Heck No, He Won't Go

Major Stefan F. Cook is seeking relief in the civilian courts from orders to go to Afghanistan, claiming that the orders are unlawful because our Commander-in-Chief is not a natural born citizen.

The deep thinkers at Wonkette infer that he is a coward, but obviously haven't paged through the court filing, which includes (point 18, page 13) the news that the plaintiff "is no pacifist or anti-war protestor.  Plaintiff actually does want to go to Aghanistan and he verifies this fact... under penalty of perjury."

The complaint is long on rhetoric and short on actual evidence.  It also includes this headscratcher (pt. 24, pg 15).  Their point is that responding to this complaint would scarcely burden Obama at all - all he needs to do is produce a long form birth certificate which "will confirm whether Barack Hussen Obama was in fact born to parents who were both citizens of the United States in Honolulu, Hawaii, on or about 1961".

That is their emphasis on the parent being US citizens, and I have no idea why - Obama's father was not a citizen, nor does he need to be.  If Obama was born in the United States, he is a citizen.

Other bits of the complaint may be accurate, and certainly give one pause.  For example, they claim (pt. 9) that a short form birth certificate of the type we have been shown for Obama could have been obtained under Hawaiian statute 338, which relies simply on the statement of a relative without corroborating evidence from a local hospital.  I have no idea whether that is true.

Well.  I ducked the Bush-National Guard until it was forced upon a reluctant nation by Dan Rather and have mostly ducked this one.  However, this seems even weirder - what in the world could the obstacle be to releasing a long form birth certificate (Fact Check was delighted with the short form)?

MyDD assures us there are mountains of evidence in defense of Obama, but who is asking for mountains, and what makes this so complicated?  Well, why ask why?  Obviously, it is not complicated if the long form contains no surprises; it is a Constitutional disaster and international debacle if it does.

JUST SAYING, AGAIN:  I don't think that Obama's mother and grandparents would have been fiddling with Obama's birth records in 1961 in order to preserve his eligibility for the White House; they would have been doing that to buttress their claim to custody in the event of a nasty separation from the African father.  Put it this way - what would Ms. Dunham's chances have looked like if she were fighting a Kenyan family in a Kenyan court for custody of a black Kenyan child?  I'm not saying there was any fiddling; I am just saying the motive for such fiddling would have been screamingly obvious back in 1961.

[end of thread]

Comments

[DebinNC]

Has TOTUS been replaced yet? If not, maybe Obama will be asked about the pitch today and he'll say it was "like the Special Olympics or something" again.

[pagar]

"Speaking of which, shouldn't someone be out there with a rule change for 2012, requiring appropriate candidate documentation in order to avoid this silly unpleasantness next time around?"

Any rule changes that will be made will be to make it more difficult for a conservative candidate to win, IMO.

If one doubts that, please review the saga of the Ohio SOS in 2008. She was sued because she refused to do her job of verifying new registrations. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The ruling, as I understand it, seems to be that since the Ohio SOS was a Democrat, she was not required to do her job.
Article

Has anyone seen any indication that the problem in Ohio has been resolved?

This is the same basis we see for Democrats challenging voter ID laws. They claim their voters are not intelligent enough to get a photo ID, but should be allowed to vote anyway. My opinion is that ACORN will make the 2012 US elections look like Saddam had real competition when he was getting 99% of the votes in his reelections.

No one is doing anything to combat ACORN, in fact the federal govrnment is feeding them taxpayer money to insure that they will be more powerful than they are today. Taxpayer's money is being used to insure conservatives will have NO voice in America.

[pagar]

Off Topic, but someone was interested in Shreveport, La. and I ran across a blog that might Interest anyone of a conservative nature.

[matt]

how about presenting a driver's license in order to vote? That's how crazy it is in CA...no ID necessary. All of this is a strong plank in the Democratic Party platform..It's the party of irresponsibility.

[peter]

Matt, what's the matter, do you want to intimidate Latino voters who might not be able to produce an identification card? How hurtful of you.

[bad]

Yeah Matt!! And where are dead people supposed to get a current license?

[MilitantBanana]

All too soon there will be a call to arms. What will you answer?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Really? Accusing the Vice Presidential Candidate of pretending to be pregnant and give birth to her Down Syndrome baby is the *mirror image* of asking for a birth certificate from a grown man?

No, the continuing obsession with the birth certificate after Congress certified the election, and in the face of a certified copy from the Secretary of State of Hawai'i, is a mirror image of the continuing obsession with a biologically near-impossibility.

[Thomas Collins]

My son lives in Shreveport, pagar. Thanks for the link to the Shreveport blog. I am going to pass it along to him.

[pagar]

You're welcome, Thomas. I thought it was you and wanted to put it where're you're see it. It looks good from my standpoint.

[JM Hanes]

Charlie:

Congress does not certify the election or the candidate, per se. They essentially just do the official tally the electoral votes which takes place after the popular election.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Check this out from Mudville Gazette:

Was the Cook case a scam?

[JM Hanes]

Thomas Collins:

"I think it would be an odd interpretation of the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution to argue that Congress was required to count electoral votes of an individual not constitutionally eligible to be President. Thus, in my view, there is vetting at both the state and federal level."

