Obama birth certificate lawsuit tossed out of court

By David W. Shelton | October 27, 2008 |

The highly publicized lawsuit filed by Philip Berg against Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama and the Democratic party itself has been thrown out of court. Berg filed the lawsuit in August of this year, claiming that Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud and that Obama’s name should be removed from the ballot.

Conservative pundits have hailed the lawsuit in the past, with even popular radio show host Rush Limbaugh having opined on how Obama’s visit to his dying grandmother is related to the now-defunct lawsuit. More commonly asked is “why doesn’t Obama just show his original birth certificate? Then this will all go away.”

It will all go away? Really? If anyone really believes that, then I’ll sell you a bridge in Brooklyn for a thousand dollars. It’s cheap. At least it makes for good entertainment.

The Phildelphia Daily News reported on the dismissal today:

U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick had denied Berg’s request for a temporary restraining order on Aug. 22 but had not ruled on the merits of the suit until yesterday. Obama and the Democratic National Committee had asked Surrick to dismiss Berg’s complaint in a court filing on Sept. 24.

They said that Berg’s claims were “ridiculous” and “patently false,” that Berg had “no standing” to challenge the qualifications of a candidate for president because he had not shown the requisite harm to himself.

Surrick agreed.

In a 34-page memorandum and opinion, the judge said Berg’s allegations of harm were “too vague and too attenuated” to confer standing on him or any other voters. Surrick ruled that Berg’s attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were “frivolous and not worthy of discussion.”

When the judge writes that a lawsuit is “frivolous and not worthy of discussion,” I think it’s time to move on. But, of course, they won’t.

My favorite claim by conservative bloggers and pundits was that the birth certificate was “photoshopped.” Well, I am happy to say that while I might not be an expert on very many things in this world, Adobe Photoshop happens to be one of them. I’ve even got the credentials to prove it. And I’ll put myself on the line by saying, “horse hockey.” The certificate number on the certificate shown on Obama’s website was redacted. That’s it.

The most popular claim is that the image is not quite perfect, and has some signs of a “halo” around some of the copy. “But there are artifacts shown around the letters. That proves it was Photoshopped!” No. It proves that it was saved as a JPEG format, which is a lossy compression — that creates artifacts around sharp edges (like around type) when saved in a medium-to-low quality compression.

Look, I don’t care if you think the scan of Obama’s birth certificate was edited, but for crying out loud, don’t try to kid me with the notion that you know what a photoshopped image looks like. You’ll only embarrass yourself. If that particular document was edited on June 12th, then great. It’s called “crop.” A standard feature in Photoshop. Nice try.

Now, if this image from Obama’s website was the only image on the Web, I’d be concerned. As luck would have it, it’s not. Newsweek’s website posted photos that were taken for the factcheck.org site, which presents the document in various angles, and show the embossed seal (which is required on all official documents). Oh, by the way — they’re not “photoshopped” either.

Berg himself had been traveling the circuit, and declared to right-wingnut Michael Savage that Obama’s failing to file response to his ridiculous (as presiding Judge Surrick called it) was an admission of guilt. No, Mr. Berg. Your assertions were ludicrous, and the Obama lawyers knew it.

Berg has said he would appeal the decision, but really – when even the right-wing WorldNet Daily website has determined that the certificate is genuine, isn’t it time to move on? Apparently Berg and fellow nutjob Jerome Corsi don’t think so. Corsi is best known for his anti-Kerry attack book, Unfit for Command and the equally-discredited The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, which met with a stinging, 40-page rebuttal from Senator Obama’s website.

Conservatives should be extremely leery of Corsi and his extremist rants. He’s even brought his verbal cannons against King George himself, claiming that President Bush is working to create a “North American Union,” which would eventually eliminate the sovereignty of the United States.

President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political entity which the President is quietly forming, much as the European Union has formed.

Corsi is clearly not satisfied with blasting away at Democrats and liberals, so he goes after every single witch hunt imaginable. Not only are his conclusions highly questionable, his facts are often just dead wrong. I don’t think I’m going out on a stretch by saying “he’s a nut.” Apparently conservative writer John Hawkins said the same thing. Well, his word was “kooky.” If we add “creepy,” we’d have the first stanza of the Addams Family theme song. I’ll bring the snaps.

And this is one of the leading voices in the “Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud” nonsense. Maybe we’ll get a grip and realize just how silly all of this has been. The birth certificate/citizenship brouhaha has been little more than a mad-dash attempt to discredit Obama since they have little else to run on. Well, that and unlicensed plumbers.

The fact is that Obama’s birth certificate is genuine, and he is a natural-born citizen of the United States of America.

UPDATE: It seems that this particluar issue is getting sillier by the minute. Read more here.

About David W. Shelton

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