Qualifications for President and the “Natural Born” Citizenship Eligibility Requirement
certified on the documents produced by the State of Hawaii, such contemporaneous official record of birth in Hawaii exists.[1] The federal court in Liacakos v. Kennedy found that with no official foreign contemporaneous documentation, even a “delayed birth certificate” produced by the plaintiff, issued by the State of West Virginia 46 years after the alleged birth there, would provide prima facie evidence of “natural born citizenship.”[2] That prima facie evidence, unrebutted by any official foreign documentation, along with collateral evidence of self-assumed and asserted U.S. citizenship, would thus be conclusive and establish “natural born” status by a “fair preponderance of the evidence.”[3] In the case of President Obama, rather than any actual contrary documentary evidence, there have instead been several “theories,” allegations, rumors, and self-generated “doubts” and “questions” concerning the place and circumstances of President Obama’s birth which, as noted in court decisions, have been posited on the Internet and “television news tabloid[s],” and upon which a number of the lawsuits were based.[4]
It may be noted that in addition to court dismissals based on lack of jurisdiction because of the failure of the plaintiff to show “standing” or to state a claim upon which relief may be granted, several of the cases regarding President Obama’s “eligibility” were dismissed on the basis of the lack of subject matter jurisdiction because, as noted by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, for example, the plaintiff’s alleged claim was “wholly insubstantial and frivolous” such that “federal jurisdiction is not extant.”[5] Similarly, in Stamper v. United States, the United States District Court noted in dismissing an “eligibility” challenge of President Obama, that a federal court may dismiss a complaint “for lack of subject matter jurisdiction” when the “allegations of a complaint are totally implausible, attenuated, unsubstantial, frivolous, devoid of merit or no longer open to discussion,” and in dismissing the case found that the court “is not required to accept unwarranted factual inferences.”[6] The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Berg v. Obama, in upholding the lower court’s dismissal of plaintiff/counsel Berg’s case, also noted “the obvious lack of any merit in Berg’s contentions…,”[7] and in Kerchner v. Obama, ruled that “[b]ecause we have decided that this appeal is frivolous, we will
- ↑ See footnotes 178, and 181–182 of this Report.
- ↑ 195 F.Supp. at 632–633.
- ↑ 195 F.Supp. at 634.
- ↑ Berg v. Obama, 574 F.Supp.2d 509, 513 (E.D. Pa. 2008), aff’d 586 F.3rd 234 (3rd Cir. 2009), cert. denied, 129 S.Ct. 920 (2009), noting plaintiff’s reliance on various sources of allegations, including a “television news tabloid.” See also dismissal of cases against the Ohio Secretary of State, Neal v. Brunner, Wayne Common Pleas case # 08CV72726; and Greenberg v. Brunner, Wood Common Pleas case # 08CV 1024. In the Neal case, as reported in The Cincinnati Inquirer, October 31, 2008, the judge stated: “The onus is upon one who challenges such public officer to demonstrate an abuse of discretion by admissible evidence—not hearsay, conclusory allegations or pure speculation…. It is abundantly clear that the allegations in Plaintiff’s complaint concerning ‘questions’ about Senator Obama’s status as a ‘natural born citizen’ are derived from Internet sources, the accuracy of which has not been demonstrated to either defendant Brunner or this magistrate.” The basis of some of the “questions” raised in lawsuits appear to be the mere fact of the existence of other similar lawsuits, as well as disputed third-party statements. Berg, supra at 513; Keyes v. Bowen, Case No. 34-2008-80000096-CU-WM-GDS, slip op. at 4 (Sup. Ct. Cal. March 13, 2009).
- ↑ “Where a complaint seeks recovery directly under the Constitution or the laws of the United States, an exception to subject matter jurisdiction lies when ‘such claim is wholly insubstantial and frivolous.’ … Having carefully reviewed Mr. Craig’s amended complaint, we find it is ‘very plain,’ Baker, 369 U.S. at 199, that his ‘alleged claim under the Constitution or federal statu[t]es’ falls within this ‘wholly insubstantial and frivolous’ category such that federal jurisdiction is not extant.” Craig v. United States, 340 Fed. Appx. 471, 473–474 (10th Cir. 2009), cert. denied, 130 S.Ct. 141 (2009).
- ↑ Stamper v. United States, Case No. 1:08 CV 2593 (N.D. Ohio November 4, 2008), Slip op. at 4, 7 (citing to Apple v. Glenn, 183 F.3d 477, 479 (6th Cir. 1999) and Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 536–37 (1974)).
- ↑ Berg v. Obama, 586 F.3d at 239.
