Vol. 15 Issue No. 10 | March 11 - 17, 2009

Natural born citizen – Foreign passport

By Linda Bentley | March 11, 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge James Robertson issued a memorandum opinion, dismissing the case of Gregory S. Hollister v. Barry Soetoro challenging Barack Hussein Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be President and the quandary created for military personnel in determining whether or not to obey his orders.

In dismissing the case, Robertson (appointed by Clinton in 1994) didn’t mince words in his opening paragraph, which stated, “This case, if it were to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do. Even in its relatively short life the case has excited the blogosphere and the conspiracy theorists. The right thing to do is bring it to an early end.”
Chastising the plaintiff for questioning whether or not “Obama is a ‘native-born’ American citizen,” Robertson errs by citing “native-born” as the constitutional requirement for being President of the United States.

Article Two, Section One of the Constitution states, “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president …”

John Bingham, who authored the 14th Amendment, defined natural born citizen as: “Any human born to parents who are U.S. citizens and are under no other jurisdiction or authority.”

Even the pro-Obama website Factcheck.org claimed Obama was born with dual citizenship, which, at the time, would have made him a British citizen, as Kenya was under British Rule at the time.

Obama was born under the jurisdiction and authority of a foreign country of a father who was not a U.S. citizen and would, therefore, be constitutionally ineligible.

However, Robertson claimed, “The issue of the President’s citizenship was raised, vetted, blogged, texted, twittered and otherwise massaged by America’s vigilant citizenry during Mr. Obama’s two-year campaign for the presidency, but this plaintiff wants it resolved in court,” adding, “The real plaintiff is probably Philip J. Berg, a lawyer … who has pursued his crusade elsewhere … invoking the civil rights statutes, the Federal Election Campaign Act, the Freedom of Information Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the law of promissory estoppel. That case was the subject of a scholarly opinion by a judge who took Mr. Berg’s claims seriously – and dismissed them.”

Attorney John D. Hemenway, a member of the Bar of the D.C. Court, is directly responsible to the court for the pleadings filed on behalf of the plaintiff, despite the fact, as Robertson states, he may have only been enlisted by Berg and Lawrence J. Joyce as a “foot soldier in their crusade.”

In his order to dismiss, Robertson also ordered Hemenway to show cause why he had not violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and why he should not be required to pay reasonable attorneys fees and other expenses to counsel for the defendants.

Meanwhile, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., responding to a constituent’s questions about Obama’s constitutional eligibility stated, “Rumors pertaining to his citizenship status have been circulating on the Internet, and this information has been debunked by Snopes.com which investigates the truth behind Internet rumors.”

Barbara and David Mikkelson, who run Snopes.com, in addressing the issue of Obama’s constitutional eligibility, didn’t address the claims raised in the numerous lawsuits questioning Obama’s eligibility, except to say none have been successful.

Posting the “claim” to be debunked as, “Barack Obama does not qualify as a natural-born citizen of the United States because his mother was too young,” they labeled it “False” and skirted any real eligibility questions raised.

The Mikkelsons resorted to theory, stating, “A few facets of this claim immediately jump out as being far-fetched: first, that a sitting U.S. Senator who has already spent a good deal of time and money securing his party’s nomination for the presidency would suddenly be discovered as ineligible due to an obscure provision of U.S. law …”

The Mikkelsons go on to inaccurately state “… even if Barack Obama’s parents were both non-U.S. citizens who hadn’t set foot in the country until just before he was born, he’d still qualify as a natural-born citizen.”

Paul Hollrah, contributing editor at FamilySecurity Matters.org, posted an article on Monday titled, “Well is he, or isn’t he?” regarding Obama’s eligibility.

Hollrah, who is also a Senior Fellow at the Lincoln Heritage Institute, said, “To convert a non-believer … one who insists that the constitutional requirements must be met, but who believes that questions about Obama’s citizenship status are nothing but sour grapes … it is only necessary to establish the facts surrounding Obama’s travel to Indonesia and Pakistan in the summer of 1981.”

Hollrah cites Obama’s April 6, 2008 speech in San Francisco, in which he spoke of his trip to Pakistan to bolster perception of his knowledge of foreign affairs.

That Obama traveled to Indonesia and Pakistan in 1981 is well-established. What is not well-established, states Hollrah, “and what is critically important, is what passport he used during that trip.”

Because Pakistan was under martial law in 1981, was on the U.S. State Department’s travel ban list and prohibited the entry of Americans, Jews and Christians as “undesirables,” Obama could not have used a U.S. passport, leaving the only other possibilities as a British or Indonesian passport.

Hollrah asks, “So how did a young man who arrived in New York in early June 1981, without a price of a hotel room in his pocket, suddenly come up with the price of a round-the-world trip just a month later? And once he was on a plane, shuttling between New York, Jakarta and Karachi, what passport was he offering when he passed through Customs and Immigration?”

He says, “The American people not only deserve to have answers to these questions, they must have answers.”

According to Hollrah, it is pretty clear from the available evidence Obama is not a “natural born” citizen and to minimize the damage to this country, he should “follow the Nixon example” and “resign from office so that we can begin to clean up the mess he leaves behind.”

Courtesy Photo:
U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson