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Obama eligibility challenges explode

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Obama eligibility court hearing in progress, takes place in absence of Obama and his lawyers

The Obama eligibility issue exploded today in an administrative court in Georgia, after Obama and his attorneys refused to appear. Because they refused, they could not exclude evidence. Today the court heard plenty of evidence, all damning. Because Obama’s attorneys offered no defense, the judge will probably rule against him by default.

Obama eligibility challenge lead-up

Three weeks ago, Judge Michael Malihi of the Office of State Administrative Hearings set a hearing for today on three Obama eligibility challenges. The lawyers in those cases are:

  1. Van Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation, representing plaintiff David Weldon.
  2. State Representative Mark Hatfield of Georgia, representing Carl Swenson and Kevin Powell.
  3. Dr. Orly Taitz, representing David Farrar, Leah Lax, Cody Judy, Thomas McClaren, and Laurie Roth. (Warning: some witnesses allege that someone has infected Orly Taitz’ web site with an Internet virus.)

Judge Malihi ruled that Weldon and the other plaintiffs all had standing, and that Barack H. Obama must show that he is eligible to the office of President even to have his name on a primary ballot. His lawyers consistently argue that eligibility is only an issue in an election of Presidential Electors. Judge Malihi is having none of that. In fact, he allowed Taitz to issue a subpoena to compel Obama to attend and to produce:

  • A paper long-form birth certificate,
  • Documentation of every name that Obama has ever called himself (including “Barry Soetoro,” his assumed name during his Indonesia years), and
  • Proof behind his Social Security Number.

Obama did produce a birth certificate earlier. But that was a PDF file, not a paper document. As such it has no legal standing. Furthermore, several witnesses have said that its multiple layers are clear evidence of forgery.

Obama’s attorney, Mark Jablonski, moved to quash that subpoena. Last week, Judge Malihi denied the motion.

In support of his motion, Defendant argues that “if enforced, [the subpoena] requires him to interrupt duties as President of the United States” to attend a hearing in Atlanta, Georgia.  However, Defendant fails to provide any legal authority to support his motion to quash the subpoena to attend.  Defendant’s motion suggests that no President should be compelled to attend a Court hearing.  This may be correct.  But Defendant has failed to cite to any legal authority evidencing why his attendance is “unreasonable or oppressive, or that the testimony…[is] irrelevant, immaterial, or cumulative and unnecessary to a party’s preparation or presentation in the hearing, or that basic fairness dictates that the subpoena should not be enforced…

Jablonski indignantly refused to have Obama attend, or even to come himself. (The Atlanta Pop Culture Examiner found this shocking and disturbing.) Had he appeared, that might have satisfied the letter of the order. It certainly would have given Jablonski the opportunity to present a case, and to cross-examine, object, and do other things that an attorney does when the other side presents its case. Instead, Jablonski sent this imperious letter to Secretary of State Brian Kemp. In it Jablonski said that Kemp had exceeded his authority, and that Judge Malihi had let the cases “get out of control.” Jablonski was especially upset with the judge for allowing Orly Taitz to send a subpoena to his client, something no other court has done so far.

The Secretary of State should withdraw the hearing request as being improvidently issued. A referring agency may withdraw the request at any time. Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. r. 616-1-2-.17(1). Indeed, regardless of the collapse of proceedings before the ALJ, the original hearing request was defective as a matter of law. Terry v. Handel, 08cv158774S (Superior Court Fulton County, 2008), appeal dismissed, No. S09D0284 (Ga. Supreme Court), reconsideration denied, No. S09A1373. (“The Secretary of State of Georgia is not given any authority that is discretionary nor any that is mandatory to refuse to allow someone to be listed as a candidate for President by a political party because she believes that the candidate might not be qualified.”) Similarly, no law gives the Secretary of State authority to determine the qualifications of someone named by a political party to be on the Presidential Preference Primary ballot. Your duty is determined by the statutory requirement that the Executive Committee of a political party name presidential preference primary candidates. O.C.G.A. § 21-2-193. Consequently, the attempt to hold hearings on qualifications which you may not enforce is ultra vires.

In other words, said Jablonski, a mere State Secretary of State may not touch the Obama eligibility issue, because what a Party Executive Committee says, goes. In reply, Kemp sent this letter back to Jablonski. In it he essentially said that if Jablonski didn’t want to attend, that was up to him. But:

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If you and your client choose to suspend your participation in the OSAH proceedings, please understand that you do so at your own peril.

In other words, “Show up, unless you want to lose.”

Obama eligibility hearing

Obama eligibility hearing takes place

The Obama eligibility hearing before Judge Michael Malihi of the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings. Photo: The National Patriot; from a live video stream in the courtroom.

