVE BEEN ELIGIBLE to be dual nationals from birth. But even though their father's nationality conferred that second nationality, it would not have been recognized without their being registered within his country or at one of his country's consulates. My second son was registered in his father's home country; my first was never registered anywhere except in the US. They never took steps to get passports from their father's country or to be considered dual nationals in any other way.

[KKlin]

53. That is precisely the question being asked of the SCOTUS

Seems simple enough on its face, but then when you consider that that is exactly the reason the founders grandfathered themselves, it takes the question to a whole new level.
No way is McCain eligible...you can count on that.

[SentientStorm]

39. No BC Needed -- Donofrio doesn't argue absent evidence.

Justice Thomas did nothing wrong in admitting the case. The original problem was Souter's clerk botched the case because even though Donofrio filed with Souter, the emergency stay should have gone directly to conference.

Since it is a stay Justice Thomas didn't review it for conference. Even though it was filed under justice Thomas it still bypassed his desk. Since the case is asking for a stay an emergency stay it goes directly to conference so the case doesn't get bogged down with preceding cases. And, yes, it is going to all 9 justices for conference.

Donofrio actually does not need to make claims about things not in evidence.

Obama has admitted that he had dual citizenship at birth, specifically British via his father's Kenyan citizenship.

Given this, Obama has divided loyalties, even as defined by Dept. of State official Foreign Affairs Manual. Under 7FAM082 "Dual Nationality and US Law", "a person may have dual nationality and be subject to responsibilities of both countries."

Founders Washington and John Jay were both born in America but both were subjects under Britain. These founders denied themselves ability to be President under "natural born citizen" clause of Article II, and thereby had to be grandfathered in to be able to be Presidents.

If these founders were unable to be President, can someone please explain by what special means Barack Obama is able to be President?

[Greg10]

43. Obama is definitely a citizen as defined by the usconstitution.net website!

From the usconstitution.net website (see specific link below):
Even if the Constitution could be interpreted as saying that Obama isn't eligible, the US Constitution website says "the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps."
Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Title 8 of the US Code as currently published by the US Government reflects the laws passed by Congress as of Jan. 3, 2007.
TITLE 8 > CHAPTER 12 > SUBCHAPTER III > Part 1 > § 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"
(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof;


Obama was born in Hawaii--the Hawaii Department of Health Director released a statement verifying that fact on October 31st. http://kgmb9.com/main/content/view/10955/76/

Constitution website:
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_citi.html

Pass the word to any right-wingers you know.

[Greg10]

44. Definition of Natural Born Citizen from usconstitution.net

I forgot to add this to my previous post.
From the usconstituton.net website:

Natural-born citizen

Who is a natural-born citizen? Who, in other words, is a citizen at birth, such that that person can be a President someday?

The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." But even this does not get specific enough. As usual, the Constitution provides the framework for the law, but it is the law that fills in the gaps.

Currently, Title 8 of the U.S. Code fills in those gaps. Section 1401 defines the following as people who are "citizens of the United States at birth:"

Read my previous post for the specifics on Title 8 Section 1401

[Greg10]

45. Framer's Intent

The bottom line is the framers of the constitution's intent, and only right wingers try to fool themselves that the framer's would deny Obama the presidency based on such murky word-splitting.

[BlueMTexpat]

48. Hear, hear!

:hi:

[Stingo]

50. I think you might include

Clarence Thomas among those wing nuts. Still, to hear the case we're going to have to have five wing nuts grant cert, right?