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Friday, December 12, 2008

Obama's "Natural Born Citizenship" Issue Still Very Much Alive

Further to my previous post regarding Obama's constitutional eligibility--or ineligibility--to be President and the two more prominent suits filed with the Supreme Court which took issue with his eligibility, if the purpose of the news media is to objectively report the facts, thereby educating "we the people", then the reporting we read in the Democrat & Chronicle's December 9th issue was, as we might have anticipated, very disappointing, indeed.

Headlined "Court Rejects Latest Obama Suit", the writer, one David Savage of the Chicago Tribune, noted that the Donofrio-Wells suit had been turned down by the Supreme Court on December 8th.And so it had.

Savage went on to explain that the basis for the Donofrio suit was "a provision in the Constitution that says no person except a natural born citizen...shall be eligible to the office of the president."

In the next stand-alone paragraph, Savage simplistically and misleadingly asserted that "Any person born in this country is considered under U.S. law to be a natural born citizen." Wow! So who needs the Supreme Court when we have David Savage! There you have it, folks. A done deal. What more is there to say about this subject? Savage is our constitutional savant, the Man!

Arrogance and shoddy journalism at its best. And we wonder why Americans are so uninformed. But, hey, the heretofore off-limits story was at least covered and with fairly bold headlines to boot. That alone borders on the momentous and is justifiable cause for celebration in these halcyon days of political correctness and self-imposed timidity. So, I suppose we should count our blessings as well.

As discussed in my previous post on December 7th, accurately defining "natural born citizen" within the context of one's eligibility to serve as President or Vice President is much more elusive and complex than Savage would have us believe. Clearly, the 'ole boy is a lousy investigative and/or legal journalist. Thus, if finding the truth is our goal, Savage's story most certainly reminds us how very important it is that we supplement any newspaper reading with some careful research of our before drawing any educated conclusions--on ANY subject of ANY value or importance.

By way of update, regarding the Wrotnowski vs Bysiewicz case which I discussed in Update #5 of my previous post, as of tonight there is no word as to its fate at the Supreme Court. Having been rejected by Justice Ginsberg, it was taken up and referred by Justice Scalia to private Supreme Court conference this morning, December 12th. A ruling on whether or not it will be heard by the full court won't be rendered until Monday, December 15th.

Like the Donofrio suit which was rejected after review by Supreme Court conference on Mondy, December 8th, it should be carefully noted that if these suits were frivolous, they would have both been immediately rejected by the court from the outset, thus denying them the dignity of a Supreme Court conference review by all Justices. So, clearly, folks, the facts of these cases are not without merit.

With as much brevity as possible, and as clearly as possible, I will keep you updated on developments as this issue unfolds. Word has it that there could be as many 100+ suits out there being prepared for filing with the Supreme Court. So, it's not over, folks. Not by a long shot.

(For a little more detail and give-and-take regarding this issue, you might want to check out the commentary following my December 7th post on monroerising.com of same title as my post below.)

Will keep you updated.