Philip J Berg lawsuit, Obama motion to dismiss, U.S. Supreme Court, FEC v. Akins, voter standing, James Akins, Related Lawsuits, subject matter jurisdiction, Jeff Schreiber commentary

On Wednesday, September 24, 2008, Obama and the DNC filed a motion to dismiss the Philip J Berg lawsuit that states Obama is not qualified to be president. Legal issues aside, in my opinion this is an admission that Obama is not qualified and is still a citizen of kenya and or Indonesia. Jeff Schreiber, a law student, legal writer and blog owner, has written his analysis of the lawsuit and motion to dismiss by Obama. here are some exerpts:

“Unlike the way in which the defense supported the 12(b)(6) defense, citing the particularities and treatment of the Declaratory Judgment Act by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the lack of standing defense did not surprise me in the least. In two recent posts on this matter, the first one eight and the other 12 days ago, I focused on the standing issue–specifically noting the disposition of the New Hampshire case, Hollander v. McCain, quoted in today’s motion–and pressed Berg on the issue.

I told him, just as I explained in these pages, that above everything else he needed to show an INJURY IN FACT. I mentioned that simply being a taxpayer, or a voter for that matter, has not proven to be enough to show injury or prove standing. In today’s motion, the defense stated that Berg failed to allege any “concrete, specific injury in fact to himself,” maintaining that voter disenfranchisement alone is not enough, that “a voter’s loss of the ability to vote for a candidate ‘of their liking’ does not confer standing because the actual injury is not to the voter but to the candidate.”

The Hon. William Alsup in the Northern District of California expressed similar feelings when he granted John McCain’s Motion to Dismiss–filed on similar grounds–on September 16 in Robinson v. Bowen, the citizenship-related action filed against the Arizona senator by the chairman of California’s American Independent Party, stating that even with plaintiff Markham Robinson’s status as party chairman and chances of becoming an elector, he still had “no greater stake in the matter than a taxpayer or voter.”

“Furthermore, even though filing so close to deadline is a common and accepted practice, Berg was steadfast in his belief that the longer the senator fails and refuses to produce the documentation sought in the Motion for Expedited Discovery filed on September 9, the more it looks like his allegations are correct, and he felt as though the timing of today’s motion was another attempt at obfuscation.

“Note, Jeff, that they waited until just before the deadline to file this, note that they’re just trying to prolong it and not deal with the issue,” he said. “It’s funny that on a day that McCain has stated that he’s suspending his campaign and wants the upcoming debate canceled so America can talk about the economic crisis, Obama says that he can campaign and talk it out at the same time, yet how come he’s not talking about his birth certificate? How come he’s hiding behind technical rules?”

“If you’re not qualified to be there,” Berg said, “get off the stage at this point in the game. Every day that goes by, every step that he takes to avoid showing those documents, which I don’t believe exist, indicates to me that he’s not natural-born.””

Read more here:

http://www.americasright.com/2008/09/obama-dnc-file-motion-to-dismiss-in.html

“Truth or fantasy of Berg’s allegations aside, as I’ve stated before, I believe that eligibility goes beyond citizenship, that our nation’s founders wanted to ensure that the man–or woman, as it were–leading our country was boundlessly loyal to Her, and that they enshrined that hope in the fifth clause of Article II, Section 1 of our Constitution. I touched upon that intent almost a month ago after Berg’s suit was filed:

It was important to those courageous men that the future leaders of their fledgling nation understand what it means to be an American. Every clause in that document is there for a reason, each a lesson learned from fresh wounds of tyranny gone but not forgotten, and the framers made a point to require that, at the very least, a potential president must have been a citizen of the United States “at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution.” Unfettered, undivided devotion and loyalty to America was of the utmost concern; simply put, only those who fought and bled for Her independence, or at the very least understood the meaning behind, need for and potential of this great experiment could be trusted with its charge.
For that reason, completely apart from my obvious ideological leanings and political bias, it seemed counterintuitive to me that regardless of the slippery slope argument, a voter in our representative republic could not stand up and question the qualifications of those who wish to lead our nation as president and Commander-in-Chief. For me, it doesn’t matter who the candidate is or to which party he or she belongs — what kind of protection are we providing for the intent of our founders if we refuse to even consider such an action on its merits, or lack thereof, instead overlooking an inquiry into a matter of such great importance based upon procedural limitations which, by their very nature, ebb and flow over time?”

“A 1998 decision rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court, FEC v. Akins, did allow for voter standing because the injury of which James Akins and the other respondents complained–the inability to obtain information, in this case as to the status of a political action committee–was concrete enough that widely-shared harm did not preclude standing. As a campaign finance-related action, FEC v. Akins may be a far cry from the nature of the claims set forth by Berg and the others, but it shows that the Court is willing to broaden the standard for injury in fact when the injury sustained by a mere voter either (1) falls within the “zone of interests” to be protected or regulated by a particular statute, or (2) is indicative of a large number of individuals who suffer the same injury. This, for me, seems to better align with the hopes of those who, wary of the King, wanted to secure power as close to the people as possible, and certainly seems to comport with the nature of the injury in the matters at hand.”

Read more here:

http://www.americasright.com/2008/09/so-who-does-have-standing-anyway.html

Make sure to visit Jeff Schreiber’s site often.