This Is Downright Weird

This Is Downright Weird

I mentioned Berg v. Obama, filed in federal court a couple of months back. I said at the time that I didn't believe Berg's claim--that Obama isn't a natural born citizen of the U.S. (and perhaps not even a naturalized citizen), as much as I wanted it to be true. But what is making this more and more interesting is the motion by Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee asking the federal judge to dismiss the suit. Go here and look at filing 12.

Instead of simply providing the certified Hawaii birth certificate that would satisfy Berg's request--and clearly establish that Obama is a natural born citizen of the U.S.--the lawyers for Obama and the DNC are claiming that Berg doesn't have standing to file the suit.

In this case, Mr. Berg fails to allege any concrete, specific injury in fact to himself.... For that reason, a voter does not have standing to challenge the qualifications of a candidate for President of the United States.

Ordinarily, you would only make an issue of standing if you thought you might lose if the plaintiff established standing, or if you were concerned about the costs of defending such a suit. But the only way that they could lose would be if Obama couldn't provide a valid, certified birth certificate establishing that he was born in Hawaii. How hard could that be? And it can't be that expensive, either. This is the type of motion that I would expect to see if, in fact, there is something about Obama's birth certificate that is a problem. Perhaps he was really born in Hawaii--but something else about that birth certificate creates a problem.

More bizarrely, Obama and the DNC's lawyers are claiming that even if Berg had standing, the Constitution provides no action that the courts can take:

In any event, the Complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because it fails to establish a cause of action.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not quite sure what this means--but if I read this correctly, they are arguing that just because the Constitution requires you to be a natural born citizen to be elected, that therefore the courts lack authority to remove Obama from the ballot if he isn't a natural born citizen. What is this Constitutional provision, then? Just a suggestion?

UPDATE: Even a bit more weird: one of Obama's own web sites, while insisting that he was born in Hawaii, acknowledges that Obama held Kenyan citizenship until 1982, quoting the Washington Post to that effect:

“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.
Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”

Now, dual citizenship wouldn't be a problem, as long as he was a natural born citizen of the United States, and had never lost his U.S. citizenship (as some have claimed with respect to his mother's marriage to an Indonesian when Obama was five). But why not just produce the certified copy of the Hawaii birth certificate, and make Berg's entire lawsuit go away?

UPDATE: I'm told that the "cause of action" language means that Berg hasn't demonstrated that he would be harmed by Obama taking office contrary to the Constitutional provision, and therefore the federal courts can't enforce this provision. If so, it means that this provision is effectively not enforceable by individual suit.