The Philadelphia Enquirer reports that U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick threw out a complaint by attorney Philip Berg who claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya and is not even an American citizen but a citizen of Indonesia and therefore ineligible to be president.
In a 34-page memorandum and opinion, the judge said Berg’s allegations of harm were “too vague and too attenuated” to confer standing on him or any other voters.
Surrick ruled that Berg’s attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were “frivolous and not worthy of discussion.”
The judge also said the harm Berg alleged did “not constitute an injury in fact” and Berg’s arguments to the contrary “ventured into the unreasonable.”
The Obama campaign had produced a valid Hawaii birth certificate for Obama. The nonpartisan Web site FactCheck.org examined the original document and said it was legitimate. The St. Pete Times actually sent a copy of the document to the Hawaii Department of Health that verified it was valid.
Further, reporters found a birth announcement in the Aug. 13, 1961, Honolulu Advertiser that listed Obama’s birth there on Aug. 4 – same as the birth certificate.
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