Category Archives: birthers

Mitt Romney has basically just conceded the election

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You know, I was pretty annoyed at Mitt Romney when he was suggesting that President Obama had ideas that are “foreign” to America. But he has reached a new low.

That’s right folks, Mitt Romney just said that nobody has ever asked for his Birth Certificate and “they know that this is the place that we were born and raised”.

This is more than just him playing up to the birther crowd. This is him clearly stating that there is some legitimate question about the birthplace of our President. Things must be really bad in the Romney campaign if they need their candidate himself to push these issues. Normally this would be something that some surrogate of the campaign would be pushing out there. Some minor spokesperson of the campaign who could get a slap on the wrist if the comment was not taken well. Or perhaps this would be left to some fringe PAC external to the campaign that could push these issues out there. There must be some really disturbing internal polling data showing that the election is already over unless they do something drastic. For Mitt Romney himself to be saying this, well this goes beyond the whole “he didn’t build that” lie.

Remember when Romney said that Obama shouldn’t be making “these kinds of attacks” and how it was unpresidential? Whatever happened to that Mr. Romney?

What is worse? The people behind him clapping and cheering for this garbage. They probably know Mitt can’t win either so they will embrace the garbage too because to them, winning is more important than the truth.

Rulings in two cases, good results but bad logic

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Yesterday the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a few birthers after the 9th circuit court of appeals ruled against them. There are many reasons to reject these crazy birther cases. You have all the instances where birthers have presented fake documents in order to try and discredit President Obama. You have the fact that the onus is on those bringing the case to prove they are right and they have no such proof to do so. You have the existing documents on record proving Obama’s birth in Hawaii (which makes him a natural born citizen because he is a citizen by the nature of his birth).

But what did the 9th circuit hang its ruling on? They ruled that the birthers lacked standing to bring the case. They couldn’t prove that they would suffer harm from the Obama presidency. Now, I do have a problem with that logic. Every single citizen of the USA, at least of voting age, should have legal standing to question the qualifications of the President. Let me be clear, when they do so they need to be able to present some proof to show that their case is valid. It is not enough to say “I don’t believe it because I havn’t seen the hard copy version of his birth certificate”. But if someone were to ever have actual proof of something against any President, that person should be able to have standing to present it.

The other case is the recent ruling against DOMA. DOMA should be ruled unconstitutional. If a couple is married in a state that allows marriage for all and cannot receive the federal benefits that other married couples can get, it should be ruled to be a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. But the court didn’t go that route. The court said it interfered with the right of a state to define marriage as it sees fit.

I have three big problems with that. First of all, states do not have rights. States have powers, people have rights. Second of all, states should not have the power to define marriage if that definition violates any part of the Constitution. This ruling basically affirms the ability of a state to discriminate when it comes to marriage. Finally, as I said before, the equal protection clause should be all that is needed here.

So while it is good that the birther case got thrown out and it is good that DOMA lost again in court, I worry that the way they went down will ultimately be problematic.