Its not over yet!

[RugerP345]

Unless I'm reading whats posted on SCOTUS's website, it looks like both applications were denied. I see where it reads that a response is due by Dec. 1st, but as it stands, Justice Souter denied both applications!

[WarHawk-AVG]

Unless I'm reading whats posted on SCOTUS's website, it looks like both applications were denied. I see where it reads that a response is due by Dec. 1st, but as it stands, Justice Souter denied both applications!

Application (08A391) denied by Justice Souter.

The 1st one was denied..the 2nd one No. 08-570 is on the Docket

[John]

Unless I'm reading whats posted on SCOTUS's website, it looks like both applications were denied. I see where it reads that a response is due by Dec. 1st, but as it stands, Justice Souter denied both applications!

Application (08A391) denied by Justice Souter.

The 1st one was denied..the 2nd one No. 08-570 is on the Docket

I read it as dead too, seems like the flow is writ to get the lower courts records and then denied base on receipt of those records, but IANAL (is that the right acronymn?... Where did the orginal poster get the story?

[srothstein]

I could be wrong, but the way I am reading this docket, the original petition for a writ of certiorari is still pending. The court will require a response from the other side before Dec. 1. This means the case overall is still alive, but nothing more. They could still reject the petition totally, reject it for some technical reason which could keep the case alive, or accept the petition. If they accept the petition, they could act as quickly or as slowly as they desire.

After the original petition, Berg filed an application for the equivalent of a temporary restraining order. This would have stopped Obama from being in the vote. Souter denied the TRO application. Berg modified it to try to show his harm as greater if the injunction were denied, but he did not get it set high enough and the modified application was still denied.

So, the case is still alive, but I would not give it much hope. I doubt they will accept the case overall. If they do, I think they will expedite hearing the case. Assuming they rule against Obama, it would have to be done before January to avoid real constitutional questions. If Obama is sworn in, what happens to all of the laws he signs or his EO's if he is found to not have been qualified? So, I doubt they will allow the question to occur.

But if they deny certiorari, the question also never arises. My hopes for the case are not high.

[Kythas]

I have to admit that I agree with Annoyed Man on this issue. Obama is a natural born citizen since his mother was a citizen and all the rest is smoke and mirrors. But now I am curious as to why the SCOTUS would want to look further into it. I am going to have to read some breifs if I can and research it further.

Not necessarily. I was born in a civilian hospital in Seoul to my dad, who was in the Army, and my mother was a South Korean citizen. As I was born premature, and the only two incubators in all of South Korea at the time were in a civilian hospital, that's where I was born. Because I was not born on a US military base, even though my dad is American, I was born a South Korean citizen and am now a naturalized US citizen, not a natural born US citizen. Therefore, I can't run for President.

Just because one of your parents is American doesn't mean you automatically are if you're born on foreign soil. Note that US military installations abroad are considered American soil, as are embassies.

[Purplehood]

My youngest brother was born in a base hospital outside Tokyo in the early 60's. He had to be naturalized to avoid being drafted by the JSDF. The laws have swung back and forth over the decades.

[Kythas]

Unless I'm reading whats posted on SCOTUS's website, it looks like both applications were denied. I see where it reads that a response is due by Dec. 1st, but as it stands, Justice Souter denied both applications!

Justice Souter denied the application requesting an injuction to postpone the Nov 4 election until the issue of Obama's citizenship was resolved. His denial of the injunction simply allowed the election to be held.

Nobody knows what the Court will do after Dec 1 if Obama doesn't produce his original birth certificate. However, if the Court decides he's not a US citizen between Dec 1 and Dec 13, when the Electoral College actually meets and casts its' votes, then I guess McCain would be President. I don't see that happening, though. That would likely start such civil unrest that it would result in another civil war or revolution. And that's something NONE of us want.

[Purplehood]

I hate to be negative and I will adamantly deny leaning one way or the other on the issue of the BC, but how difficult would it be for politically-connected folks to come up with a "legitimate" BC? I mean, you could come up with one whether it was genuine or not considering the state of government records back in the 60's, no?

[GrillKing]

Obama was born in 1961. Hawaii was admitted as a state in 1959. Even so, as a territory, the residents of Hawaii had the rights of U.S. citizenship prior to 1959, just as current citizens of Puerto Rico (a U.S. territory) have all the rights of U.S. citizenship.

