Supreme Nuts
by digby
I have only been tangentially aware of this wingnut conspiracy theory that Obama isn’t really a US citizen. It’s the typical kooky stuff you see when Democrats are in charge.
[L]egions of anti-Obama bloggers are so convinced he was born in Kenya that they’ve filed more than a dozen lawsuits nationwide.
They cite the Constitution’s requirement that presidents be “natural born citizens.” They want the election declared void if Obama doesn’t deliver an original birth certificate — subject to an inspection by forensic experts — to be sure.
One litigant’s U.S. Supreme Court filing is scheduled to be discussed in private by the justices later this week.
Justice Clarence Thomas distributed to his colleagues a request that the high court weigh in before the Electoral College makes Obama’s victory official later this month. The justices may decide in a Friday conference whether to hear or cast away a lawsuit dismissed in a lower court and appealed by a retired New Jersey lawyer named Leo C. Donofrio, who also has his own Web site.
Like most of the commentators on this issue, I wouldn’t expect them to get involved. But then I insisted they wouldn’t get involved in Bush vs Gore either. You just never know.
But the mere fact that they are considering it gives the whole thing currency it shouldn’t have. Evidently, the court considers hearing a lot of pending stays and rarely grants them, so this isn’t entirely unusual. But this is real crackpot stuff you would think could have been disposed of without the full court having to consider it. The fact that it was Thomas who did it just makes it all the more questionable.
This is just the first of many national underground obsession among the wingnuts. They love this stuff — the kookier the better. The problem is when it goes mainstream — and sometimes it does. It pays to keep an eye on them.