Posted on 12/23/2011 8:19:18 AM PST by Smokeyblue
The judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled that election fraud suspected in the 2008 presidential campaign essentially was canceled by the inauguration of Barack Obama.
The ruling comes in a lawsuit that was filed on the same day Obama was inaugurated in Washington by a team of taxpayers, voters, presidential candidates, members of the military and others who alleged Obama failed to meet the Constitution's requirements for the presidency.
The opinion from judges Harry Pregerson, Ray Fisher and Marsha Berzon explained the concept is called "competitive standing," and they affirmed it as legitimate grounds for concern.
SNIP
However, in Obama's case, the court panel simply said once the inauguration was held, the claims evaporated.
"The original complaint was filed on Jan. 20, 2009, at 3:26 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, after President Obama was officially sworn is as president," the judges wrote. "Once the 2008 election was over and the president sworn in, Keyes, Drake and Lightfoot were no longer 'candidates' for the 2008 general election. Moreover, they have not alleged any interest in running against President Obama in the future.
"Therefore, none of the plaintiffs could claim that they would be injured by the 'potential loss of an election,'" the court said.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
butterdezillion demanded: “I repeat: Name me one person whose case was heard on the merits.”
John Sidney McCain III.
The lies and garbage that you birthers spew are part of the price of our liberty. We chose to pay it, because the alternative is worse. There is a down side to the First Amendment: Freedom guaranteed will inevitably be freedom abused.
Do you not grasp how lucky you are to live in a nation where your lies and smear go unpunished? You complain about the “THE SYSTEM” while our system protects your right to spread your filth.
Our government is far from perfect, and eternal vigilance is a price that we the people must pay. Debunking such utter crap as spit by birthers or 9/11-inside-jobbers is a very small part of that.
butterdezillion wrote: “Rosa Parks just didn’t like the answer that the whole system gave her.”
Wow.
noinfringers2 wrote: Better said that patriots want elections to be legal and that legal cases should be subject to the ‘We the People’s’ Constitution, Birther or non-Birther.”
Then you have what you claim to want. The people elected Barack Obama, and birthers have lost a hundred-some cases in court and won zero.
Moreover, there’s another election coming up. Did that first round of stimulus that put us another seven hundred billion dollars in debt achieve what the pitchman-in-chief said it would? Are the good reasons for not giving our current president a second term a justification for the lie that he was never really president?
When did John Sidney McCain III have his case heard on the merits?
But that wasn’t what we were talking about so I’ll make it even more clear: Name me one person who has challenged Obama’s eligibility who has had their case heard on the merits.
I accept your ad hominems as an admission that you have no refutation for the substance of my arguments.
Also, by saying “Wow” to my “Rosa Parks just didn’t like the answer that the whole system gave her.” comment without noting that I was using it to show how absurd your own logic would be if applied to Rosa Parks.... shows that you must be a journalist. Only a journalist would crop off context to make it appear to a casual observer that I was saying the exact opposite of what I was saying. I was actually citing YOUR reasoning and pointing out that it was dead wrong.
I trust that your “Wow” is an acknowledgment of how silly that reasoning was. The system screwed Rosa Parks and she had every right to get from the courts a Constitutional “redress of grievances” for the way the SYSTEM screwed her. Yes, the system has authority to do certain things. But it never has authority when doing those things to violate the Constitution, and when it does, the judiciary is there to provide a redress for those grievances.
If the “political” system - including the electoral and vote-counting system prescribed and authorized by the Constitution - came up with a RESULT that violates the Constitution, it is the judiciary’s job to resolve that conflict or case arising out of the Constitution.
That’s precisely why the 20th Amendment says that even a President elect - the final result of the prescribed political process - can “fail to qualify” between the counting of the ballots and the inauguration. The only other qualifications besides being duly elected are the CONSTITUTIONAL qualifications, so the 20th Amendment provides a way for the CONSTITUTIONAL qualifications to be required by the judiciary if there is controversy or a case regarding someone’s qualifications - even when the political process itself failed to achieve a Constitutional result.
