Thursday, October 29, 2009

Crazytown Gets A Civics Lesson

US District Judge David Carter dismissed the Complaint brought on behalf of crackpot 3rd Party candidate Alan Keyes and others in which they sought a Declaratory Judgment that Barack Obama is not qualified to be President by the alleged reason of his foreign birth. They also asked the Court to, basically, declare the election of 2008 void.

In a masterful 30 page opinion the Judge basically said two important things. The first thing is that the Plaintiffs did not have standing to sue because they could not establish that they had been personally harmed by the election of an allegedly "unqualified" candidate. The Court pointed out that while Mr. Obama received over 90 million votes, Mr. Keyes received the electoral equivalent of the number of people in the Courtroom for oral argument. The harm to the Plaintiffs being entirely speculative, they did not have standing to sue.

Secondly, by waiting until after President Obama had taken the Oath of Office to file their cockamamie lawsuit, the Plaintiffs shot themselves in the foot. Once Obama took the Oath he was the President, the Court ruled. And as President of the United States he could only be removed by impeachment or due to disability. The Courts have no power under the Constitution to void an election or remove a President.

Undoubtedly these fools will appeal. But this is a very powerful Opinion that will be cited in future cases concerning the issue of standing and separation of powers.

So some good did come out of this. I guess.

Hit the link for the story in Salon where you can read the Opinion in full: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/birthers/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2009/10/29/taitz_dismissal

1 comment:

Hugh W. Tedder, Jr. said...

I suppose you saw this:
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202434530466&Federal_Judge_Sanctions_Birther_Lawyer_for_Frivolous_Suit