Berg v. Obama: Clerk Orders Case Submitted to Merits Panel
Attorney Philip J. Berg, the Plaintiff in his Third Circuit Court of Appeals case Berg v. Obama, yesterday had his case referred to a Merits Panel. Below is a posting from FreeRepublic.com regarding the PACER docket:
12/09/2008 Open Document ORDER (SCIRICA, Chief Judge and AMBRO, Circuit Judges) denying Appellant’s Motion an Immediate Injunction to Stay the Certification of Electors, to Stay the Electoral College from Casting any Votes for Barack H. Obama on December 15, 2008, and to Stay the Counting of any votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate on January 6, 2009 Pending Resolution of Appellant’s Appeal. Panel No.: ECO-16. Scirica, Authoring Judge. See Order for complete text. (CH)
12/10/2008 RECORD available on District Court CM/ECF. (CH)
12/10/2008 Open Document BRIEFING NOTICE ISSUED. Brief on behalf of Philip J. Berg due on or before 01/20/2009. Appendix due on or before 01/20/2009. (CH)
01/16/2009 Open Document ENTRY OF APPEARANCE from Steve N. Hajjar on behalf of Appellee(s) Federal Election Commission. (SNH)
01/16/2009 Open Document Motion filed by Appellee Fed Election Comm to summarily affirm. Certificate of Service dated 01/16/2009. SEND TO MERITS PANEL.–[Edited 01/28/2009 by CH] (SNH)
01/20/2009 Open Document ELECTRONIC BRIEF with Volume I of Appendix attached on behalf of Appellant Philip J. Berg, filed. Certificate of Service dated 01/20/2009 by email. (PJB)
01/20/2009 Open Document ELECTRONIC APPENDIX on behalf of Appellant Philip J. Berg, filed. Manner of Service: electronic. Certificate of Service dated 01/20/2009. (PJB)
01/27/2009 Open Document Response filed by Appellant Philip J. Berg to Motion for summary action. Certificate of Service dated 01/26/2009. (PJB)
01/28/2009 Open Document CLERK ORDER referring Motion by Appellee Federal Election Commitee For Summary Affirmance to the merits panel. It is noted that Appellant filed his brief and appendix on January 20, 2009, counsel for Appellee Federal Election Committee, is directed to inform this office in writing within seven (7) days from the date of this order if they intend to file a brief or rely on the Motion for Summary Affirmance in lieu of a formal brief, filed. SEND TO MERITS PANEL. (CH)
02/02/2009 Open Document CLERK ORDER referring the Response of Appellant to Appellee Federal Election Committee’s Motion for Summary Affirmance to the merits panel, filed. SEND TO MERITS PANEL. (CH) [emphasis from posting]
What does the above mean?…
For starters, take a look at the Internal Operating Procedures of the US 3rd Circuit Appeals Court, specifically chapter 10 (it’s not a long document):
CHAPTER 10. MOTION PRACTICE
10.1 Motion Panels.
A panel is available to receive motions at all times. The chief judge, with the consent of the court, designates standing motions panels (SMPs) to receive from the clerk motions in cases which have not been sent to merits panels. …
10.2.3 Motions on non-emergency matters are distributed to the SMPs as they are complete; i.e., when responses have been filed and any necessary briefing completed. …
10.7 Motions Related to Cases Assigned to Merits Panels.
10.7.1 Motions related to cases assigned to merits panels are generally granted or denied by the presiding judge if they are merely administrative and unrelated to the disposition, unless the presider believes reference to the entire panel is appropriate.
10.7.2 Motions related to scheduling cases for argument are always referred to the entire panel.
There’s more to the process for the applicable Clerk Order than what I’ve shown, above; definitely worth a read if you have a few minutes.
My non-attorney take is that the Clerk has decided (based on the type of case and protocol thereof) to refer Berg’s case to a Merit Panel where, not surprisingly (!), the merits of the case will be considered prior to their being a judgment made (the document goes into more detail on how all of this could transpire: the kind of judgment, the process for making said judgment, etc.).
