Another one bites the dust.

The district court dismissed, and now the DC Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed that dismissal in the tersely worded decision following.

BERG v OBAMA (FCA) – (APPEAL) – PER CURIAM JUDGMENT – Affirmed – Transport Room

Philip Berg

I left this question over at Phil Berg’s web site, Obamacrimes.com, in November of 2009. I don’t know whether I didn’t see the answer at the time, or what. In any case an answer of sorts did appear. Here’s the question:

A particular point of interest to me regarding the Berg v. Obama lawsuit is the difference between the original complaint and the first amended complaint and how that came to happen.

After the original filing of the suit, quite a bit of media attention was focused on Phil Berg and his lawsuit, but I don’t think it caught hold in the minds of many folk until the amended complaint and the introduction of the affidavit by “Kweli Shuhubia” [not his real name] and the abbreviated version of the “grandmother tape”.

I am interested in how the contacts were made and what parties were involved in the affidavit and the tape. Was Ron McRae the intermediary? Did he approach Phil directly?

While it may be an unpopular view on this web site, I personally think Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. If this is true, the Shuhubia affidavit is a fraud. That means there was no district registrar, and no “top secret” birth certificate in Kenya. If it was a fraud, what was the motivation? Was it McRae’s fervent objection to abortion as murder, or was just another African scam? Did money change hands for “expenses”?

Of course, if Obama was born in Kenya, then everything is on the up and up.

Another difference between the original complaint and the amended complaint is the deletion of a passing reference to a Canadian birth certificate for Obama. Rumors exist that some folks paid money for copies of that certificate. I wondered if Phil could shed any light on that question, or whether this is just an aside he picked up on the Internet.

Here’s the answer from the person writing as “Paralegal.”

Hi Dr. Conspiracy,

Where to start.

The original complaint was literally thrown together very fast in order to have it filed before the Democratic Convention with the intent to amend it.

The Canadian birth certificate, that was sent to us via email – without mentioning names (you know we are in litigation) – it was not a very readable copy. This reference was removed when we discovered it was a hoax, so it was nothing intentional on our part. We did not pay any money for the Canadian B/C and never heard of the rumor that others did, so I can’t comment on this.

The interview of Obama’s grandmother was done in Kenya at Sarah Obama’s home on October 16, 2008. Present was the interviewer, a translator and a grandson of Sarah Obama’s. That is why you see several affidavits as well as the phone records. I cannot and will not divulge the true identities at this time.

Regardless of where Obama was actually born, and again we believe he was born in Kenya with the information we have, he (Obama) never reclaimed any US citizenship status he may have had and has failed to relinquish his Indonesian citizenship between the ages of 18-21. This is important because Indonesia did not recognize dual citizenship and Obama had the opportunity to reclaim his US Citizenship whether it was natural born, which we do not believe, or “naturalized”.

In order for Obama to have relinquished his Indonesia citizenship, he was required to send a sworn affidavit to the Indonesian Government. We cannot find any record of Obama complying with this. In addition, the State Department would have records relating to Obama reclaiming his US citizenship status, if he held such.

Next, the name issue. The last legal name we have for Obama is on his school record in Indonesia, which was Barry Soetoro. We cannot located any legal documents where he ever legally changed his name to Barack H. Obama.

Just to keep things straight, the First Amended Complaint in Berg v. Obama was filed October 6, 2008 and we did not receive the tape and affidavits regarding Obama’s grandmother until after October 30, 2008.

I hope I answered everything.

Of course, it doesn’t answer everything, because I really wanted to know about how Berg and McRae got hooked up. One thing I have learned since I wrote those questions is never to ask a lawyer a complex question because he can give you a long answer to just part of it, and the part you really didn’t care about that much.

Philip Berg

In the same vein, virtually all of the present birther mythology is found in the original Berg v Obama lawsuit from 2008 and all the birther lawsuits are little more than warmed over Philip J. Berg. (Berg also believed that the US Government was responsible for blowing up the Twin Towers on 9/11. Berg appears to be a credulous person with a conspiracy theory mindset.) Berg’s lawsuit in some small way legitimized the conspiracy theories in the popular mind.

