Posted by
Andrews on Friday, October 24, 2008 2:40:24 PM
I have been a skeptic about the whole birth certificate controversy
since at least July of this year, but I really thought
my last post would be my final word on this. At least until the silly Berg suit started. Now, people are out there claiming that there is "proof" that Obama's birth certificate is false.
So, what is the proof?
Well, this claim of proof is based on a small understanding of the legal system, and a bigger misunderstanding.
You see, by failing to respond, the named parties in a complaint are assumed to have conceded the allegations in the document. However, that is not quite true. The truth is, by failing to respond, they deny themselves the right to offer a defense and a default judgment can be entered against them. At that point, the allegations are considered proven.
However, there are two small problems.
First, there has been no ruling by a judge, so there has been no default judgment entered. That means that these allegations are not yet proved in any sense. Without a ruling they remain allegations, as they were when this started, even without a response.
Second, the Obama camp and the DNC likely failed to respond as Berg most likely has no legal standing to file such a suit. He has no legal right to compel Obama or the DNC to produce any evidence. Admittedly, the usual response would be to file a response challenging his right to bring such a suit, but I think they may be counting on the judge to question his standing and simply refuse to issue a default judgment.
And that is the final point that many people seem to miss. Anyone can file a lawsuit and ask for a response. Yet, even if the other party fails to respond, there is no requirement that the judge must enter a default judgment. The judge still has leeway. Just as a judge can vacate a jury verdict in a criminal case, if a filing is improper, even if there is no response, nothing in the law requires a judge grant a default judgment. (
Here is a report of a judge failing to enter a default judgment in a file sharing suit, just to prove that a default judgment is not guaranteed.)
So, please, until we have a ruling, there is no "proof" of anything.
If I went to Alaska and filed a suit against Townhall alleging they are failing to disclose the fact that they are run by Martians, and they failed to file a response, would anyone believe I proved interplanetary involvement in Townhall's management? Then why are we granting credence to Berg's nuisance suit?
POSTSCRIPT
By the way,
yet another newspaper examined the birth certificate, even sent it to the Hawaii Department of Health, and, surprise, they could find nothing amiss. Granted, it does not disprove some massive conspiracy, as the article admits, but without a cast of at least hundreds, it seems impossible to carry out all the deceptions Obama supposedly did.
POSTSCRIPT II
Here are all my posts on this topic:
An Interesting Question
A Small Update on the Birth Certificate Controversy
Birth Certificate Controversy Revisited
One More Post on the Birth Certificate Controversy
UPDATE
Another possible reason Obama and the DNC failed to respond.
The FEC filed to dismiss for lack of standing. That could easily explain why no one else bothered to reply. That fact clearly needs to be adjudicated before anything else is done (Note: The site to which I link
has links to a site alleging FactCheck.org is reliable. I do not agree with that assertion. I simply link to provide evidence that there is a very good reason Obama did not respond.)
CORRECTION (10/25/2008)
One small correction to earlier posts. I once said birth records were public. Apparently, in Hawaii, birth certificates are available only to members of the immediate family. That does make the conspiracy theory slightly more plausible, but only very slightly. The records still exist in many places, accessible, even if illegally, to hundreds or thousands of bureaucrats. So it is still a very risky proposal to lie about them.
Trust me, as a former government worker, the amount of data accessible to random employees is startling. I had access to almost all motor vehicle records, unemployment records, and welfare records as a welfare eligibility worker. So, I would imagine almost anyone in the Department of Health has some degree of access to these computerized records. Which means that, if Obama faked this file, a random worker indulging his idle curiosity could easily ruin Obama's supposed scheme simply by printing out a true record and mailing it to the local paper.
That makes the conspiracy theories still seem highly unlikely. (Not to mention the same is true of records in the hospital in which he was born, adding hundreds of additional people who could spoil any conspiracy.)