The audacity of anti-Obamaniacs

The anti-Barack Obama conspiracy theorists just never give up.

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider a lawsuit claiming the president-elect is ineligible for office because his father was born in Kenya. The nine justices rejected the case without comment.

Internet-based activists intent on preventing Mr Obama from being sworn in as president next month have been citing his Kenyan heritage in a variety of challenges to his standing as an American.

The US Constitution stipulates that only a “natural born citizen” is eligible to serve as president.

The case referred to the Supreme Court argued that because of his father’s birth in Kenya, Mr Obama was “born with split and competing loyalties” and is therefore “not a ‘natural born citizen.’”

Leo Donofrio, a retired lawyer who filed the lawsuit, also contended that Mr Obama should “be required to prove . . . he was born in Hawaii.”

Many of the die-hard Obama refuseniks maintain he was secretly born in Kenya and a certificate proving he was born in Hawaii is a forgery. Hawaiian officials have affirmed that the certificate is valid.

Several other anti-Obama citizenship-related cases are pending in the US court system. Legal experts say all of them are likely to be thrown out.

During weeks leading to the presidential election, some critics tried to paint the Democratic presidential nominee as a dangerous outsider. He will do nothing to protect Israel, they suggested. He is a socialist who favours radical wealth redistribution, they argued.

“He’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential pick, famously said.

More than a month after Mr Obama’s historic election triumph, attacks like these appear to have resurfaced.

Mr Donofrio argued that because Mr Obama was also a British subject through his Kenyan father, he did not qualify.

In 1961, Kenya was still a British colony, and Mr Obama was indeed a dual citizen at birth under the British Nationality Act of 1948, according to FactCheck.org, a non-partisan website.

“Sen. Obama’s father was born in Kenya, and therefore, having been born with split and competing loyalties, candidate Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen,” the lawyer reportedly alleged.

“Since Barack Obama’s father was a citizen of Kenya, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the UK at the time of Senator Obama’s birth,” he elaborated, “then Senator Obama was a British citizen ‘at birth,’ just like the framers of the Constitution, and therefore, even if he were to produce an original birth certificate proving he were born on US soil, he still wouldn’t be eligible to be president.”

After independence in 1963, Mr Obama technically acquired Kenyan citizenship, although this expired when he turned 21 because the Kenyan constitution prohibits dual citizenship, FactCheck.org explains.

The application was earlier turned away by state courts. When one Supreme Court judge, Justice David Souter, also turned down the application on November 6, it seemed like the end of the matter.

But another judge who was subsequently approached, Justice Clarence Thomas, decided to table the case for discussion before the entire panel of judges.

Justice Thomas, one of the Supreme Court’s conservative members, famously sided with George W. Bush in the infamous Bush v. Gore, resolving the 2000 presidential election in his favour. His move suddenly gave the case a high profile.

On Monday, the court turned down the case, but not before it gained passionate support on conservative websites, amongst bloggers who had supported Mr Obama’s rival, Senator John McCain.

One blogger called the rejection “another giant slap in the face of America” and claimed “the liberal TV media …bent over backwards to virtually ignore this case.”

Another said: “The country is not asking too much to make Obama prove he is eligible for President. If he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to worry about.”

Liberal blogs, meanwhile, portrayed Mr Donofrio as desperately anti-Obama, although the lawyer also reportedly questioned John McCain’s eligibility.

John McCain was born on a US military base in the Panama Canal Zone, which was under American control but not officially part of the United States.

Paranoid delusions

One liberal blogger called Mr Donofrio a “nutjob” and wrote that “the Supreme Court has declined to entertain the paranoid delusions of anti-Obamaniacs.” Another remarked: “Man, the wingnuts are desperate, huh?”

Other left-leaning blogs directed their anger at Justice Thomas. “Thomas’s legal meddle on the Obama birth certificate non-issue fits perfectly in with his jaundiced interpretation of law and its practice,” read one posting.

Similar cases are still pending before the court. For example, a lawyer named Philip Berg has alleged that Mr Obama was actually born in Kenya, even though Mr Obama’s team released a copy of his Hawaii birth certificate.

Despite the passionate debate between both sides, some observers in the middle feel that these cases could actually have important legal significance.

Even though they are virtually guaranteed to fail, the observers say, they represent an opportunity to clarify the law on citizenship.

But one thing is clear: they cannot put off the inevitable. On January 20, Mr Barack Obama will be inaugurated as the President of the United States of America.

Additional reporting by Kevin J Kelley in New York