Not all territories qualify one for citizenship. You are correct, Puerto Ricans are US citizens. American Samoans are not. Even though a US territory, they are US Nationals, but not US Citizens, very different.

The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands has been associated with the US since the 1940s, but qualified residents did not become US citizens until the mid 1980s.

Being a current or former territory does not guarantee US Citizenship to those born there. I don't know how this applies to Hawaii or Arizona.

Not related the Barack Obama, just interesting trivia....

[srothstein]

Well, in addition to the political discussion, the thread has proven educational. I did not know there was a difference between a US national and a US citizen. I had never even heard of the two terms not being used as synonyms. I also have always thought our citizenship was derived automatically through either the birth in the US (legally there anyway, such as foreign bases and embassies) or through parentage. I was not aware there were any limitations on citenship derived through the parents. I had heard of problems during the Viet Nam war caused by this; a child of a soldier was a citizen so the moms were claiming soldiers as parents even if they did not know for sure.

All of the people I had ever met that had mixed citizenship like those mentioned had automatic US citizenship through one parent and automatic other country citizenship through the other parent. It suggests to me that we need to fix our laws as any US citizen who has a child should have a US citizen as a child, automatically.

[lrb111]

I hate to be negative and I will adamantly deny leaning one way or the other on the issue of the BC, but how difficult would it be for politically-connected folks to come up with a "legitimate" BC? I mean, you could come up with one whether it was genuine or not considering the state of government records back in the 60's, no?

I wonder why he did not present his BC at any point and have all this stopped. All he has done is present lawyers, that are trying to avoid presenting the BC.

[GrillKing]

I wonder why he did not present his BC at any point and have all this stopped. All he has done is present lawyers, that are trying to avoid presenting the BC.

Why, that's too simple. There you go, thinking again.

[GrillKing]

I did not know there was a difference between a US national and a US citizen. I had never even heard of the two terms not being used as synonyms.

To clarify my earlier post, all US Citizens are US Nationals, but not all US Nationals are US Citizens. Nationals who are not citizens can carry US Passports but are marked as Nationals. They cannot vote in US Elections or hold US Public office.

Interestingly, Citizens who are residents of Puerto Rico fall under different tax law (federal income tax) than residents of the states and also cannot vote directly for President. They do participate in political party nominations however. If residency moves to a state, then Puerto Rican US voting is allowed. Likewise, if I for example move to PR, I cannot vote for President.

PR fields its own Olympic team.

Sorry, I'll try to not continue to hijack this thread!!!!

[bdickens]

I wonder why he did not present his BC at any point and have all this stopped. All he has done is present lawyers, that are trying to avoid presenting the BC.

Why, that's too simple. There you go, thinking again.

Yeah, the issue is too "nuanced" for such a simple solution.

[KBCraig]

From Camille Paglia, a left-leaning pro-choice feminist (who also has nice things to say about Sarah Palin):

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/11/12/palin/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

As I've watched Obama gracefully step up to podiums or move through crowds, I've been reminded not of basketball, with its feints and pivots, but of surfing, that art form of his native Hawaii. A photograph of Obama body surfing on vacation was widely publicized in August. But I'm talking about big-time competitive surfing, as in this stunning video tribute to the death-defying Laird Hamilton (who, like Obama, was raised fatherless in Hawaii). Obama's ability to stay on his feet and outrun the most menacing waves that threaten to engulf him seems to embody the breezy, sunny spirit of the American surfer.

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama -- even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama's birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction.

But Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the "short-form" certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.) And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available? The passivity of the press toward Bush administration propaganda about weapons of mass destruction led the nation into the costly blunder of the Iraq war. We don't need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don't like feeling gamed or played.

Another issue that I initially dismissed was the flap over William Ayers, the Chicago-based former member of the violent Weather Underground. Conservative radio host Sean Hannity began the drumbeat about Ayers' association with Obama a year ago -- a theme that most of the mainstream media refused to investigate or even report until this summer. I had never heard of Ayers and couldn't have cared less. I was irritated by Hillary Clinton's aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama's curt dismissal of the issue.

Hence my concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign. Obama may not in recent years have been "pallin' around" with Ayers, in Sarah Palin's memorable line, but his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed. Blame for the failure of this issue to take hold must also accrue to the conservative talk shows, which use the scare term "radical" with simplistic sensationalism, blanketing everyone under the sun from scraggly ex-hippies to lipstick-chic Nancy Pelosi.
( . . . )
Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

It's worth reading the whole article.