The Obama eligibility hearing took place this morning in Atlanta, Georgia from 9:00 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. (Here is a partial transcript.) The Article II Political Action Committee carried a live video stream of the hearing. About 100 people attended and took every vacant seat in the audience section. Most of these seemed to be 55 years old or older. CNAV heard from several Internet witnesses that the video stream did not necessarily reach every user who tried to connect to it. Some suspected that some person or persons unknown tried to block the stream. Perhaps anticipating such a thing, Article II PAC arranged for two “back-up” streams. One of these carried the trade name “Vattelevision” in reference to Emmerich de Vattel, author of The Law of Nations. Many Obama eligibility challengers rely on this text to define a natural-born citizen.

Van Irion went first. He asserted that Obama cannot be a natural-born citizen because his father was a British colonial subject and never applied for US citizenship. Irion cited Minor v. Happersett as defining three classes of citizen: naturalized, statutory, and natural-born. A natural-born citizen must be born in-country to two citizen parents. A citizen mother alone is not enough.

(Nicholas E. Purpura, lead plaintiff in Purpura v. Sebelius, told CNAV that this is the strongest Obama eligibility argument available. His comprehensive case against the health care reform bill makes the identical Obama eligibility challenge. He now plans to re-argue his petition for certiorari to the US Supreme Court, and to cite Van Irion’s evidence in his argument, among other things.)

Representative Hatfield was next. He called his two clients as witnesses, in an effort to show that the Obama birth certificate is a forgery.

Orly Taitz came last and created the greatest sensation. She called six different witnesses, including a private investigator and a small businessman who sells document scanners. Her cases was twofold:

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  1. Obama’s Social Security Number cannot be his. It belongs to a long-dead person who was born in 1890. The Obama SSN, say the witnesses, follows the convention for a man born in that year, but not one born in 1962.
  2. The Obama birth certificate PDF file has many layers. Those layers fairly scream, “Forgery!”

After calling her witnesses, Taitz addressed the judge directly on her own investigation. Judge Malihi interrupted her and said that if she was testifying, then she must do so under oath. She then took the stand, swore the oath of truthfulness, and began to testify. Finally the judge asked her to give the court a notarized affidavit laying out her investigation and its results.

Judge Malihi did not rule on the Obama eligibility cases today. Nor did he hint at whether he would find Obama in contempt of court for not showing, and not even sending his attorney to show. Whether an administrative law judge can compel someone beyond the State line to come to court is an open question. What is not open is that any judge may rule only on the evidence that it hears. By not showing, and not sending a surrogate, Obama risks a default judgment that will knock him off the Georgia ballot. (In fact, some of the plaintiffs say that Judge Malihi told them that he already planned to enter a default judgment in their favor. He let the hearing go forward only when the three attorneys insisted that they present their evidence to get it on the record.)

Obama eligibility challenges elsewhere

The Georgia case is not the only Obama eligibility case now pending. Alabama election officials will not allow Obama to list his name on the ballot until an Obama eligibility case in that State resolves itself.

Georgia was the first such case because its primary deadline is very close. Other States have their own filing deadlines. Purpura told CNAV that his massive health care reform bill case is the only case with an Obama eligibility count that is even before the Supreme Court. He plans to argue that the Court must not only grant certiorari to him, but also expedite his case. That, he says, is the only way to close the other Obama eligibility cases before any more primary filing deadlines pass. The reason: not one of those cases is even close to ripe for appeal to the Supreme Court in its respective State. And the US Supreme Court will not accept a case on appeal from a lower State court.

Related:

Obama eligibility challenges go forward

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.

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Barbara

Holy Homerun Batman!!! This is amazing news!

DinsdaleP

What’s amazing is that people expect that the President of the United States to put the responsibilities and priorities of the office second in priority to every partisan who can find a sympathetic judge to back them up, and travel the country to appear in hearings.

How many times did Taitz have her suits dismissed before her judge-shopping found a friendly venue? The Supreme Court rebuffed your friends from NJ, but of course that shows ignorance and bias on the part of a panel that has more conservatives than not, rather than the suit being flawed.

The simple reality is this – there is no level of proof that will satisfy the birther community if it doesn’t support their predetermined conclusios. The official state-issued documents that are sufficient for all other legal purposes are inadequate for this crowd, and nowthey expect the President to rearrange the priorities of the country to show up whenevr and wherever they demand. How about putting up a better candidate and voting the man out of office in a few months instead ?