Does this mean anything in terms of the content of the case? I’m going to say it doesn’t, and instead say this is part of the process. However, I’m sure a number of the lawyer types that have been producing copious amounts of commentary on my blog (thanks for that!) will be happy to extrapolate more judicial theory on this issue.
A current listing of eligibility lawsuits can be found here.
-Phil
Equal protection of the laws under the 14th Amendment does not limit its application to “citizens” of any kind. Read the amendment before contributing any more foolish non-sequiturs. The word is “persons”, as I said, but it applies only at the state level; it does not (or ought not) apply at the federal level, as I said.
–John
Question for a legal mind: Are the parents’ citizenship status the bottom line, and if so, does any “alive” case out there argue on that point? The only one I would guess does offhand is Berg’s. It seems some of the arguments made against BO’s status himself might be weak because of so much case law heretofore that has lowered the bar, and we must be sober enough to know that BO et al haven’t fleshed this out long ago. Would SC ultimately reject any hearing if the plaintiff doesn’t argue the case on the right point of law (parents’ citizen status)? Thanks.
John:
Equal protection of the law for all citizens means just that. That all citizens are protected. The 14th Amendment citizenship does not negate nor replace Article II, “Natural Born Citizen”.
The 13th Amendment freed the African Americans from slavery but did not afford them U.S. citizenship. The 14th Amendment was instituted to give the African Americans U.S. Citizenship. At that time in history, African Americans were moving from State to State. Some States because of their State Constitutions would not afford them citizenship. Thus, the reason for U.S. Citizenship so that individual States could not discriminate. The American Indians were offered U.S. citizenship through the 14th Amendment as well. They were not considered U.S. citizens even though born on American soil because their allegiance was to their tribes and not to America. We had treaties with them. Thus, the 14th Amendment institution naturalized U.S. citizenship as we did not have immigration at that time. This amendment has been largely misued. As you say, the SCOTUS Judges and Congress are very creative and do play on words in the U.S. Constitution. Thus, Obama has done this as well.
richCares:
You say: “it’s OK, you don’t have to accept him, but most of America has accepted him, so just stay behind, we don’t need you!”
Might I remind you that 60,000,000+ of the approx. 130,000,000 voters went to Senator McCain. So most of Americans has not necessarily accepted Obama. If this country falls we all fall. Think about it.
richCares:
Obama, himself, announced on TV that his father was born in Kenya. His father was never a U.S. Citizen. Because his father is Kenyan, Obama is at best a “U.S. Citizen” and cannot be a “Natural Born Citizen” per Article II of the U.S. Constitution. It doesn’t really make any difference where Obama was born, except that if he was not born in HI, he would be either a “Naturalized citizen” or an illegal alien.
The definition of “Natural Born Citizen” is quite clear. For starters, go to http://www.senate.gov/civics/constitution_item/constitution.htm for review of the U.S. Constitution. Then you can go to http://www.constitution.org for the U.S. Constitution and backup documents. There are many educational organizations and government websites where you can find a clear interpretation.
Some have said that the candidate posted that he was a “native born citizen” under the 14th Amendment, and that, despite (or hinted by) the obvious distinction between “native” and “natural,” this would be his legal stance, the idea being that the 14th Amendment voids the “natural born citizen” clause by prohibiting distinctions between classes of American citizens.
As I began considering the implications of that position I seem to have wandered into a morass of very disturbing implications. For it seems to me that the Supreme Court has been routinely inventing authority that allows the congress to usurp authority that neither body has under the Constitution. This usurpation has apparently, insofar as I can interpret the language of the Constitution and the meaning apparently assigned to it by the court, been accomplished by stretching the meaning of words and clauses until the law is made sufficiently plastic and modifiable by the court as to support any meaning the court wants to give it—in but a few places, of course, places prone to providing promiscuous results.
