Snapped Shot

actually, nothing says that api is a fake news organization more than the fact than they got phil berg as their attorney. i'm also an attorney in philadelphia and mr. berg is rather notorious for his high-profile but completely meritless legal work. berg once filed a lawsuit against president bush claiming that the president was involved in the 9/11 attacks. he sought to have several justices of the surpreme court disbarred because of their bush v. gore decision. feel free to google around, there are a ton of nutty berg lawsuits out there.

i think it's hilarious that the right is embracing our proud local nutbag attorney, simply because he preferred clinton during the primary and so now has declared his usual legally suspect jihad against obama.
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<i>nd, if you notice, Brian did not take a side on this or lean for or against the attorney. He only raised the possibility that there may be questions. As long as there is a suit, there are questions.</i>

but there is no suit. no one has sued api, they've just lawyered up in case they later are. so by your logic, doesn't that mean that we're back to there not being any questions?

<i>As I am very sure that "the left" has gloated over the questions of McCain's citizenship. Tell me you didn't?!</i>

i didn't. it's pretty obvious that the court would never touch an issue like that. that's why the judiciary invented the political question doctrine.

<i>And, if you will also kindly notice, he pasted a completely farcical birth certificate. Wouldn't normal people then take his whole post as a comical one? Or, are you people so ignorant that you just jump at any chance to shoot down "the right".</i>

i don't know about the others, but the update (which includes the fake birth certificate) wasn't posted when i wrote my comment.
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DMartyr, you're hilarious. there's no danger of a constitutional crisis. first, even if Obama were born outside the u.s. he would still be a natural born citizen because his mother was a citizen. that's why once you venture beyond the wingnut-o-sphere, most of the world views this whole "controversy" as a joke. the joke is made even funnier when your peeps refused to accept the birth certification, or the fact that the honolulu newspaper published a birth announcement, this proving that not only does your eligibility argument make no sense, but also that nothing will convince you otherwise. as I said, the fact that a certified lunatic 9/11 conspiracy theorist has signed onto your cause itself speaks volumes about it's merits

and finally, there will be no constitutional crisis because the courts won't touch it under the political question doctrine. instead, I predict that after Obama becomes president you'll still be fuming about his eligibility but no one aside from the fringe right will care. you'll end up about as influential as the leftwingers who claim that bush stole the election in 2004 because of diebold voting machines.
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"upyernoz, one major difference between me and those 2004 'leftwingers' (which you are whether you admit it or not) is that you won't see this wussy crap from me"

this is great! you simply cannot stick to a single subject. you realize that the "sorryeverybody.com" people are not the same people who thought the election was stolen? the "stolen election" people weren't apologizing because they were convinced they had won!

so first you write a post about the bogus api story and how they got the same crazy lawyer as the one who filed the lawsuit claiming obama wasn't eligible. and then, in response to my comment about the lawyer, you shift gears and start talking about the "constitutional crisis" that would follow an obama presidency. and then, when i address that and compare you to the "bush stole the election" crowd, then you shift again and start talking about the "sorryeverybody.com" folks even though they are, by definition, different from the stolen election group.

oh, and then you shift again, bringing up some boneheaded comment by biden. there are certainly no shortage of them. but so what? none of this is at all responsive to the points i make here. it's almost like you don't have a coherent response and keep shifting the topic to avoid having to give one.

at least that's the impression i get from reading this thread. it is pretty funny to watch your twists and turns.
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"You obviously don't care about upholding the constitution if it means getting your candidate in office, but that potential violation happens to be an important issue to me."

of course i care. i'm just pointing out that the obama candidacy doesn't violate the constitution. in fact, the entire theory that he isn't eligible doesn't make any sense. you've have to believe that in 1961 his family forced a birth certificate, and planted a birth announcement in the honolulu newspapers so that, just in case barack ever wanted to be president, they could hide his secret birth in kenya from the world, even though if he were born in kenya, he still would be eligible for the presidency anyway.

that's why the whole theory is the subject of so much mockery. it's crazy on its face, and even if you were right about his foreign birth, he's still eligible to be president under the constitution because he was born a citizen. only certified nut-jobs like berg and other people desperate to find a way to undermine the obama candidacy now that it's clear that they can't beat him at the polls, find anything appealing in the theory. to most of the world, it's a joke.

as for my alleged "irreverence" to the rule of law, that is the real joke. berg is famous for filing meritless lawsuits here in the philadelphia legal community. he's been criticized for abusing the judicial process to pursue his crazy paranoid fantasies like that 9/11 was planned by the bush administration. and yet you're jumping on board to his latest nutball theory even though obama would be legally eligible to be president even if he were born in another country.

which is why i find people like you to be so amusing.
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hey, and what ever happened to that api story? you know, before you tried to shift this whole discussion to your favorite fringe legal theories, that's what this was about, remember? isn't it funny how the "news organization" seems to be writing about little other than the alleged michelle obama tape these days? and why haven't they produced the audio like they promised?

