Posted: April 29, 2011
8:30 pm Eastern
8:30 pm Eastern
By Bob Unruh
© 2011 WorldNetDaily
Only days after the White House released a copy of Barack Obama's "Certificate of Live Birth" from Hawaii, claiming to have put to rest the dispute over his eligibility to hold the office, attorneys will argue on Monday before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the requirements of the U.S. Constitution simply are too important to ignore for the sake of political expediency, even when they involve a sitting president.
The case has been pending since the 2008 election. The plaintiffs alleged that Obama's qualifications were not checked properly, and that has resulted in a violation of the U.S. Constitution, a man occupying the Oval Office who does not meet the requirements that only a "natural born Citizen" can hold the office.
California attorney Orly Taitz told WND today that her hope is for a decision that will return the case to the district court for proceedings, which could include a discovery process through which a large number of Obama's life documents could be obtained.
Another set of plaintiffs is being represented by Attorney Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation.
"What I hope comes out of the case is that the 9th Circuit will remand to the trial court for further proceedings, allow us to take depositions, subpoena witnesses and evidence to find out the truth," Kreep told WND.
"Let's assume the [White House-released birth] document is the real thing, that it's an actual copy of the birth certificate. There's still the issue of his half-sister [Maya Soetoro-Ng] who reported him being adopted by the Indonesia stepfather [Lolo Soetoro]. That raises legal questions. Maybe he lost his citizenship. There's also the issue of him traveling to Pakistan…"
"There's even the question of whether he was a dual citizen," he said. "That raises all sorts of different questions."
Also, "if the document that the White House released is accurate and is what it appears …. That still doesn't resolve all the issues, and perhaps the most important question is why spend all this private money and taxpayer money to keep it from being revealed?"
Since his election, sometimes using private attorneys and sometimes using taxpayer-funded legal teams, Obama has battled almost six dozen lawsuits across the country, including several that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, in order to keep his records concealed from the public.
He even withheld the document he has released now when a career Army doctor, Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, was court-martialed and imprisoned for asking for verification that the commander-in-chief was legitimate.
"Why didn't he just release it in 2008 when he was running, or when Hillary Clinton asked for it? Why cause all the mistrust?" Kreep asked.
And far from putting the issue to rest as Obama had stated he wanted, the interest continues to surge. Two networks that largely had ignored the case for the first several years of its arguments now have asked the federal court for permission to broadcast the Monday proceedings, officials confirmed.
A team of U.S. attorneys based in California earlier argued in pleadings that there essentially is nothing the American public can do to determine if Obama is qualified under the U.S. Constitution's demand for a "natural-born citizen" in the Oval Office, and if they are injured, at least they are all injured alike.
The case arguments were presented in a brief submitted by U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. and his assistants Roger West and David DeJute in defense of Obama.
The plaintiffs had warned that allowing the district court's dismissal of the case to stand would strip minorities in the United States of "all political power" and leave laws to be based "upon the whims of the majority."
That earlier brief was filed by Kreep, who is representing Wiley S. Drake, a vice-presidential candidate on the 2008 ballot in California, and Markham Robinson, an elector from the state.
The case challenges Obama's eligibility to be president, citing a lack of documentation, and was the subject of hearings at the lower court level, where Judge David Carter heard arguments.
However, Carter dismissed the case, ruling that the plaintiffs suffered no injury – they didn't have "standing" – and that the law left it to Congress to sort out eligibility issues instead of a court.
Government attorneys defending Obama's position said those who brought the case cannot "demonstrate a particularized injury-in-fact traceable to defendants' conduct as would be necessary to establish standing."
The attorneys brushed off concerns that a violation of the Constitution was a serious matter and caused any injury to the plaintiffs, saying, "To put it another way, the relief sought by appellants, consisting of a determination by the court of the eligibility of the president to hold office, and, possibly, his removal from office, would have 'no more directly and tangibly benefitted [them] than … the public at large.'"
Further, the U.S. attorneys argued that a possible violation of the Constitution is a political issue, not judicial.
"Even assuming arguendo, that some of the purported 'injuries' alleged by appellants satisfied the Article III requirement of 'injury-in-fact,' the district court correctly held that no appellant could demonstrate that any injury complained of could be redressed by a court," they continued. "The political question doctrine precludes redress to any appellant, because such redress would improperly arrogate to this court jurisdiction over political questions as to the eligibility of the president which the Constitution entrusts exclusively to the House and Senate.
"The political question doctrine serves to 'restrain the judiciary from inappropriate interference in the business of the other branches of government' by prohibiting the courts from deciding issues that properly rest within the province of the political branches," they said.
The documentation from the government in the case was unresponsive to the issue raised by the plaintiffs that courts have authority to remove an elected chief executive officer should he be documented as ineligible.
The plaintiffs' brief had cited the removal of Thomas H. Moodie from the office of governor in North Dakota in the 1930s as proof that a government's chief officer can be removed from office by the courts – even after an election and inauguration. Moodie had failed to meet a state residency requirement to be governor. But he was elected anyway and installed, and ultimately removed from office by the court over that failure.
The plaintiffs also cite an earlier California case in which a candidate for president was removed from the ballot by state officials because he failed to qualify for the office under the Constitution's age requirements.
But the tax-paid U.S. attorneys said in defense of Obama that "disputes involving political questions lie outside of the Article III jurisdiction of federal courts."
"The issues sought to be raised by appellants herein, regarding both whether President Obama is a 'natural born citizen of the United States' and therefore eligible to be president as well as any purported claims raised by any criminal statutes … are to be judged, according to the text of the Constitution, by the legislative branch of the government, and not the judicial," they said.
They argued it is "preposterous" for the plaintiffs to seek a ruling that Obama is not eligible and therefore "should be removed from office."
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