HIGH COURT TURNS DOWN OBAMA ELIGIBILITY CASE…. A disappointment, to be sure, for unhinged, right-wing conspiracy theorists everywhere. The AP reports:
The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.
The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a “natural born citizen,” one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.
Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.
How non-partisan of him.
So, it’s all over? Donofrio’s case is, but, alas, he’s not the only one pursuing the issue. Robert Barnes notes that there are two related cases filed at the Supreme Court — neither of which have been considered by the justices — in addition to many more suits in the lower courts on the same issue. The “most celebrated” of the suits was filed by Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., who continues to insist that Obama was born in Kenya, and might possibly be a citizen of Indonesia.
Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg’s lawsuit. Go figure.
For more on why all of this is easily-dismissed far-right nonsense, take a look at this piece from David Weigel, and this one from my friend Alex Koppelman.