Ed

If BO was a red blooded, patriotic resident of the US, looking out for the best interest of this country and his “fellow” citizens, this whole thing would have gone away. However, he has done nothing but undermine the Constitution and destroy our economy since he took office. His actions and his many ties to radicals and communists show that he has no loyalty whatsoever to the nation he rules. He is the perfect illustration of why we need a natural born citizen in charge – NOT a traitorous minion of our own enemies. Wake up! Either he goes away, or the USA does – your choice.

Geno

Dinsdale wrote:
“What’s amazing is that people expect that the President of the United States to put the responsibilities and priorities of the office second in priority to every partisan ”

Geno points out:
I don’t think anyone seriously expects Obama to appear in person. However, even the Preisdent of the United States is NOT above the law. Other presidents have had their lawyers appear and that has been perfectly acceptable to the courts.

Obama has chosen to ignore the court.

DinsdaleP

That’s a fair point, and one i completely agree with. I had been assuming that the lack of a response by Obama or one of his lawyers was due to a jurisdiction issue. If it was contempt that’d be another matter entirely.

I dont know enough about the details of this case, so I’ll do the responsible thing and stop commenting on it further until ive done more research into the facts.

Geno

Keep in mind, the election of the president is actually the sum of individual state elections. It would be pretty far out to argue a state court doesn’t have jurisdiction over a state’s election process.

Slock

“To cite Minor v. Happersett as the definitive statement of the meaning of the phrase “natural born citizen” is to exhibit an unfortunate lack of understanding of the Supreme Court’s 1874 decision in that case”.

– Associate Professor Joesph Hylton
– Marquette University Law School

The reality is: Birthers and Constitutionalists will continue their pursuit upon this unconstitutional (non natural born citizen) bogus “president.” Personally, I think they are wearing him down. Hence, Obama’s new strategy is, not to give court cases like this anymore attention than (they think) need be. Besides, Obama doesn’t need Georgia’s electoral votes to win a 2012 general election, as it already is a forgone conclusion that the Republican nominee will handily win the state.

In the end, (sooner than later) this whole Obama ineligibility house of cards deception will collapse. Those from both political parties who have complacently gone along with this whole eligibility deception charade would do well to quickly wake up, repent of their unconstitutional complacency sins of omission, and join the birther bandwagon to drive the unconstitutional occupier from the White House.

Slock

If I am an apologist for Obama than I am also an apologist for the following presidents
• Andrew Jackson‘s parents were both born in Ireland
• James Buchanan had an Irish father
• Chester A. Arthur had an Irish father
• Woodrow Wilson‘s mother was English
• Herbert Hoover had a Canadian-born mother
I really don’t know why Obama’s lawyer did not show up, maybe he did not want to show up to something that amounts to 2 + 2 = 5

Diane

Andrew Jackson and other presidents parents’ were immigrants who settled in America. Obama’s father was a “student” in Hawaii “temporarily” who still held allegiance to a foreign country, and there is No Doubt, was Not an Immigrant. If one’s parents were born in another country but became American citizens, that qualifies their children born in America as “natural born.”

Slock

Chester never gave any lie that hid his father’s naturalization status. A. P. Hinman’s book How a British Subject became President of the United States.
leaves us proof that Arthur’s birth to an Irish citizen was well known at the time.

Here are two excerpts from the book

“City and County of New York, ss
Chester A. Arthur, being duly sworn, says he is a native born
citizen of the United States; that he is of the age of
twenty-one years, and a resident of the First Judicial District
of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
CHESTER A. ARTHUR.
Sworn to before me this 4th day of May, 1854.
WM. A. DUSENBERRY, Com. of Deeds.
Indorsed; filed May 8, 1854.
State of New York,
City and County of New York, \ ss
I, William A. Butler, Clerk of the said City and County,”
Page 82
“PRESIDENT ARTHUR’S MESSAGE SEVERELY CRITICIZED BY
A ST. PETERSBURG JOURNAL-EXCEPTION TAKEN TO
THE CONDITION OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA.

(By cable to the Herald.)
London, December 12, 1881.
…Arthur even refrains from making comments
on English home affairs–the Irish rebellion, for instance,
which is agitating millions of American citizens, who are
also born Irishmen like the President.”
Page 88

Ian Lister

Err… no. There’s a good summary of what the order actually does here (link to blogcritics.org) – regardless of what right-wing conspiracy theorists want to believe.

Simon DeMon

It’s funny because to the best of my knowledge, Obama has never once tried to deny or hide the citizenship of his father. I believe he was even quite explicit about it.

Slock

What Obama’s first executive order really said.

Obama’s first executive order merely rescinded an earlier executive order severely limiting public access to presidential records after they left office.

That now-rescinded executive order, 13233, was signed by then-President George W. Bush on Nov. 1, 2001. It allowed former presidents and even family members to declare executive privilege and block public access to White House records for virtually any reason.

