December 10, 2012
A longstanding eligibility case challenging Barack Obama’s presence in the White House soon could be headed to the state Supreme Court in Alabama, where one justice already in a court filing has questioned the authenticity of Obama’s documentation, and the incoming chief justice is a dyed-in-the-wool Constitution supporter with little tolerance for those who want to bypass the document.
The move is pending in an eligibility challenge brought by Hugh McInnish and others against the Alabama Secretary of State Beth Chapman.
The case most recently was turned down by a state district judge, Eugene Reese, who got his opinion into the mix by determining that the case was “ordered, adjudged and decreed” to be dismissed.
The case calls for a determination that Chapman “has a duty to verify the eligibility of those seeking office.”
In a recent brief in the case, attorney Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and now of the Klayman Law Firm in Washington, noted that while the state is arguing it should not be tasked with making sure candidates are eligible, the submission by the state itself suggests otherwise.
“[An attorney general's opinion] is not case precedent binding on this court … Nevertheless, it constitutes an admission by Alabama’s chief law enforcement officer on behalf of the state that if the Secretary of State has knowledge gained from an official source about a candidate’s eligibility then she ‘should not’ certify the candidate.”
The issue is the conflict over the requirements of the U.S. Constitution, which demands, “No Person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of president…”
While Obama’s campaign first released a representation of a short-form birth document from Hawaii, and the White House later officially posted online a representation of a long-form certificate, the authenticity of both of those documents has been questioned.
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