I must say that the McInnish v. Chapman lawsuit is a magnet for nutty birther theories. We had the Larry Klayman complaint, followed with the amicus brief from Lucas Daniel Smith (who brought the subject of this article to my attention – and no, I have never tried to access your computer), then the USJF brief, and now someone named Albert W. L. Moore, Jr. has submitted his own amicus brief.
If one sang the Sesame Street song: “one of these briefs is not like the other,” this one might be the odd one (but then again maybe they all are). It is like the others in that it seems to ignore what the question before the Alabama Supreme Court is. They’re not deciding whether Obama is eligible to be President or not; they’re deciding whether the lower court correctly dismissed the case, a dismissal not based on Obama’s eligibility. Still the Moore brief is a bit out there, even by birther standards.
It has the usual old birther stuff: Fukino said “records” instead of “record,” Indonesian adoption and Barack Obama Sr. is not really the President’s father. But it also has a narrative structure that I have come to associate with a former commenter here, Sven Magnussen (and his host of sock puppets). Here’s a bit:
Obama was a naturalized citizen of Indonesia around 1968, when American Secretary of State Dean Rusk issued a certificate of loss of nationality to facilitate the Indonesian naturalization. In 1971, Obama was returned to the United States unaccompanied on his Indonesian passport. The Department of State referred him to Catholic Charities of Connecticut, under a contractual arrangement. Catholic Charities had Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham appointed guardian. In 1977 Obama started using the Social Security number of a deceased American citizen to avoid applying for one on the basis of his American citizenship….
Then it lapses into the April Fool story of Obama attending Columbia University under the name of Barry Soetoro with a foreign student scholarship. Oh, and he wants a DNA sample.
Of course this is pure fantasy. Its logic (if you can call it that) says that Obama had to use someone else’s social-security number because he wasn’t a citizen—only you don’t have to be a citizen to get a social-security number, only a legal resident. And of course Columbia University lists Barack Obama, not Barry Soetoro as a graduate.
I don’t know. Maybe this brief was submitted to make the birthers look crazy. Either way, the McInnish appeal is pretty much a publicity stunt all around.
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