James Taranto, RINOs and Stupid People

~Snooper~

James Taranto is one of those people that seem to think his crap doesn't stink at times. Bully for him.

He has a piece up today in regards to the Obama Birth Certificate and the very tone of the piece reeks of surrendering to the enemy all in the name of playing nice-nice. This is why the GOP is in the position it is in. People are too afraid to press issues because they may seem to look like they are "going along with the in crowd". They and now he makes me sick.

'Natural Born' Baloney
Debunking the urban legend about the Supreme Court and Obama's citizenship.
By JAMES TARANTO

No, the Supreme Court is not going to intervene and stop Barack Obama from becoming president.

Normally this would be "Bottom Story of the Day" material, but lots of crazy rumors have been going around, albeit mostly on blogs and other Web sites of the far-right fringe. Last week, however, David Serchuk of Forbes.com rehearsed one of them, giving us an opportunity to set the record straight. Here's Serchuk:

You've got to hand it to Philip J. Berg: he doesn't give up easily. You might recall that Philadelphia attorney Berg tried, and failed, to halt the presidential election of Barack Obama on the grounds that he is not a native-born citizen. Game over, right? Wrong.

Berg filed a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in late October, asking that the highest court review the decision of the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania. The latter court dismissed Berg's claims because he lacked standing to bring them. Standing requires plaintiffs to prove they are directly affected by the issue at hand, with evidence of injury that is concrete and particular. In its decision the district court said Berg "does not, and we believe cannot, establish injury in fact." It also dismissed his claims as frivolous.

Berg takes this in stride. His writ, he says, requires Obama and the Democratic National Council to respond by December 1. . . .

One of the pillars of Berg's argument is that Obama doesn't have a legally-valid U.S. birth certificate because he was born in Kenya . . .

In fairness to Serchuk, he doesn't seem to take this seriously--but he doesn't quite explain why it is nonsense. So, here goes.

In August Berg filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia's federal trial court, alleging that Obama was not a "natural born citizen" and thus constitutionally ineligible to be president. No trial was held; on Oct. 24, the court summarily dismissed Berg v. Obama on the ground that Berg did not have standing to sue. (In fact, the judge who dismissed the case opined that Berg's efforts to establish standing "are frivolous and not worthy of discussion.")

On Oct. 30, Berg filed a petition for a writ of certiorari--in laymen's terms, he asked the Supreme Court to hear his appeal. (Note that contrary to Berg's language, which Serchuk repeats, one does not "file a writ." One files a petition, and the court decides whether to issue a writ.) On Oct. 31, according to Berg's Web site, he filed a motion asking Justice David Souter for injunctive relief in the form of halting the following week's election.

On Nov. 3, Souter denied the injunction. The next day, the election was held as scheduled. You might have read about it, it was in all the papers.

It is true that Berg's petition for certiorari is still pending before the high court. It is also true that there is a deadline for responses from the defendants (including Obama) of next Monday, Dec. 1. The defendants, however, are under no obligation to respond, and there is no reason to think they will bother.

The probability that the court will actually grant certiorari is, in theory, greater than zero, but it is such a small number as to be incomprehensible to anyone within the ordinary range of intelligence. As Judge Peter Messitte notes in an article for the State Department's eJournalUSA, the justices typically grant such petitions only for cases "raising particularly significant questions of law, and/or those where there is a division of legal authority, as where lower courts have produced conflicting interpretations of constitutional or federal law."

An additional rumor, not repeated by Forbes.com's Serchuk, is that the "response" that Obama is "required" to file next week consists of proof that he is a natural-born citizen. Those who make this claim seem to believe that cert. is two, two, two writs in one. In fact, the only question currently before the high court is whether to hear the appeal at all.

Even in the vanishingly unlikely event that the court does grant certiorari, it almost certainly would consider only the legal issue raised by the lower court's ruling--namely, whether Berg has standing to sue. In the even more vanishingly unlikely event that the justices rule in his favor, the case would be returned to a trial judge for consideration of the factual allegations.

One Leo Denofrio has a pending petition for certiorari in a similar case that was dismissed by the New Jersey Supreme Court. His prospects for success are approximately equal to Berg's, for the same reasons. We devoutly hope this is the last item we will ever have to write on this silly topic.

With all of the evidence mounting, it is no wonder that Taranto and his Band of Sycophants would be afraid of challenging the illegal alien Barack. With "conservatives" like him and them, who in the hell needs enemies?