IOW, the Constitution can prescribe authority to do a process, but the RESULTS of that process are still always subject to Constitutional scrutiny. Like For Rosa Parks or anybody else who challenged the Constitutionality of the RESULTS. Congress, for instance, has the authority to count the ballots, but if they voted to throw out all the votes by Black electors simply because they are Black, that RESULT would be subject to Constitutional review by the courts. Though Congress has the Constitutional authority to do the job of counting the ballots, they never have the authority to violate the Constitution with their RESULTS. The job of the judiciary is to decide whether the RESULT of the process violates the Constitution, even if the process itself was authorized by the Constitution.
Or take another example. Suppose Congress decided that all abortions are illegal. They have the authority to make statutes, and are actually given the Constitutional responsibility of making statutes. So no problem that the Constitution as currently interpreted says that abortion is a protected Constitution “privacy” right, huh? If the eligibility judges’ logic was used, whatever statutes Congress makes are fine because the Constitution authorizes them to make statutes. The judiciary couldn’t rule on the Constitutionality of anything Congress enacts because that would be a “political issue”, since the Constitution gives the job of legislating to Congress.
We all know that’s not how it works. Even if somebody is authorized to do the process, they are never authorized to come up with an unconstitutional RESULT. The courts are ALWAYS able to scrutinize the Constitutionality of the RESULT. That’s what a “redress of grievances” is - holding the government itself accountable to obey the laws and Constitution.
May I say “WOW” to that ˆˆˆ!!!
butterdezillion wrote: “When did John Sidney McCain III have his case heard on the merits?”
The 2008 campaign.
butterdezillion wrote: “If the ‘political’ system - including the electoral and vote-counting system prescribed and authorized by the Constitution - came up with a RESULT that violates the Constitution, it is the judiciary’s job to resolve that conflict or case arising out of the Constitution”.
On the other hand, debunking crank nonsense is not really their job.
They certainly gave an excuse based on the spin that I mentioned, and the result is that you're arguing against yourself. Good job, blade, just not too bright there.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit explained this issue in Berg v. Obama:
It's not an explanation, it's an excuse. The court makes a claim, and by what you're quoted, provides NOTHING to support the claim: "That grievance, too, is not one "appropriately resolved through the judicial process."" This is a claim, but it's NOT supported. Do you understand??
Sigh. The standing doctrine applies to the federal courts. Ankeny v. Daniels was a *state* case.
Sigh. Failure to state a claim was the "doctrine" applied in AvD, which is equivalent to the standing doctrine. Butter was right again, of course. You owe her an apology for your ignorant replies.
The determination of whether a plaintiff's complaint should be dismissed for lack of standing is properly treated as a motion to dismiss under Indiana Trial Rule 12(B)(6)—the failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.
link
Journalists, who collectively aren't particularly smart, probably don't deserve this comparison. Blade's tactics are intentionally dishonest, and it's not clear if he's close to being as smart as the dumbest journalists out there.
Good journalism is an extremely worthy endeavor, and there are some who do it well. I don’t mean to slight those people.
I think they must be few and far between though. I’ve seen nobody in the MSM who is willing to speak the truth about the eligibility issue even if they know the truth. Instead they sound as if they are Blade Bryan. At one point I would have written it off as either confusion about who/what to believe or maybe just laziness, but my experiences with the editor of the Hutch News, reporter from the Lincoln Journal-Star, the Poynter Institute, and a myriad of online “news” sites tell me that at least for some of them it’s willful ignorance at best.
I’m angry at the news media. When I spoke to John Gale, Nebraska’s SOS, he said there was no need for official documentation because we could trust the news media to find any substantial story out there. Bah! I told him I found it incredible that he would say that. As I think of it, why do we even bother to count the votes, since the media would be more than happy to tell us what the election results are - and they can surely know that without any documentation!