Rescinding Bush-Era Secrecy
Bush’s measure was criticized heavily and challenged in court. The Society of American Archivists called Bush’s executive order a “complete abnegation of the original 1978 Presidential Records Act.” The Presidential Records Act mandates the preservation of presidential records and makes them available to the public.

Obama agreed with the criticism.

“For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city. This administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but with those who seek it to be known,” Obama said after signing the order rescinding the Bush-era measure.

“The mere fact that you have the legal power to keep something secret does not mean you should always use it. Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

So Obama’s first executive order didn’t seek to shut down access to his own personal records, as conspiracy theorists claim. Its goal was exactly the opposite, to open up White House records to you and me.

Slock

Yet no one at the hearing claimed Obama was not born in Hawaii.

Slock

Terry
Do you think Rick Santorum is a natural born citizen?

Slock

I am not sure when or if Rick Santorum’s father was naturalized. I do not plan on performing that search. Frankly the potential results from a Santorum search turn my stomach.

DinsdaleP

Then why not simply sue the state of Hawaii to show how the PDF is the same as the paper document on file? The premise that the president himself must prove that his birth records issued by a state government are legitimate is flawed. The responsibility rests with the agency issuing the records.

Any paper document produced would be declared a fraud and/or insufficient anyway, so this is all theater in the end. Just win with a better candidate in November ..

DinsdaleP

Your last assertion about Taitz makes no sense. She was fined $20,000 for filing a frivolous lawsuit, lost her appeal, and lost again when she appealed that decision to the Supreme Court. She’s apparently trying to file a motion of reconsideration which is dragging the process on, but unless I missed something she’s still guilty and owes the $20K. No one is “leaving her alone” over her penalty.

DinsdaleP

Unless SCOTUS reverses it’s own ruling, she’s still guilty and still owes $20K in fines. Delaying tactics on her part are not the same as “people leaving her alone because they can’t disprove her contentions”. Nothing else worth saying on this topic, since there’s no distinction being made between fact and opinion on your part.

James K

I’m guessing Terry’s referring to this case:
link to ledger-enquirer.com

DinsdaleP

Thanks James, that’s even more current than the references I was looking at yesterday – it’s clear that her appeals failed and her fines have been paid.

The interesting statement in the article was this one:

““If it is denied, I will go to an international court,” Taitz told the Ledger-Enquirer.”

I love how conservatives push bills in 13 states to prevent foreign law from being used in U.S. court proceedings, but when the Supreme Court slaps a conservative like Taitz down without comment, she’s all too ready to appeal beyond U.S. jurisdiction.

Reminds me of how Perry and Gingrich push the 10th Amendment and “states rights”, but ran to the Federal courts when the Virginia State Supreme Court ruled that they failed to satisfy the state’s ballot-eligibility rules.

maurice

WAIT A MINUTE MISS CLAUDEEN-There is much more to this sick twisted story. The Barry Obama Presidency is part of an agenda by the ruling oligarchy to discredit the US Goverrnment, the office of the president and the US Consitution .. Thats why they installed an illegitimate president. To make America look ridiculous. Obamas bailed out bosses want World Governance, so the integrity of the Consitutional Republic must be destroyed first… and they need more trillion dollar bail outs.

Slock

May I ask how you became such an expert on this subject?

[…] Obama eligibility cases explode […]

Burly

Whether or not a president should appear in court is not relevant. B. Hussein Obama is not the president of the U.S. He is, and always has been, Constitutionally ineligible to run for, or hold that office. Winning a majority of votes in ’08 does not change or nullify this fact. B. Hussein Obama is not, and can never be, the president of the U.S.

James K

Well it’s official. Obama is a natural born citizen and is eligible to stand on the Georgia ballot.
link to international.to

Full decision is available here:
link to blogs.ajc.com

And this without Obama even presenting evidence, which indicates a pretty flimsy case on the birters’ part. So, what now for the birther movement? Concede they were wrong all along, or cry “conspiracy”?

James K

Actually Terry, here’s a serious question and I wish somebody would bring it up with her: How much is Orly Taitz making out of all these court cases?

After all, this isn’t the first time she’s been to court (link to en.wikipedia.org) and I very much doubt she’s doing pro bono work.

It would be interesting to find out just how much money she has made (and for that matter cost her clients) in pursuing this issue. Perhaps it’s time people asked just what her motive is. After all, she isn’t even American.

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[…] Obama eligibility challenges explode […]

[…] Obama eligibility challenges explode […]

[…] Obama eligibility challenges explode […]

[…] Obama eligibility challenges explode […]

[…] Obama eligibility challenges explode […]

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