No birth certificate? No Obamacare!
Chelsea Schilling
Attorney files motion to link eligibility, health-care lawsuits
A California lawyer who has led several of the high-profile legal challenges to Barack Obama's eligibility to be president has filed a motion to intervene in a case by 13 attorneys general contesting the constitutionality of the Democrats' massive health-care plan.
Attorney Orly Taitz – now a candidate for secretary of state in California – is seeking to link her case and the case against the health-care law, Florida et al vs. United States Department of Health and Human Services.
In legal documents filed April 6 in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Taitz requests an oral argument on the motion to take place April 14 at 9 a.m.
As WND recently reported, Taitz argues, "H.R. 3590 was signed into law by Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, who … never proved his legitimacy to the presidency. Therefore the act is invalid, as it was not signed by one legally entitled to sign it."
Plaintiffs for the case include attorneys general representing the following states: Florida, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho and South Carolina. Virginia has filed an independent suit in a separate action. The complaint lists Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis as defendants.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to:
A. Declare the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to be in violation of Article I of and the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States;
B. Declare defendants to have violated the plaintiffs' rights as sovereigns and protectors of the freedom, health, and welfare of their citizens and residents, as aforesaid;
C. Enjoin defendants and any other agency or employee acting on behalf of the United States from enforcing the act against the plaintiffs, their citizens and residents, and any of their agencies or officials or employees, and to take such actions as are necessary and proper to remedy their violations deriving from any such actual or attempted enforcement
"Movant unlike the Attorneys General is a medical provider directly affected by the Act suing Quo Warranto," Taitz' motion states. "Accordingly, there can be no genuine dispute that Dr. Taitz claims a valid interest in the subject matter of the instant action – i.e. whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act violates the Commerce Clause."
It continues, "It is likewise irrefutable that Dr. Taitz is presently 'so situated' that a disposition of the instant declaratory judgment action will significantly, if not completely, impair her legal interests."
Taitz' complaint notes that she is a California-licensed doctor of dental surgery and claims the health-care law "imposes an unreasonable infringement upon her gainful employment in dental surgery as overburdening interstate commerce in clear violation of the Commerce Clause."
"However," it states, "unlike the attorneys general, Dr. Taitz raises a more fundamental issue, the underlying legitimacy of Barack Obama to sign the act."
WND has reported on dozens of legal challenges to Obama's status as a "natural born citizen." The Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, "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."
Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama's American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.
Other challenges have focused on Obama's citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born. And still others contend he holds Indonesian citizenship from his childhood living there.
Adding fuel to the fire is Obama's persistent refusal to release documents that could provide answers and the appointment – at a cost confirmed to be at least $1.7 million – of myriad lawyers to defend against all requests for his documentation. While his supporters cite an online version of a "Certification of Live Birth" from Hawaii as his birth verification, critics point out such documents actually were issued for children not born in the state.
WND also has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records and his adoption records.
The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 495,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.
The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.
Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.
If you are a member of the media and would like to interview Joseph Farah about this campaign, e-mail WND.
April 8, 2010