In short, by means of some very creative word-twisting, the Supreme Court has given congress the power to circumvent the clear meaning of the Constitution’s limitation of Congressional powers within state boundaries to matters dealing with national issues and to pass laws that effectively dictate to the several States in a manner contrary to the 10th Amendment. The usurpation hinges on adopting a flexible and shifting interpretation for the meaning of the words “state” and “union” so that, when convenient to the purpose of the tyrants’ usurpation, the words mean two different things, or the same thing, as their purpose demands. Not being a lawyer, I cannot say with legal certainty, but it seems reasonable to me as a linguist that if two words in a legal document can ordinarily both have multiple meanings and one of the two meanings makes the two words the same word, this, being nowhere else made clear, is some kind of flaw in the document.
I got to thinking about this yesterday when I just re-read the 14th Amendment for the umpteenth time, and saw something I had not considered before”
“No state shall …”
“NO STATE” it says.
A very reasonable case could be made, I should think, that “state” is distinguished in the first section from “the Unites States” by the plain wording of the first sentence: “born or naturalized in the United States, … are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
If “the United States” is not differentiated from “the state in which they reside” then the word “and” is unnecessary, and the expression “the state in which they reside” is redundant.
So far as I understand it, there is a legal principle that makes it incorrect to construe any law in a way that makes a word or a clause redundant or unnecessary, such that, whenever there is an ambiguity allowing such interpretations, the law must be interpreted to disallow the redundancy by applying a different meaning to the potentially redundant word or clause than was applied previously to its potential synonym so as to interpret the law to have a meaning that allows no unnecessary word or phrase insofar as possible. Now consider what this implies for the legal meaning of the words in the 14th Amendment. I think you, too, will find this discovery quite shocking. “Alarming” might in fact be a better word.
Once established, this distinction between “the United States” (the federal government) and a “state in which [someone] resides” (a state government) must then be maintained throughout the remainder of the 14th Amendment. With such an understanding in force, the meaning of the 14th Amendment is quite clear and consistent with its purpose at the time it was adopted.
With that in mind, then, the clause: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” does not, cannot make the “natural born citizen” clause of the Constitution void, because Article II is not a law made or enforced by a “state” but by “the United States.” Notice how this differs from the 1st Amendment, which begins, “Congress shall pass no law …”
Now consider the “equal protection” clause, which is also (erroneously, in my view) cited by some as a reason for voiding the “natural born citizen” clause. Again, it is binding upon a “state” not upon “the United States,” but this is neither here nor there given another clearly implied meaning of the 14th Amendment: “No state shall make or enforce … ; nor shall any state deprive … ; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The constitution of the United States distinguishes between “citizen of the United States” and “natural born citizen,” and it distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens (by establishing conditions upon which citizenship is conferred), but the equal protection of the laws, which applies to all “persons,” does not, cannot destroy the meaningful distinction between “alien” and “citizen” according to the authority of the Constitution of the United States of America, since the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment does not apply to “the United States,” but to each several “state.”
For the same reason the 14th Amendment does not, cannot destroy the meaningful distinction between “citizen” and “natural born citizen.” Thus “equal protection of the laws” does not grant a person who merely happens to be in the country the right to vote, for example. In a similar way, the 14th Amendment cannot grant to a “citizen” who is not a “natural born citizen” the right to be president.
To summarize the points made above, the clear distinction made in the first section of the 14th Amendment between “the United States” on the one hand and “the state in which they reside” on the other precludes any claim that the 14th Amendment supercedes the “natural born citizen” clause in the Constitution, because the U.S. Constitution is not the law of “the state in which [a presidential candidate/president] resides” but of “the United States.” The “natural born citizen” requirement does not apply to a person within the jurisdiction of a “state,” but applies only to persons who are under the jurisdiction, in this case, only of Article II of the Constitution of the United States Constitution. Clearly, those who wrote the 14th Amendment were aware that they were thus preserving the “natural born citizen” requirement for the office of president in the language of this amendment.
I am not a lawyer, but a linguist, and this is only an opinion, but the reasonableness of this opinion in light of the expressed intentions of the founders is quite clear to me.
