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Hey this kid is going to be President!
The Supreme Court this morning unceremoniously declined to hear an emergency appeal from a man who claimed President-elect Barack Obama is not qualified for the presidency because he is not a “natural-born” citizen.
Newspaper announcement of birth of Barack, which acknowledges mother and fathers marriage - see copy below
The court without comment declined to hear “Donofrio v. Wells,” a suit that had attempted to keep Obama off the New Jersey ballot. Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick had claimed Obama had dual nationality at birth, because of his Kansas-born mother and his Kenyan-born father, who was a British subject at the time.
Births and marriage announcements Honolulu 1961
Just to be nonpartisan about it, Donofrio also contended that Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero also were not natural-born citizens and should have been kept off the ballot.
The case had little chance at the high court, but became the subject of a tremendous amount of speculation and debate on ideological political blogs.
Right-wing blogs were outraged when Justice David H. Souter denied Donofrio’s petition for an injunction, and left-wing blogs smelled trouble when Justice Clarence Thomas referred the matter to the full court for consideration.
In fact, both were routine procedures, as the court’s action today shows. There were no recorded dissents to the decision dismissing the case.
This hardly means the lawsuits are over. There are two other cases at the Supreme Court, neither of which has been scheduled for consideration. The most celebrated is filed by Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa. There are others still at lower court levels.
Berg argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama has said and Hawaii officials confirm. Alternately, Berg argues that Obama may have renounced his citizenship as a boy in Indonesia, where he lived for a time with his mother and stepfather.
Those supporting Berg do not believe a birth certificate Obama’s campaign has produced.
Factcheck.org has done an independent investigation of the controversy.
“FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate,” the group writes. “We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship…. Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.”
Black African Muslims are seen as being of less value than lighter or browner African Muslims from the North, killing Black Africans seems less important to the Middle East and N. African regions than the Palestinian crisis, where far fewer people have died.
NAIROBI — If the election of Barack Obama has been greeted with glee across much of Africa, there is at least one spot where the mood is decidedly different.
In the Sudanese capital of Khartoum these days, political elites are bracing for what they expect will be a major shift in U.S. policy toward a government the United States has blamed for orchestrating a violent campaign against civilians in the western Darfur region.
“Compared to the Republicans, the Democrats, I think they are hawks,” said Ghazi Suleiman, a human rights lawyer and member of the Southern People’s Liberation Movement, which has a fragile power-sharing agreement with the ruling party. “I know Obama’s appointees. And I know their policy towards Sudan. Everybody here knows it. The policy is very aggressive and very harsh. I think we really will miss the judgments of George W. Bush.”
While the Bush administration most recently advocated the idea of “normalizing” relations with Sudan as a carrot approach to ending a crisis it labeled a genocide, Obama’s foreign policy appointees have pushed for sticks.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the nominee for secretary of state, has called for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone to “blanket” Darfur in order to prevent Sudanese bombing of villages. The appointee for U.N. ambassador, Susan E. Rice — a key Africa adviser to the Clinton administration during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when President Bill Clinton was sharply criticized for failing to act — has pushed for U.S. or NATO airstrikes and a naval blockade of Sudan’s major port to prevent lucrative oil exports. Rice has vowed to “go down in flames” advocating tough measures.
Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was chosen for his foreign policy experience and pressed early for U.S. intervention to stop the fighting in the Balkans, was blunt during a hearing last year: “I would use American force now,” he said.
But it remains unclear how those pre-election views will square with the president-elect, who has outlined a pragmatic, coalition-based approach to foreign policy, while also speaking of America’s “moral obligation” in the face of humanitarian catastrophes of the sort that are plentiful in Africa.
Heading off potential genocide is the focus of a task force report to be released today in Washington. The group recommends, among other things, that the Obama administration create a high-level forum in the White House to direct the government’s response to threats of mass violence.
So far, Obama has been more cautious on Darfur than some of his appointees, advocating tougher sanctions against Khartoum and a no-fly zone that might be enforced with U.S. “help.” He has not called for direct U.S. intervention.
Obama intends to keep Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who has already suggested that the United States will not provide much-needed helicopters to a struggling peacekeeping mission in Darfur because U.S. forces are stretched too thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has also nominated as national security adviser retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, a former NATO supreme allied commander who has suggested that NATO’s role in Darfur should be training and support to the current peacekeeping mission rather than direct intervention.
And specialists close to Obama’s presidential campaign said that more generally, the new administration sees a need for diplomatic approaches to security crises across the continent.
“We don’t have the capacity to pacify these places militarily,” said John Prendergast, a Darfur activist and former White House aide during the Clinton administration, citing Sudan and the worsening conflicts in Congo and Somalia. “We need political solutions.”
Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, dismissed the calls for military action as “only election slogans.”
“You cannot claim to be disengaging from disasters like Iraq but creating a new disaster in one of Africa’s biggest countries,” he said.
The crisis is in many ways a far more complex conflict than the one the Bush administration confronted. The violence in Darfur began in February 2003 when two rebel groups attacked Sudan’s Islamic government, claiming a pattern of bias against the region’s black African tribes. Khartoum organized a local Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, to wage a scorched-earth campaign against the three ethnic groups — mostly farmers and traders — thought to be the rebels’ political base.
Some analysts estimate that as many as 450,000 people have died from disease and violence in the conflict. About half the population of the Darfur region — about 2.5 million people — are now displaced.
President George W. Bush got a look at how history will remember him, at least in one artist’s view. Bush presided over the unveiling of his portrait at The Union League. (Dec. 6)
As President Bush prepares to move into his new Dallas home at the end of his term, neighborhood residents worry about having him close by.
One woman shared her fears as she walked past Bush’s house carrying her King Charles cocker spaniel on Friday.
“I am afraid with all the negative press the president has been getting, the whole neighborhood is going to be a target,” said the woman, who refused to give her name.
Traffic has already begun to clog the narrow streets around the home, causing neighbors to call the police — who expect the hullabaloo to continue.
“When the Bushes are here full time, I imagine we’ll be here full time,” said Officer Michael Bratcher of the Dallas Police Department, who was directing traffic.
But the exclusive Dallas community the Bush family will soon join has a troubled history of its own.
Until 2000, the neighborhood association’s covenant said only white people were allowed to live there, though an exception was made for servants.
Enacted in 1956, part of the original document reads: “Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons except those shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant.”
The entire covenant can be seen here.
When asked about his new home in an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Bush “played coy.”
“Mr. President — you excited about your house in Dallas?” Todd Gillman asked.
“Todd, why do you care?” Bush responded. “You live in Washington, D.C.”
The neighborhood is home to many famous people, including former presidential candidate Ross Perot and Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner.
President Bush’s new house abuts the 14-acre lair of real-estate investor Gene Phillips, who just had a trout-filled lake installed on his property.
Dubyas new digs!
Source: RawNews, SmokingGun
Out Foxing Karl Rove 
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