I believe it is dangerous for anybody in this country to give the current crop of “journalists” automatic credibility. It would be incredibly tough to be a good journalist, and I think the good ones probably have to fight their own editors to come up with anything trustworthy so I don’t mean to place all the blame on the journalists, but the net result is that, for whatever reason, we can’t really trust the journalists to accurately present any story.
I would be ecstatic if somebody proved me wrong on this.
What was the name of the case that John McCain had heard on the merits regarding presidential eligibility?
And I missed any response regarding what case regarding Obama’s eligibility had ever been heard on the merits. What case(s) have been heard on the merits?
Debunking crank nonsense is absolutely their job, when there’s a legal claim before them. Should be an easy job at that, if it’s such nonsense, so why would they refuse to do it?
Thanks for documenting the equivalence between “standing” and “failure to state a claim”.
And Merry Christmas, Edge! =)
That a good summation of what we just saw. The case was under-developed all the way until it was over-developed. Not one instant of properly-developed, so the case can never even get its toe in the door.
There have been elections settled by lawsuits even before the ‘birther’ issue came e.g. Bush for POTUSA so your point on this is meaningless. Also there is this societal governance called common law that came about from what the people being governed believed should be codified. Here again you apparently deride a social procedure which is the basis for the USA government. I see a positive addition to our society to have judges who presumably are also servants of the ‘people’ to have to give a solid justification when called for by the ‘people’.
butterdezillion wrote: “Debunking crank nonsense is absolutely their job, “
Not really, though some courts have done so as an aside.
“This case, if it were allowed to proceed, would deserve mention in one of those books that seek to prove that the law is foolish or that America has too many lawyers with not enough to do. Even in its relatively short life the case has excited the blogosphere and the conspiracy theorists. The right thing to do is to bring it to an early end.” Hollister v. Soetoro, 601 F. Supp.2d 179 (D.D.C. Cir. 2009)
Yeah, the “right” thing that judge decided to do in Hollister was to claim that $20,000 or so in wages and benefits didn’t meet the minimum requirement of $500.
Real piece of work there. If it was such an easy thing to debunk then why didn’t he take the case and allow the truth to be seen clearly by everyone? Instead he “botched” math that even a first-grader could have figured out. And because he wears a black robe, the whole world has to abide by his math that would have flunked first-grade.
And you’re going around broadcasting this guy’s drivel as proof that *I’m* stupid?
We all know that judge knew the $500 minimum requirement was met. The reason he pretended otherwise was because he is a lying, corrupt piece of slime covering for what he knows to be an enemy combatant occupying our White House.
butterdezillion wrote: “We all know that judge knew the $500 minimum requirement was met. The reason he pretended otherwise was because he is a lying, corrupt piece of slime covering for what he knows to be an enemy combatant occupying our White House.”
Birthers have never shown any evidence to back up the many claims of corruption they’ve leveled against judges.
I present as evidence the Hollister judge’s claim that a couple years’ worth of wages and benefits didn’t meet a $500 minimum limit for there to be enough at stake in the lawsuit.
Was that judge too incompetent to know that thousands of dollars exceeds the $500 minimum threshold? Or was he too crooked to obey the law?
I present as evidence the Hollister judge’s claim that a couple years’ worth of wages and benefits didn’t meet a $500 minimum limit for there to be enough at stake in the lawsuit.Yet you do not quote "the Hollister judge" making any such claim. You cannot.
Was that judge too incompetent to know that thousands of dollars exceeds the $500 minimum threshold? Or was he too crooked to obey the law?Reading of the Court's memorandum, and your claims here about what the Court said, makes clear who is incompetent or dishonest. Contrary to your reporting, butterdezillion, there exists no finding that "thousands of dollars" nor, "a couple years’ worth of wages and benefits", fails to exceed $500. That the fantasied damages did not happen may have been an issue -- though not what the Court primarily cited as dispositive -- but the Court simply never said what you claimed.
This is far from the first time, butterdezillion, that you have falsely reported what a court wrote. Right here on FR you wrote of Judge C. D. Land's order imposing sanctions in Rhodes v McDonald:
Judge Land was saying, 'I don’t need no stinkin’ precedents'We look at Judge Land's order and he cites precedent after precedent. What you claimed was just plain false, and you've excuse for it as an honest mistake. The Court's actual order was easily available to you.