Now comes the twist, the shocking news. All of the above is predicated on the absolutely reasonable understanding that the authors of the 14th Amendment meant to preserve a distinction between citizens and resident aliens, and between citizens and natural born citizens. After all, its purpose was to end slavery, and there was no need nor purpose to be advanced in blurring these distinctions. As worded, and with the distinction illuminated above, the 14th Amendment absolutely precludes denying citizenship to anyone born in the United States (thus rendering moot the Dred Scott decision), while guaranteeing every citizen of the United States the full and equal application of the laws of each of the several states. It is important to emphasize this last point, because it, too, makes a distinction. It was never the intent of the 14th Amendment to make the “equal protection” clause applicable to the federal government, since the only place in which the federal government had ever made a distinction between one class of persons and another was in the area of citizenship—specifically, “natural born citizens,” “citizens of the United States,” “other persons,” and “Indians not taxed.” These distinctions were not intended to be erased by the 14th Amendment. And it was unnecessary to stretch the meaning of the 14th Amendment to enforce equal protection of the laws to every person within the country under federal law, since there were no federal laws pertaining to the issue of slavery per se, nor did the federal government have any such powers over the citizens of the several states such as it apparently claims now. And there is the rub.
In the 20th century, the Supreme Court began to find new explicit “rights” supposedly in the Constitution, and to invent new powers for the federal government that would never have been allowed by the founders or the authors of the several Amendments. Mangling language in the most barbaric way, the court, in 1973, found a “right” to an abortion in the meaning of the word “person” in the first clause of the 14th Amendment, arguing that if anyone was a person born or naturalized in the United States, it followed that someone not yet born (or naturalized?) was not a person, and could thus be murdered—err, killed—without legal repercussion. This began (or continued) a wholesale redefinition of the United States Constitution to embrace all kinds of never before thought of “rights” in penumbras of fictional origin, including the wholesale dismantling of the distinction between “the United States” and the several “states” in which the people actually lived.
Having thus burned its conscience to death with the Roe v Wade ruling, the court went on to find all kinds of fictional rights in the “equal protection” clause. Fictional, I say, because the “equal protection” clause does not reasonably apply at the federal level, as shown above, and the federal government therefore has no authority to authorize Congress to pass legislation to enforce these fictional rights that the Supreme Court invented by perverting the meaning of the words in this amendment. Now, as we all know, the Supreme Court has been blithely issuing proclamation after proclamation based on the illogical interpretation of the equal protection clause to be a federal law empowering Congress to enact all sorts of remedial legislation to insure “equal” protection from or toward countless totalitarian absurdities such as Affirmative Action, school busing, queer marriage, and the whole grand slam of nonsensical Draconian bully beatings with which we are all now familiar. Well, now you also know where it all came from. The court stole this authority by blinding itself to the clear distinction between state and federal governments in the 14th Amendment (after first shooting a hole through the part of its collective brain that formerly held the words “born” and “person”) and has handed to Congress ever since a carte blanche power to run amok with our liberties that the Constitution never granted to it.
Now you can understand, too, why the federal government does nothing, absolutely nothing to stem the tide of the illegal (so we thought) invasion of our country (so we thought), since it is now all too clear just why. From this understanding we can see that it likewise erased the distinction between natural born citizen and citizen, and (the bigger shocker) between citizen and non-citizen. You see, if equal protection of the laws applies to all persons however they got “within the United States,” under such an interpretation of the 14th Amendment as has been used to justify all the Congressional action on Affirmative Action, then all the blessings of liberty granted by American citizenship as a distinction are completely erased as well. Welcome to the new world order, “comrades”.