An excellent example of tautology. The question in this case is how Congress would even know whether they're counting votes for a constitutionally eligible individual or not. States vet the popular vote count, and Congress vets the electoral college vote count. Neither of them vet candidates.

Your putative solutions, basically limited to complaint and impeachment after the fact, do nothing to address the most compelling issue. As you yourself repeatedly assert, such challenges are essentially rendered null, once a President-elect takes the oath of office. This more de facto presumption, however, than legal argument. The Cook case challenges the constitutionality of that presumption, while Berg brought suit for a fraud upon the polity.

Your observations about judicial restraint are not on point, because resolving both such challenges is, in fact, within the purview of the judicial branch -- the very branch of government which has long served as the primary check on legislative overreach.

"I don't think I am mixing up the political and the legal here."

I think you've served up a veritable stew of political, legal, moral and practical issues. The key element of "the moral foundation of a polity" is a legal flowering of the Golden Rule, not a tripartite form of governance. The idea that our own mandated three branches are either intended or obliged to operate independently in full, ignores the foundational concept of checks and balances entirely.

Designing a mechanism for legally establishing constitutional eligibility for the highest office falls clearly in the legislative ballpark -- something that the Congressional process of counting votes which you have cited does nothing to address. Short of a constitutional amendment, however, even the question of which legislative entity could do so authoritatively is not a simple one. So too, the question of precisely when and how such a mechanism could legitimately kick in -- and the slippery slope implications of government determining who may and may not run for office -- are of labyrinthine complexity, IMO.

Whether or not continuing to raise the birth certificate issue will serve Republicans well or ill in this particular instance is, of course, is a purely political matter of expediency -- one which has next to nothing to do with any of the moral, legal or judicial arguments you have proffered. Indeed, such political exigencies are the very obstacle which virtually precludes any serious examination of standing and vetting issues.

[JM Hanes]

Let's hear about Totus's Tooth:

Very interesting observations on dust! I admit to a certain skepticism in the past, when you've posited such unintended consequences of stealing energy from the ecosystem, but now I see what you meant.

"The 'Fight the Smears' site was rolled out as soon as Obama was assured of the nomination. It makes senses to me that it would attack the 'smear' about which his team felt most vulnerable."

The connection was even more direct. Fight the Smears didn't debut till the controversy over the Kos COLB erupted, and the haste with which it was put together was laughably apparent. A much reduced, thoroughly degraded image of the infamous document was couched in a few inconsequential rumors, and the site went dormant almost immediately afterwards.

I loved your Ghana goat comment, BTW. It was LOL on target! How long the predicted metamorphosis will be in coming, however, even Kim doesn't know.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Major Cook Terminated from DOD's Defense Security Services Job

[Many of you have been suckered by the Alinskyite marginalizing of this issue. Don't be such blind fools.]

I love you, Charlie, but I suspect that even if you were presented en face with the certified copy from the Hawaiian SOS that you would still not see why it does not prove 'native born citizen' for Presidential eligibility purposes. We are presented with unprecedented circumstances, crying out for resolution, and Charlie, you think you have the answers. That is arrogant and ignorant.

Thanks, JMH. The truth is that it takes removing a very significant portion of wind energy before you'll see anything but local changes in climate. Nonetheless, even with trivial amounts taken there are measurable local changes, and the damages from the local changes outweigh the value of the energy derived from it. So called 'sustainable' is anything but, in most of the applications to which that appellation is applied. How's about that shiny appl?

By the way, if all the energy of the sun reaching the earth were directed solely to the sustenance of the human race, the theoretical maximum population of humans on earth is in the quadrillions. In other words, a million TIMES more people than we already sustain could be sustained. With only minimal increases in the efficiency with which we use the energy of the sun, many more people could live on earth.

It's amusing to see everyone skirt an issue and that is that the immediate presumption by nearly everyone, incorrectly, is that removing his orders to a war zone removes his standing in this lawsuit. I doubt that is the case, however, this dissonance between what everyone senses and the way they act about the issue is telling.

Remember, the fundamental issue is his insubordination to the will of the people. Do you like him doing that to you? Well, then why do you put up with it?

[Pofarmer]

No, the continuing obsession with the birth certificate after Congress certified the election, and in the face of a certified copy from the Secretary of State of Hawai'i, is a mirror image of the continuing obsession with a biologically near-impossibility.

Really? When, and how was it verified?

[glasater]

From a tweeter I follow:

How to Brainwash a Nation

It is a video done in 1985 from a KGB agent who defected to the US in 1970
If anyone gets back to this thread--watching the video is really worth the time spent viewing.

[MayBee]

No, the continuing obsession with the birth certificate after Congress certified the election,

Put me in the camp who thinks its more akin to continuing to criticize Congress after they'd passed a bill they didn't read.
Sure it isn't going to change anything, but it is still a flaw in the system and I'm going to talk about it.

There is apparently no mechanism to verify the constitutional requirements to hold the office have been met. I find that really odd. Congress debated McCain's eligibility, but his alone. That indicates to me Congress is at least interested in the issue, but not consistently.

Theoretically, what *would* happen if the newly inaugurated President turned out to be 33?

[daddy]

"Theoretically, what *would* happen if the newly inaugurated President turned out to be 33?"

Is the theoretical President we're talking about a Democrat or a Republican?