Here are some of the ideas that came from Berg v. Obama in his Original C0mplaint:

1. The threat of civil disobedience should an ineligible person become the Democratic nominee for President.
2. The claim that Obama has “refused to prove” his eligibility. (Note: this is after Obama had published his birth certificate online).
3. Berg had a copy of the Obama divorce papers back in August of 2008 while others claimed to have “first discovered it” later.
4. Contradictory claims as to which hospital Obama was born in.
5. Hospitals reported (on the Internet) as having no birthing records for Obama in Hawaii
6. Obama became a Kenyan citizen upon Kenya’s independence (true).
7. Barack Obama’s mother naturalized as an Indonesian citizen
8. Barack Obama lost his US Citizenship when his mother naturalized. (He states that the Nationality Act of 1940 provides that a person loses their citizenship upon the naturalization of a custodial parent.) See What’s Your Evidence? for a discussion of why this is not true.)
9. The Indonesian school record lists Obama as an “Indonesian citizen”.
10. Obama traveled to Pakistan on an Indonesian passport. This allegation is supported only by the statement: “Investigation further showed.”
11. Three forensic experts have shown the Obama birth certificate (COLB) posted on the Internet was a fake
12. The COLB was altered from his sister Maya’s birth certificate.
13. Obama lied on his Illinois bar application
14. Obama carries multiple citizenships (Kenyan and Indonesian).
15. There is a Canadian birth certificate for Obama on the Internet

Then Berg filed a motion for expedited discovery, and included the long list of demanded documents that we see over and over again. I won’t repeat these, but commend the reader to the link provided.

These were introduced in Berg’s First Amended Complaint in the case on October 6, 2008.

1. Lolo Soetoro legally “acknowledged” Obama as his son and/or adopted him, thereby making Obama an Indonesian citizen. (The assertion that his mother’s marriage caused loss of citizenship was dropped).
2. Barack Obama was born in Mombasa.
3. Obama’s step grandmother Sarah Obama says she was present
4. Obama’s half brother and half sister say he was born in Kenya
5. The Kenyan birth was because the airline refused to allow the pregnant Stanley Ann to fly.
6. An unidentified “research team” went to Kenya and found a birth certificate for Obama.
7. Only Indonesian citizens were allowed to attend Indonesian schools (not true)
8. The name Barry Soetoro.
9. The Travel Ban to Pakistan, “Pakistan was so dangerous that it was on the State Department’s travel ban list for US Citizens.” (not true) [I had thought that this myth was started by Janet Folger Porter in the pages of World Net Daily, November 28, 2008, but we see that Berg had stated it a month earlier.]
10. Non-Muslims were unwelcome in Pakistan in 1981 when Obama traveled there.

Later on Berg submitted the “affidavit” of the anonymous Kweli Shuhubia and the grandmother tape, introducing the idea that Obama’s birth certificate in Kenya was a government protected top secret. The taped interview between Ron McRae and Obama’s maternal grandmother (edited so as to make it say something other than what it actually said) was probably the single most important factor in convincing the birthers.

Besides some misstatements of Hawaiian vital statistics law that appeared in Keyes v Bowen, there’s not much else of consequence in this discussion beyond those Internet rumors collated by Philip J. Berg into the Berg v. Obama lawsuit. We all came out of Berg’s suit.

Philip Berg

First my humble apologies to any of you who were planning to attend Phil Berg’s “Obama birth certificate / eligibility / Obamacare march on Washington” this weekend, for being a day late late with this news.

In an email message to his supporters yesterday, Berg said that “scheduling conflicts” required that the march be postponed until a date to be determined sometime in August / September. Berg also noted that he needed to raise $50,000 to finance advertising for the rescheduled march.

We’re doing our part here at Obama Conspiracy Theories to publicize the event.

Philip J .Berg, fairly called the “father of the birthers”,  believes Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and then adopted by his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, thereby becoming Indonesian national and losing US Citizenship.

The first concerns a non-event from Hawaii. The Post and Email presented a petition to the Hawaii Attorney General, asking for Obama’s birth certificate and the documents relating to the preparation of Dr. Fukino’s statement that Obama was born in Hawaii.

The AG says the he doesn’t keep birth certificates; that’s the Department of Health’s job, and that he doesn’t have any documents relating to Dr. Fukino’s preparation of her statement. (I suppose if Dr. Fukino did consult with the AG, it was over the phone.)

Somehow the nObamas thing this means something, but I don’t see it.

The other item is a death threat, which appeared on Orly’s Facebook fan page, according to the Crazy Internet People blog. The argument there was that if Obama is not really president, then threatening him really isn’t a crime. I don’t know if threatening the president (or vice-president) on a blog is a crime or not. Mailing one is most definitely a crime. But hypothetically say someone commits a crime against President Obama and is prosecuted; could that person raise the defense that Obama isn’t really president? It certainly sidesteps the issue of standing.

By the way, Phil Berg is publicizing his Obamacare/Obama March on Washington for May 29, 2010. Here’s the flyer.