You didn’t know that this “bloodless” coup of the phony foreign one was so well planned, did you? Or that, having been this well planned, you have zero chance of stopping this communist takeover, since everyone in government is in on it (and laughing at you). Perhaps everyone in your neighborhood is in on it but you. You didn’t know that the lawyers that planned all this have been teaching law at Harvard for the last forty years, did you? Or that they’ve been importing their students from the gutters of the armpits of the world and paying their tuition without regard to merit so long as they were member of the ICP? Or that, once they bring terrorists into the country as refugees or displaced enemy combatants, those dirtbags will have all the rights and privileges you do, including a right to live in your home? I mean, (excuse me, how careless!), what was formerly your home. Well, now you do. Those of you who find this appalling can be sure that your dissident’s solitary confinement cell has already been prepared and furnished and is ready for your immediate occupancy, next on the agenda. You think this is extreme? Wait. See.
“It is imparative that we know the truth about Obamas birth place and if he is a natural born citizen of this country. Until then I cannot accept Obama as my president.”
it’s OK, you don’t have to accept him, but most of America has accepted him, so just stay behind, we don’t need you!
Dr. Taitz filed a complaint that SCOTUS dropped her case for the docket, her docket was removed she said, she is very mad about this.
SCOTUS maintains a public information site http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov
This is not a formal site to keep records, it is an information site, turns out they were doing some maintainance and parts of site were not accessible, these came back on line next day. No docket was removed from court as this info site is not the court records site (actual records are not on line). Good luck on Taitz’s complaint!
Berg has more “denied”’s than any lawyer in history, parts of his Hollister case were called frivilous by the Judge, tomorrow on 2/13 Berg will either be sanctioned or/and case dismissed. Hoping that Berg can be successful is wishful thinking.
the vast majority of Americans believe Obama is qualified. Today Obama’s Lincoln Day address was cheered by Dems & Repubs. His TV appearances are currently the largest draw on TV. I am a US Marine and I voted for Obama, another US Marine Gen Jim Jones (was commandant of Marines) is working for Obama. You may not agree with his politics, but calling him a traitor says more about you than it does about Obama, no wonder you guys can’t win a case! The guy shouting traitor the loudest is usually the traitor!
It is imparative that we know the truth about Obamas birth place and if he is a natural born citizen of this country. Until then I cannot accept Obama as my president.
Why isn’t this being moved forward or the MSM covering this issue?
Phil,
We have evidence SCOTUS has refused to fire Clerk Bickell and other clerks for blatant obstruction of justice on cases specifically geared to questioning the usurper’s eligibility ( in this case the lack thereof).
Let’s review:
1. Blatant mishandling of the Donofrio case (denied at the clerk level – Bickell).
2. Blatant mishandling of the Wrotnowski case (denied at the clerk level – Bickell, then shipped off to the Anthrax lab).
3. Blatant mishandling of the Lightfoot case (lost paperwork, and yes, Bickell was working on this one also – just call the clerk’s office to confirm).
This 3 ring circus called the Supreme Court has shown its true colors. It cares not of the process or the Constitution. And it’s not the first time this has happened. It also occurred in 2004 after the election. You can do some research on this as well.
This is not a question of innocence vs guilt. This a question of being qualified vs unqualified, i.e. contractual agreements.
Now if we were talking about a fraud or forgery case, that’s a different story.
Correct.
However, the Supreme Court and Congress would be considered guilty of Seditious Conspiracy should Soetoro be deemed ineligible. And Soetoro would be considered to be a fraud should he be deemed ineligible. Both are criminal offenses.
They can not plead ignorance to it as there have been more than 6 ineligibility cases brought to the attention of the Supreme Court before the inauguration and countless other Congressional and state officials responding to questions and lawsuite based on his ineligibility before the inauguration.
I would love to put this on buzz or anything if I only knew what it meant
Harrah,
Even if Obama was not a U.S. citizen, he would still be entitled to a presumption of innocence in criminal proceedings; the burden of proof is always on the prosecution in criminal cases, regardless of the defendant’s citizenship.
Harrah,
Again, that would have to be conclusively (legally) established. While there seems to be evidence pointing to the President allegedly not being an American citizen, at the moment he is legally construed to be such, and so therefore is afforded all of the rights under the Constitution.
