Supreme Court Rejects Obama Case

This is no surprise since I never believed that SCOTUS would get entangled in another election lawsuit fiasco:

Court won't review Obama's eligibility to serve


Suit claimed Obama was British-born and not a 'natural born' U.S. citizen


WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a "natural born citizen," one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.

Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.

At least one other appeal over Obama's citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii Secretary of State has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg's lawsuit.

The suit was initially rejected by Justice David Souter, but the plaintiff, Leo Donofrio, appealed to the full court and Clarence Thomas decided to present the case in a conference. Although this was a routine procedure, it did create some angst in the blogosphere. If you remember, during the Saddleback church debate, Obama created a stir by claiming that Thomas was unqualified. Nonetheless, there was no way the justices would get involved in an explosive case that would've sent the entire nation in a tailspin, especially while we are in this economic meltdown.

UPDATE: I basically surmised this SCOTUS move by Thomas was procedural, others weren't so forgiving...

Here is Earl Hutchinson from the American Chronicle on the subject:

Thomas´s legal meddle on the Obama birth certificate [sic] non-issue fits perfectly in with his jaundiced interpretation of law and its practice and his private vow to get revenge on his liberal tormentors. Obama is the latest would- be victim. He almost certainly stirred Thomas´s personal ire back in August. Obama was asked at a joint church gathering with Republican rival John McCain at the mega Saddleback church in Lake Forest, California which justice he wouldn´t have nominated to the Supreme Court. He didn´t hesitate. He named Thomas. And he told why.

"I don´t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time, for that elevation, setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretations of a lot of the constitution."

In a full frontal assault on the merits of this case, Les Payne assails Justice Thomas and takes similar issue with perennial candidate Alan Keyes:

Keeping the Oval Office for Whites Only:

"The bitter Justice Thomas is seemingly bent these days on exacting revenge on the larger black community. It is perhaps in this light that we catch a glimpse of him stoking the Donofrio case as much for Limbaugh laughs as for the backhand it applies to the aspirations of African-Americans.

The case of Alan Keyes on the "Stop Obama" campaign is a bit more personal but no less a matter of race and politics."

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