(and why, for that matter, would a news organization use a free blogging softwear like wordpress to host their site? and why hadn't anyone heard of the api before now? even my brother who dealt with the media all the time when he lived in nairobi had never heard of the organization before this michelle obama thing.
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kevin true,

i love these crazy rightwing rumors!

actually, the PA lawsuit <a href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/10/federal-judge-dismisses-obama.php">was thrown out</a> by the court last week. you also don't seem to have much of a grip on federal civil procedure. you can't be arrested for a default in a civil action.
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"Thank you, now that is public record in civil court regarding forensic proof of falsified document, please advise what we are basing Obama's qualifications as a US born Citizen?"

it's not public record. the lawsuit was dismissed by the court because berg had no standing to bring the suit and because his allegations were baseless.
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wow, kevin, thanks for the civil procedure refresher course. i do practice law every day, but i guess it is nice to have someone cut and paste the definition of a JNOV for me now and then.

except you're missing a critical fact. there was no verdict. the case was dismissed in the pre-trial stage. i.e. the judge threw out the case. there wasn't even discovery or any public evidentiary record. instead, we have the record of berg's allegations and the court's decision explaining why the judge threw the case out.

as for your claim that "This wasn't dismissed", did you read the first line of the article describing the disposition of the case? here it is again:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/10/federal-judge-dismisses-obama.php
in case you're too lazy to copy and paste that into your browser, here's how the article begins:
"Judge R. Barclay Surrick of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Friday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the citizenship status and eligibility of Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to become US president."

because i practice in federal court here in the eastern district of PA, i have access to the court's docket. if you want a pdf of the judge's actual decision i could easily email it to you.

not that i think giving you the decision stating that the case is "dismissed" would convince you that it was, in fact, dismissed. i find it really interesting that the obama-was-not-born-in-the-u.s. crowd are completely incapable of being convinced of anything other than their pre-established opinion, no matter what facts are presented to them. they don't believe the hawaii birth certification. they don't believe the statements of hawaii officials that there records do, in fact, show he was born in the state. they don't believe the contemporaneous 1961 birth announcement in the honolulu papers. they don't believe the fact that no birth record was ever recorded in kenya. and they don't seem to ever get that even if obama were born outside the u.s., he still would be eligible to be president because his mother was a u.s. citizen.

this whole thing is just a circus of stupid crazy people, who hold a belief so strongly they will never be convinced, no matter what evidence is shown to them.

which is why i find you guys so entertaining. but still, my offer to email you or anyone judge surrick's decision stands.
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"It was reported to me as not withstanding from a new report."

so the article was a lie? why does the court docket for the case say the case was dismissed? (if you have access, go see for yourself. it is EDPA No. 08-cv-4083). and why aren't you citing your special source?

besides, based on your above responses, it sounds like your source has seriously misled you. you can't file a MJNOV (motion for judgment notwithstanding a verdict) until there has been a jury verdict. there never was a trial in the case (trials don't happen that fast. the case was only filed in august 2008. if the court had not dismissed the case, the trial would have been some time around mid-2009)

i am sorry you think i am "pompous" "overbearing" and have a "punk moniker". i'm not trying to talk down to anyone. but i am pointing out that you are wrong and that this entire "controversy" has become a bit of a joke for most of the world.

"Anyway you are welcomed to post the dismissal charges hear."

i can't. it's a pdf. you can only access it online if you are a registered efiler with the court. as an efiler, i can download it to my hard drive. but that doesn't mean i can put it in the comments here.
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by the way, i just went back to the online docket for the case and noticed that berg is appealing the dismissal. the appeal was filed today.

not that there's any surprise that he did. i believe berg also appealed when his lawsuit claiming that president bush was behind 9/11 was thrown out last year. berg appeals everything.

but if, as kevin seems to be claiming, berg actually won a JNOV motion, it raises the question of what exactly berg is appealing?
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wow, that's almost right. the case was dismissed for lack of standing. "standing" just means that you have to be the right person to file the lawsuit (so, for example, if kevin and dmartyr entered into a contract, and then dmartyr failed to abide by that contract, i would not have standing to see for breach of contract, because i wasn't a party to the agreement. kevin would be the only one with standing)

anyway, there are different ways to get standing to sue. one of those ways, the most common one, is when you can show you were harmed by another person's actions. usually that means financial harm, but not always. one of the things that berg argued (and the court rejected as "frivolous") was that he would be harmed if obama because president simply because berg is an american. the problem is that the supreme court has been rejected "citizenship standing" over the past two years.

anyway, i'm impressed that you kind of got something right here kevin! that's still doesn't explain why you thought a JNOV was somehow relevant, or your earliest statement that the lawsuit "wasn't dismissed". now you seem to be saying it was dismissed because berg couldn't prove harm. i guess everyone's allowed to flip-flop now and then.
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wow, that made no sense at all. this bit pretty much sums it up:

"It an open matter with an appeal the judges handling is questionable and confused..."

that comment sure is.
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