Obama birth certificate not fake; someone sues anyway

Ed Brayton and the WorldNutDaily have noted that Philip J. Berg:

has sued Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission, claiming that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and, therefore, is not eligible to be president of the United States.

For his efforts, Ed has given him the not-so-coveted Robert O'Brien Trophy that he awards regularly for special displays of stupidity (he apparently manages to have a blog, see PZ's dungeon for more details about Robert O'Brien.

A summary of Berg's claims are:

Obama was not born an American citizen; lost any hypothetical American citizenship he had as a child (Editor's note: This point is not supported by U.S. citizenship law); may not now be an American citizen and even if he is, may hold dual citizenships with other countries. If any, much less all, of these allegations are true, the suit claims, Obama cannot constitutionally serve as president.

Note that even a WorldNutDaily editor knows more about the law than this crazy fellow.

Obama was born an American citizen, as confirmed by FactCheck.org:

The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal

To quell even the most diehard of conspiracy theorists about this:

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

Obama's birth announcement

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.
Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.

And Philip Berg sues with no basis for his lawsuit because 1) Obama was born a US citizen, 2) even a wnd editor knows that 2) one cannot lose citizenship as a child, 3) is still an American citizen even if 4) he holds dual citizenship (which is not a crime is most cases; embarrassing perhaps, but not a crime; in any case, the US does not prohibit dual citizenship). If Obama were not a citizen or were not born one, then, yes, Berg would be right. Since he was born in Hawaii he is a citizen and unless he specifically renounced (even then, it's not necessarily final) he still is -- and was admitted to the bar, the senate... Maybe Berg will get reprimanded for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
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Religious organization lawyers = idiots

University of California vs. ACSI

After witnessing the Thomas More Law Center crash and burn in the Dover trial, and witnessing the regular stupidity of Casey Luskin of the Discovery (sic) Institute regarding Intelligent Design, it is perhaps not a surprise that the lawyers for a Christian high school in California were inept.



Besides losing the case (not a surprise), a scan of the ruling for summary judgment on the remaining claims (I'll address this in a later post in a couple of days; maybe I'll even have a reader or two by then) reveals utter incompetence (on several levels). The document reads:

The newly acquired expert affidavits, in which the experts analyze each of Plaintiffs' 38 challenged course rejections, were signed by the experts on June 12, 2008 (Vitz), June 12, 2008 (Stotsky), June 9, 2008 (Behe), and June 13, 2008 (Guevara).

What reveals one layer of ineptitude is the following:

The discovery deadline passed on July 15, 2007. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(2)(C) required all expert discovery to be complete at least by August 21, 2007, 90 days before the trial date. (Docket No. 48.) One month after this expert discovery deadline passed, this Court continued the trial date indefinitely in light of the massive volume of filings and issues presented by the first round of summary judgment motions. (Docket No. 145.) This continuance did not revive the discovery period for experts.

A further ineptitude is when the testimony served as, what one poster or commenter at scienceblogs (probably at dispatches from the culture wars, though I may have read a post at another scienceblog about the trail and this tidbit) a self goal. Scored by Behe.

In case you weren't aware, Michael Behe is a professor at Lehigh University where he has been largely disowned by his department -- both his website and the department's own site include statements about Behe's interest in Intelligent Design and how his colleagues do not see that as science (they are right, but that's another topic). He was an expert witness for the defense in the Dover trial and tried to argue that ID is scientific. Instead, what he admitted was that in order for ID to be scientific, the rules of science need to be adjusted to as they were in the 18th century, when, among others, astrology was a science. Astrology. Horoscopes. Goal! -- for the prosecution.

In this trial he testified that dogmatic points of view were bad for intellectual development. Goal! This time for the defense. Except he was a witness for the plaintiffs. He was apparently trying to say that presentation of modern evolutionary theory without criticism was a dogmatic approach. Of course, there is absolutely no scientific controversy over evolution. The judge decided to use the statement to criticize the fundy school's use of biology textbooks that say that where science and the Word of God (by Bible, presumably in King James translation) conflict, one should take the Word of God over the results that science provides. Goal -- again, self goal.

With lawyers who can't even follow rules of procedure and "expert" witnesses like Behe, the fundies and other allied groups will continue to lose lawsuits.

And here is the rest of it. Read more!