Believe it or not, the birther effort to de-legitimize the Barack Obama presidency may be officially over, just in time for a possible Democratic defeat in November.
AP is reporting that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to Obama’s U.S. citizenship and, consequently, to his eligibility to be the country’s commander in chief.
The court on Monday rejected without comment an appeal from Alan Keyes, Wiley Drake and Markham Robinson.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the challengers did not have legal standing to file a lawsuit based on their allegation.
As the U.S. Constitution states that “a natural born citizen” is the only person eligible to serve as president, the court’s choice on Monday may mean that in the justices’ minds being born to one U.S. citizen is sufficient to comply with the constitutional requirement – regardless of an individual’s place of birth.
Candidate Obama’s Republican opponent in 2008, Senator John McCain, was born in the Panama Canal Zone.
This might explain why the court would not entertain the challengers’ allegations that Obama, whose father was Kenyan, was born in Kenya, rather than in Hawaii. Regardless of whether or not their claim that his Hawaii birth certificate is a forgery, if having an American parent suffices to make one “a natural born citizen,” then the certificate is immaterial.
Of course, now the birthers will have to provide DNA evidence suggesting Obama was born to a Kenyan mother, too.
Republicans who gave a hoot back in 2008 will recall that Keyes and Drake ran against Obama on the American Independent Party ticket, and Robinson serves to this day as the party’s chairman.
And back in 2004, in the Illinois U.S. Senate Election, Obama beat Keyes 70-27.
Ouch.