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It was dismissed for lack of legal standing, not because Berg's allegations did not have merit. Berg can refile under other theories. There are still 3 other suits pending.
I think the best way to go would be a Writ of Mandamus, a court order to compel whatever authorities have jurisdiction to take action.
The Writ of Mandamus can only force a body to do what it is supposed to do, and only one of the bodies he has sued may have any jurisdiction over this issue - the U.S. Senate Committee.
Given the lack of standing issue, though, it is extremely unlikely that that approach would work, either. At least one of the cases cited in the dismissal of this case dealt with such an approach - and it, too, was dropped due to lack of 'standing' on the part of the plaintiff.
Berg threw every possible approach into this filing - or, more properly, the First Amended Complaint. He tried an Freedom of Information Act approach, an Elections Act approach, and about a half dozen more.
None of them touch the issue of the 3 part "standing"test that Burrick (and LaPlante, in McCain) discusses, and so long as that gets looked at before any discussion on the merits of a case, then Writs of Mandamus can go no further than anything else.
Read the decision - it is pretty comprehensive in its discussion of the issue of standing, even while it is dismissive and even disdainful of the plaintiff and his stratagems.
He is a conservative which makes him a fake democrat. How many time do I have to tell you this? Jeez.
Oh yeah, he's a conservative that sued Bush, and supports the clintons.. PLEASE, get a cell in your brain that thinks and stop trolling me over and over with the same bs postings. Its getting old.
No, they examined an electronically produced document.
While it does have a "raised seal" for the state of Hawaii, so do 15,000+ Hawaiians who are attorneys or notaries public.
The certificate number is conspicuously blacked out.
The state of Hawaii is strangely silent on the issue, neither confirming nor denying.
While it has been alleged that a birth notice did appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, the newspaper has neither confirmed nor denied it, and no one else seems to be able to find it.
It should also be pointed out that the notice appears on August 13, 1961. The Honolulu Advertiser is a daily paper. Had the birth notice been published between August 5 and August 9, it would have been more compelling.
There's also a question of whether the font used in the notice was in use by newspapers in 1961.
Quote:
When the birth certificate arrived from the Obama campaign it confirmed his name as the other documents already showed it. Still, we took an extra step: We e-mailed it to the Hawaii Department of Health, which maintains such records, to ask if it was real.
“It’s a valid Hawaii state birth certificate,” spokesman Janice Okubo told us.
The Hawaii Department of Health receives about a dozen e-mail inquiries a day about Obama’s birth certificate, spokesman Okubo said.
“I guess the big issue that’s being raised is the lack of an embossed seal and a signature,” Okubo said, pointing out that in Hawaii, both those things are on the back of the document. “Because they scanned the front … you wouldn’t see those things.”
Okubo says she got a copy of her own birth certificate last year and it is identical to the Obama one we received.
And about the copy we e-mailed her for verification? “When we looked at that image you guys sent us, our registrar, he thought he could see pieces of the embossed image through it.”
Still, she acknowledges: “I don’t know that it’s possible for us to even say beyond a doubt what the image on the site represents.”
Doesn't sound silent to me. Sounds clear and explicit. She looked at an emailed copy of a HARD copy that Politifact had, as well as the image on the website. She is not explicitly vouching for the image on Obama's website - but that image, number excluded, looks just like the hard copies that the Obama campaign ordered from Hawaii and provided to Politifact and Factcheck: http://www.factcheck.org/UploadedFil...tificate_3.jpg has the number on it, and also why the uploaded image from the Obama folks had the number blacked out.
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From a story in the Hawaii Advertiser:
Quote:
"'Others wonder why a large black rectangle appears next to the words, "CERTIFICATE NO'."
"'The thing that's redacted is just our file number," she said. "Potentially, if you have that number, you could break into the system.'"
"'Health officials contacted the Obama campaign a few months ago in response to the persistent inquiries "to see if they could try and resolve the issue with the people who were asking questions,' she said.
Emphasis is mine.
NOTE: The Hawaii Department of Health contacted Obama first. How much more proactive do you need them to be? How "silent" was that of them?
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The notary seal is not the same as the seal used by the Registrar of the State of Hawaii, and a notary does not stamp the Registrar's name onto documents.
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Now you're questioning the birth notice? Bizarre, considering it was dug up by a pro-Clinton researcher!
Here's some of the story from somebody skeptical, but less so than you, evidently:
Obama was likely born in Hawaii — does that mean he’s Eligible? « td blog (http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/obama-was-likely-born-in-hawaii/ - broken link)
From the finder of the birth announcement:
Quote:
Hi, I’ve talked to the Department of Vital Records and the Honolulu Advertiser. In 1961, the hospitals would take their new birth certificates to Vital Records. At the end of the week, Vital Records would post a sheet that for the news paper to pick up that contained births, deaths, marriages and divorces. The Advertiser routinely printed this information in their Sunday edition. This is not a paid announcement that his grandmother could arrange. This is information that comes from Vital Records - we know this because this particular section reflects those records. They didn’t have a provision for paid, one sentence announcement that would be included in the Vital Records. At the time, if a child was born outside a hospital, the family would have 30 days to apply for a birth certificate and Vital Records would expect to see prenatal care records, or pediatrician records of the first check up, etc. They’d also want the notarized statement from the mid-wife. Of course, they can apply later but that would noted as a different kind of birth certificate. I think TD has already addressed that. This information was received by Vital Records the first week of his birth = that suggests the hospital.