Thanks for the comment,
-Phil
Hello, Phil–
Lest we forget…JUST WHAT ARE WE THINKING?! Soetoro is NOT an American citizen–so why should he be entitled to innocence until proven guilty in a court of law?!!?
@ Steve
This is the location of the transcript: http://www.therightsideoflife.com/?p=3220
RC
It is unclear what you are trying to say.
Once a case is assigned to a merits panel, the merits panel will hear all the motions in that case, as well as the case itself.
If a case is not yet assigned to a merits panel, a motion panel can hear motions, including dispostive motions, like motions to dismiss and motions for summary adjudication. However, if a single judge on a motions panel votes against such a motion, the case would go to a merits panel. That way, if a judge isn’t comfortable disposing of a case in such a summary fashion, a “no” vote ensures a hearing by a merits panel.
This is, generally, the more efficient system because then cases will be assigned to merits panels only when they are fully briefed and ready to go. It would be more work for the court to assign every case that is filed to a merits panel from the moment they are filed because many appeals are abandoned, dismissed, settled, etc.
Now, in some cases, the motions panel could make a ruling that affects the rest of the appeal (like an injunction, for example), but those cases are a small percentage of the total docket. So while there are exceptions, they are in the minority, and Berg’s case isn’t one of them.
Hillary plan to visit Indonesia, my guess is she is being told by BHO to ensure the Indonesian government to change his school certificate and other of his document in Indonesia from the Indonesian nationality into Americans at the exchange of Indonesian gov wanted the most” economy aid and impunity of past human right violation. I sincerely urged all the Americans that still fought for the truth to send your team and best hacker to get this VIP important prove other wise this shall lost forever for I cant due the fat I’m an Chinese breed Indonesian.
I don’t see anyone laughing.
Georgetown,
I’ve heard it’s part of Perkins-Coie’s flat fee arrangement with the campaign, so that $800K probably includes all the ballot access work, FEC reporting, etc.
For someone who respects the Constitution, you sure are ignorant of the part about treason.
“Article III, Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. ”
In no way has Obama committed treason, nor have his “minions.”
Reality Check,
You’ve only got a transcript? I tivo’d that $#!t. I think it’s gonna rerun at 3:30 AM eastern time on C-Span 5.
steve,
(Sorry, Reality Check!
) It was a joke.
Frankly, I don’t think Dr. Taitz really realizes the fact that there was probably nothing of substance recorded. Personally, I have always maintained that it was nothing more than a ceremonial visit by the then-President-Elect and VP-Elect. Certainly, nobody has to agree with my sentiment, but I simply don’t see any evidence — outside of rank conjecture — that any wrong-doing occurred.
Further, do you have any evidence that the Executive branch is “paying off,” to use your phrase, the Supreme Court, thereby influencing the Judiciary to not hear certain types of cases? If you do, that would certainly be news, as that could then be forwarded to certain folks who could hold the government to account. Else, I’m going to believe that it’s a true conspiracy theory, something that simply cannot ever be proven and, again, is based on conjecture.
Folks, do your own research! Think about things for a minute. Don’t believe everything you see or read simply because someone told you to do so. Are you not following down the very same path you simultaneously claim is wrong with the “unwashed masses” of the American people? Also realize that there’s not a conspiracy behind every bush, as it were. Don’t buy into unsubstantiated claims.
Thanks for the question,
-Phil
Where is this blog that has the leaked transcript ( Between scotus and The little tin-pot Dictator/Kenyan terrorist Hussein ) can you forward that to my email I’d like to be able to follow all of this and can’t find it, especially when hussein goes to scotus to PAY off the Judges with Hush money and pays them to throw out every case that arrives in court where is this transcript ..?
Phil,
I agree. This is all just conjecture, and that’s why no one can come up with a source for the dollar figure du jour.
Until a motion is filed for an award of attorneys fees, which would be accompanied by an affidavit and copies of time records/billing details, whatever amounts have been incurred are not going to be disclosed. Such records are confidential, and in some instances, portions of the bills are protected by the attorney-client privilege.
