Two Articles, Two Sides of Berg v. Obama

After two months, news of Philip Berg's federal lawsuit is finally gaining traction. Pieces are popping up on local television stations from Florida to Alaska. The Internet buzz has reached more mainstream Web sites such as Newsmax and WorldNetDaily. Articles are popping up in big and small newspapers from coast to coast. Even Rush Limbaugh mentioned the case on his Thursday afternoon program, and Michael Savage did a surprising long interview with Berg later that evening.

"I was told that I would be doing a ten-minute segment," Berg told me on the telephone this evening. "The next thing I knew, it had been almost an hour."

Two recent articles in particular, however, caught my eye. The difference between them is stark, and could be a microcosm of the outcome of the case. The first one, for example, talks more about the evidence side of the action, about whether or not Barack Obama truly is eligible to be president of the United States; the second one talks more about the procedural angle, about whether or not Philip Berg has standing to sue.

In my opinion, the result of this action on the District Court level will depend upon whether the Hon. R. Barclay Surrick is more interested in the underlying eligibility questions, or in the satisfaction of the requirements necessary to raise them.

The first piece is by Kenneth Timmerman of Newsmax, the same reporter who, just a few days ago, wrote so well about the questionable $63 million in Barack Obama's campaign coffers. He goes into detail about Obama's birth certificate, even providing a link to the Certificate of Live Birth provided by the Illinois senator, and an official Certificate of Live Birth from a person born just two years later. Reproduction issues aside, one quite obviously provides more information than the other.

Timmerman also raises an interesting point by highlighting a segment from one of Obama's memoirs in which he actually mentions the document:

Ironically, Obama mentions his birth certificate in passing on Page 26 of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams of My Father.” “I discovered this article, folded away among my birth certificate and old vaccination forms, when I was in high school,” he wrote.

As much as I am a skeptic as to all of this business--I've said time and time again that I simply feel as though we are constitutionally obligated to ensure that our leaders are properly vetted--this, to me, presents a question as to why it was necessary for Obama to provide an obviously laser-printed, recent copy of his birth records in the first place. If he had his original, tucked in among articles and old vaccination forms, why not just provide that one?

The second article ran on a Web blog entitled The Daily Jot, a nicely-written resource with which I am just now becoming familiar. This one highlighted the argument made by attorneys for Barack Obama and the DNC that, indeed, voters have no constitutional right to challenge the eligibility of the presidential candidates.

While I don't much like it, as the law stands right now the lawyers are technically right. Just as you or I could not have standing to sue the federal government simply because we are taxpayers, voters cannot sue simply because they are voters. Time and time again, on these pages, I've said that the standing doctrine weighs heavily against Philip Berg's cause. Just a few days ago, in fact, I wrote that common sense dictates that the suit be tossed on grounds of lack of standing -- though I specifically said that some unexplainable tremor in my gut told me that Judge Surrick could surprise us all and rewrite voter standing as we know it. Law texts, after all, wouldn't be so thick if the law never changed.

That's why these two articles caught my eye. On one hand, the nature of the evidence, albeit circumstantial, makes me wonder if we might just be surprised by Judge Surrick's willingness to expand upon the standing doctrine and redefine injury a little bit. On the other hand, the law as it stands now says that Monday [hopefully, it's Monday and no later] will likely be a gloomy one for those interested in standing up for constitutional principles valued by our nation's framers.

At the end of the day, it's going to be one or the other -- faith in the convincing nature of circumstantial evidence, or devotion to the procedure and the letter of the law.

Gut versus common sense. We'll see.

EIther way, I'm back in town. Typically near a computer. Keep checking at America's Right for updates.