And is he consequently eligible to become President of the United States? It’s a question posed by Democrat lawyer Philip J. Berg, who filed a lawsuit a month ago in federal court:
[He] alleged that Obama was not a U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible for the presidency. Berg claimed that Obama is either a citizen of his father’s native Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia after he moved there as a boy.
Note that this Associated Press story dismisses the allegation in the very next sentence:
Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father.
Clearly, the AP journo who wrote the story doesn’t think there’s any merit to the allegations, repeating as fact Obama’s claim that he was born in Hawaii. Neither does U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick, who on Friday granted Obama’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that Berg’s allegations were “…too vague and too attenuated,” prompting Berg to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. And, according to this article, nine other lawsuits have now been filed in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington which seek to require Obama to provide his birth certificate or be removed from the state ballots.
So, is all this about a birth certificate? Yup. See, Obama didn’t provide it in response to the court filing, and hasn’t done so in response to any of the other nine lawsuits. This has aroused suspicions. On the other hand, the folks at FactCheck.Org (a discernibly pro-Obama website) say they’ve seen the birth certificate affirming that Obama was born in the fiftieth state of the union, handled it, photographed it and verified that it’s the real deal.
So why wouldn’t Obama produce the original to the courts where it’s been brought under scrutiny? If you ask me, there are two possible answers.
1) Obama is not a natural-born citizen. He was born in Kenya or Indonesia and had someone fake a birth certificate for his campaign.
2) It’s a campaign strategy. He’s waiting until the last minute to affirm his eligibility as president by providing his records to the courts in the last days of the campaign, a final stamp of certainty that will help propel him to the White House.
Of the options, I think the second is more likely. But I hope it’s not. What scandal and excitement would ensue in the final run-up to the election if it turned out Obama couldn’t be on the ticket!