The ruling in Hollister was that there was not enough money at stake to meet the minimum requirement, which specifically includes potential earnings. Hollister was claiming that several years’ salary and benefits were at stake. What I said was true.
Judge Land refused to address the precedents that Orly cited, and he had to waffle around to try to get his decision to fit even the precedents he mentioned. Ultimately he ended up relying on an assumption that Holder could not have been in GA that morning because he had been in LA the afternoon before and surfaced again in LA late that afternoon. The timeframe in Holder’s published schedule would easily have given him time to be in GA at the time it was claimed he was there though - but Land would not allow an investigation into his own integrity and claims.
That whole idea of a judge deciding whether he can be investigated for potential ethics breaches stinks to high heaven. Definitely gives an appearance of a conflict of interest, which is itself an ethics breach.
My original comment paraphrasing Land’s attitude was based on your refusal to tell me how Land responded to Orly’s cited precedents. After reading the decision myself I see why you didn’t cite any response to her precedents: because he never did respond to what she cited. He talked right past her. He didn’t need no stinkin’ precedents that Orly cited. And even he acknowledged that the precedents he mentioned didn’t exactly apply unless he made assumptions about how much Orly might earn from lawyering in a year’s time...
I know I typed up a complete response regarding this but my computer has been giving me troubles and I may have given up on battling the computer, knowing that it’s pointless to talk to you anyway because you won’t see what’s in front of you.
BTW, I’m STILL waiting for you to tell me the name of one person who challenged Obama’s eligibility who had the case heard on the merits. You have insisted that we’ve gotten our legal answer over and over again yet you’re awfully slow to give me the name of a person who got a legal answer other than “none of your business”.
AND I’m still waiting for you to tell me what case by John McCain was heard on its merits during the 2008 election.
You’ve made some factual claims and haven’t backed them up at all. You also claimed that the Ankeny case was not denied standing but Edge pointed out that “failure to state a claim” is the same thing at the state level as “lack of standing” at the federal level, so that factual claim of yours was proven wrong.
I’ve made claims about what judges have ruled, and what I have said is true. Judge Land DID give the raspberry to Orly’s cited precedents, totally ignored them and instead twisted some other ones to try to make them fit. All the while allowing himself to be the judge of himself and deciding that a factual claim regarding Eric Holder was nonsense based on evidence not admitted to the court or subject to judicial evidentiary standards or cross-examination.
I don’t want to die on Orly’s hill. She has been frantically trying to do what she can, and the technical details were probably not all correct. I’m not a lawyer and it would be a waste of my time to major in the minors the way the lilliputian lawyers and judges so often do. But a person doesn’t have to be a lawyer to see problems with a judge who will not respond to the precedents cited (as if not accountable to those precedents), withholds due process rights to somebody receiving fines that meet the minimum to receive those due process rights, decides a matter of fact based on evidence not admitted to the court while denying the opportunity to cross-examine or refute that cited “evidence”, and allows himself to be his own judge when accused of ethics breaches.
You have taken me to be a fool by making legal-sounding claims that just don’t hold water - like your claim that Ankeny wasn’t a denial of standing, or your claim that Orly’s precedents don’t count because only GA precedents would count (when even Land didn’t cite GA cases). It seems to be a pattern that you BS and hope that nobody will check up on your facts. Just like the yellow journalists I so despise. You’re wasting my time on goose-chases, responding to your BS.
It is pointless to talk to you. You are not interested in factual truth, and your M.O. of posting lies and BS and hoping that you either trick, confuse, or scare people away with your stink-bombs ... stinks to high heaven. Facts should not be scary things. We should be able to acknowledge the facts of what these rulings have been, without having to put smokescreens all over the place. The refusal of so many Obama apologists to honestly state the situation we’re in is very, very revealing.
Hey if the bank robber gets away with the loot, it is his to keep, even if he gets caught later, right?
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