Oh boy, here is what I said
… is it more efficient to assign a case that has more chance of proceeding on the merits to a merits panel (the judges will be familiar with the case already) rather than to a panel unfamiliar with the case?
and what I meant to say
… is it more efficient to assign a case that has more chance of proceeding on the merits to a merits panel (the judges will be familiar with the case already) rather than to a panel who may have to forward it a panel unfamiliar with the case?
“If you file a motion in a Third Circuit appeal, it will either be decided by the clerk’s office, by a motions panel not assigned to decide the appeal on its merits, or by the panel that will decide the merits of the appeal.” (The above taken from the link provided by bregenon.)
The panel that decides Berg’s case could have been assigned to a panel that will not hear the merits, even if the motion to dismiss is denied. The case would then go to a merits panel at that point. It seems that Berg’s case was instead assigned to a merits panel who will continue with the case should it survive the motion to dismiss. I wonder if anyone who has practiced before the Third Circuit knows if it is entirely arbitrary to assign the case to a panel who will hear the merits if the case proceeds versus a panel that will not have the case should it proceed to the merits. (The clerk’s office decides simple procedural matters such as extensions or technical matters.) In other words, is it more efficient to assign a case that has more chance of proceeding on the merits to a merits panel (the judges will be familiar with the case already) rather than to a panel unfamiliar with the case? Or are they just randomly assigned based upon the back-load of cases? Either way, the way the case has proceeded doesn’t seem to indicate that Berg is doomed based upon the assignation of his case to a merits panel. It is either completely arbitrary or an indication that the court would rather assign the case to a panel who will already be familiar with it should it move forward.
@ Wil
Are you the same person as the Bill Benson who says he has proof the 16th and 17th amendments were never ratified? We would all love to see the proof if you are. Please provide it soon as I haven’t done my income taxes yet.
@ Jack
They don’t really care about the country. They are like Rush and just want Obama to fail and fall into disgrace. If the birth certificate issue won’t do it they will move onto something else like calling him a socialist. I will give you a tip. You can ignore any comment that has the phrase “We the people” or mentions “the Constitution” more than once. It will almost certainly be from an uninformed person.
Yes, and I have provided a leaked transcript on that thread of the secret meeting between PE Obama and the justices which is absolutely devastating. Everyone should read it.
Jack, you wrote: “Shouldn’t you guys be more concerned whether Obama knows what he is doing than anything else. He has power now. The last President left the kitchen in a shambles and you guys could care less. By not attacking his actions you are marginalizing yourselves.
And if you did attack on what grounds – what principles would you use to attest to your wisdom and case for justice – and truth arete, aletheia and dike (in the Greek).”
First, Jack, I’m not just taking this out on you, but on the many people who trash President Bush. One of these days people are going to wake up and figure out that he was a good president and he took much abuse from many people in the U.S. and abroad and did not deserve it. He kept us safe! Put yourself in his shoes for a second and think how you would feel if day after day you were slandered, reviled from people everywhere for no reason. Half the people who say they hated him don’t even know why. How realistic is that. Just a bunch of idiots, in my opinion. What they have done is brought one heck of a mess down on themselves.
Next, people don’t really understand these facts at all. What happens when a new president takes over is stuff that’s happened years before starts showing up. So when President Bush became pres., we were still paying for Clinton’s mess even at the end of Bush’s terms. And honestly just like we’ll be paying for BO’s mistakes many years after his term(s). We’re probably still paying for Clinton. The only thing that Pres. Bush did that I disagree with is the bailout, which that went against his principles. I think it was a manufactured crises anyway, but it was not by Pres. Bush. And the Fannie Mae stuff and whatever else is a result of what happened many years before when they started making loans to just about anyone.
Yes, I understand the issue actually never goes away or becomes moot. I didn’t mean to imply that length or number of terms was a qualifier. The fact that candidate qualifications is an issue for some of us; however, for one Barack Obama it seems to be an issue he has quite successfully skirted.