Next, the announcement is from Sunday, August 13th and Obama was born on Friday, August 4th. Hospitals usually don’t take birth certificate information the first couple days to avoid changes. So it was likely filled out on the 4th or so, as hospital stays were usually 3 - 5 days at the time. Lastly, having worked in a newborn nursery in college, hospitals don’t ask for documentation. If mom says she’s married, that’s what they write. They have no authority to question her statement.
In Honolulu at the time, paid birth announcements weren’t in vogue. Frequently families would post one year announcements that included pictures from the party, etc. I haven’t checked to see if that exists.
I hope that finishes clearing this up.
I suspect if "nobody else" could find it, they probably haven't bothered to go into the Newspaper or the Library to look at the fiche from that period. Nobody I've read about claims to have done so, and then failed to find what Lori found. Anybody can claim not to have found something if they didn't look!
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And more, because heaven forfend "but they won't name which library it came from!" be the next objection. This is from elsewhere on the same blog page I already linked. It is Lori's explanation for where she got it - and how you, too, can go get your very own copy of the (so terribly difficult to find) clipping!
Quote:
the clipping comes from the archives at the State Library in Honolulu. It’s on microfiche, and anyone who lives in Hawaii could go there and pull it themselves. Interestingly, I was the first person to request that search. I have spent an extensive amount of time on the phone with both the Honolulu Advertiser (who had no idea why I was asking the questions that i was asking and assumed it was run of the mill geneology work) and the Department of Vital Statistics. Both the Honolulu Advertiser and DVS agreed on the procudures in the sixties for submissions of data to the newspapers. Unless you have evidence the paper would lie about that, I think you should take that at face value.
Because of the date of his birth, and the date of publication - remember, this was in the paper on August 13th, 1961, there is virtually no chance he wasn’t born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. We know it wasn’t a late filed certficate because it wouldn’t have been in the newspaper on the date that it was.
I have no idea why they haven’t cleared it up. I’m not a fan.
LB - there is no “supposed” - we know for a fact how the newspaper got their information. This was standard procedure at the time all across the nation. The COLB came from the campaign and they could have cause to alter it. But this clipping is from the state library archives. In a court of law, a contemporaneous newspaper clipping - be it the real thing or a copy from a state library - would be very, very credible evidence. The clipping posted was emailed to me by the library.
Bemused - yes, we do know for a fact this isn’t a paid announcement because of the section of the newspaper it is in. If it were a paid announcement, it wouldn’t be with the Vital Records announcements.
As for her marital status, I’ll say it again - hospitals have no authority to question the mother’s word. The last thing hospitals want to do is have to chase down whether ever parent is married as they say they were. All her marital status in the announcement indicates is that, at the very least, her family wanted the public to believe she was married. You should read no more into it than that. Marriage licences are definitive on marriage. Birth certificates are definitive on birth.
What is definitive in a birth certificate is the child’s date and place of birth, gender, the mother’s name, the hospital and the attending physician - that’s about it. Everything else the hospital assumes is accurate because they don’t have the time or money to hire PIs to double check whether every woman giving birth is actually married. Do not assume this annoucement means they were legally married - it doesn’t.
And no, it wasnt’ a late certificate because the newspaper printed the story on August 13th - 9 days after his birth. The section of the paper it is in indicates definitively that it came from the DVS. Paid annoucements went somewhere else and were larger.
Are with done with this part of it now?
The clippings are legit. The data came from the state's Department of Vital Statistics. The DVS got it from the hospital, because that is how they always got it. It doesn't specify the hospital because none of them specify the hospital. But knock yourself out:
Hospitals and Health Care in Hawaii: History (http://hml.org/mmhc/hosphist.html - broken link)
And more, because heaven forfend "but they won't name which library it came from!" be the next objection. This is from elsewhere on the same blog page I already linked. It is Lori's explanation for where she got it - and how you, too, can go get your very own copy of the (so terribly difficult to find) clipping!
Are with done with this part of it now?
The clippings are legit. The data came from the state's Department of Vital Statistics. The DVS got it from the hospital, because that is how they always got it. It doesn't specify the hospital because none of them specify the hospital. But knock yourself out:
Hospitals and Health Care in Hawaii: History (http://hml.org/mmhc/hosphist.html - broken link)
This all sounds darned well definitive to me. Thanks for taking the time to do the "legwork"
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