I am probably going to lose some readers, but I have to say it. When something is wrong, it is wrong whether the left or the right engages in it. And I see the right engaged in wrong doing. No, I am not about to drift off into some Kathleen Parker delusions about racism, or join the chorus bashing Palin., I have a point much closer to reality.

It is time we stopped supporting the absurd Berg lawsuit.

I know many of my readers believe in this cause, they believe they are defending the constitution in demanding a birth certificate, but have you read all of the Berg charging documents?

This document does not even rise to the level of laughable. Let us leave aside the fact that some of the allegations are based on the birth certificate allegations which I find implausible to say the least, what doe she bring as evidence? Wikipedia! He actually uses Wikipedia inconsistencies as evidence of an ongoing scheme to deceive people. Does Berg not realize that any idiot can edit Wikipedia? For that matter, berg himself could place conflicting statements if he wanted. How this is "evidence" that Obama is engaged in deceit is beyond me.

Nor do some of his charges fill me with confidence. He alleges that because Kenya grants citizenship to children of its citizen that Obama has dual citizenship which disqualifies him from running for president. By this logic no Jew or son of a Jewish woman could ever be president either as Israel recognizes their citizenship. If there ever was a definition of "weak argument', this is it. And, to be honest, all Obama has to do to avoid this incredibly weak charge, if it even has any significance, is to say, before his oath of office, "I renounce my Kenyan citizenship", maybe send them a notarized letter a few days before. Not exactly a damning argument.

The Indonesian citizenship argument seem a bit more plausible on their face, but they too are almost as weak. Obama was a minor who had American citizenship when his mother married an Indonesian. Berg's allegations boil down tot he fact that Obama's mother lost her nationality through the marriage, that Obama thus lost his nationality, and failed to regain it by taking the oath of allegiance upon turning 18. Unfortunately, the law doesn't support his contentions. The only requirement for a minor to regain his citizenship is that he establish permanent residence prior to twenty five (twenty three in the 1940 act, amended to twenty five in 1952). Since Obama clearly did so, there was no legal obligation he take any additional steps to assert his citizenship.

I note that since his initial filing, Berg supporters have apparently recognized this problem and alleged that Sotero, his step father, adopted Obama and thus he lost this citizenship. However, that really makes no sense at all. As stated above, even if a parent lost their citizenship, Obama could regain it simply by establishing permanent residence. Even if he were adopted, it would make no difference. Adoption simply creates the legal fiction that one is the biological child of a new parent. As his citizenship rested on his place of birth, it does not matter if Sotero adopted him. Second, his other claim to citizenship was that his mother was a citizen, and his adoption would not change that. It did not even terminate any parent rights of his Kenyan father, much less his citizen mother. (Some allege his mother lost her citizenship upon marriage, but the 1940 law applies such rules only to those married prior to 1922, so that is not relevant. In any case, the law explicitly states children can regain citizenship by establishing residence, even if their parents are naturalized elsewhere.)

Which brings us to the argument that Obama was born elsewhere and his birth certificate is a fraud. I have already wasted enough ink on this, so I will just give a synopsis. The technical analysis, despite the claims of expertise, does not impress me. I worked with image encoding software enough to know some of the allegations are wrong. Some were even proved wrong as soon as they were made (such as charged that the document designation was phony, until the Decosta certificate appeared with the same designation). Even were I not convinced the analysis was off base, the logic of this escapes me. Why would Obama try to sneak in a phony birth certificate when any of the hundreds of government employees could uncover the fraud with some simple (if improper) snooping? They can't all be in on the conspiracy, so it seems an incredibly silly risk to take. And, much as the press is in the tank for Obama, I still can't see every paper in the nation refusing to cover such an incredible scoop. One fo them would reveal such evidence if a whistleblower found it, and it would all be over for Obama. That is too much fo a risk to take.

However, I have made better and more detailed arguments in my posts specifically on the birth certificate controversy, so I would refer readers to my most recent post, which contains links to the earlier posts.

The rest of Berg's charges are similarly weak. He alleges that Obama used an Indonesian pass port to enter Pakistan, and while the trip is well documented, I don't know of any evidence that he did use his Indonesian passport. Even if he did, I don't know if that alone is sufficient to establish that he renounced his US citizenship. He was only twenty at the time, so he still had five years to change his mind, establish permanent residence in the US and get rid of his Indonesian citizenship, so even if it proved true (of which I have seen no evidence, and you would think someone would have posted the evidence if it existed), it would not prove he was not a US citizen.

He also mentioned some even more insubstantial charges such as a Canadian birth certificate for Barrack Obama Jr, with a date two years earlier. I should not even bother to respond, but I can attest, as can anyone who ever worked with credit reports, paternity tests, or anywhere that similar names can cause confusion, that the value fo that evidence is exactly zero. Just as an example, I had  friend after college who swore he was going to leave Baltimore for the simple reason that a man by the same name apparently impregnated a number of women, and whenever they filed for welfare benefits, the child support branch would call in everyone with that name for paternity tests. And so, time after time, my friend was hauled in for blood tests to prove he was not the father of yet another illegitimate child. His name was a bit more mundane than Barrack Obama Jr, but not that much, and with 6 billion people, that two having the same name were born within two or three years of each other isn't e4xactly shocking. (For that matter, who is to say the Canadian certificate is legitimate, I have read nowhere of it receiving the same scrutiny Obama's posted birth certificate did.)

In short, there really is little of substance in the Berg suit.

I am sure many are now asking, "So, it is lacking in substance, but why do you say it is wrong?" And my reasoning is this. By pursuing what much of the public sees as absurd charges, we run the risk of making ourselves a laughingstock, the way Dan rather did when pushing the bogus TANG documents. And worse, we risk giving the impression that Obama is right. Many may see our pursuit of such tangential topics as proof we cannot argue with his message, and so we need to attack him.

There are plenty of grounds on which we can object to Obama. His beliefs, his associates, his record, his character, all of those are relevant, well documented, and true. There is no need to bring in very dubious claims about his place of birth or claims that Kenya miught extend him citizenship in order to fight him. Doing so only serves to distance us from the independent voters we need to win this election. So, rather than destroying our chances and actually helping the Obama campaign, let us fight him on the topics which matter, and which the voters see as relevant.

Were there real evidence Obama was a non-citizen, perhaps this wouldn't be such an absurd quest, but the evidence is so shaky, and Berg is such a dubious character, that we would all be much better off if we simply ignored him. There are much better arguments to be made against Obama, we do not need to pathetic claims of a sometimes 9/11 truther to make our case against Obama.

POSTSCRIPT

We also need to avoid other tactics pioneered by the left that only serve to make us look bad.

For example, one reader mentioned psychiatrists who "diagnosed" Obama with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This sounds frighteningly similar to the attempted smear of Goldwater by liberal psychiatrists. No reputable psychiatrist would diagnose anyone without at least some personal interviews, so this is nothing but political grandstanding. And, let's face it, lending it any credence invites the other side to use the same tactics. It just opens the door to warring Neo-Stalinist accusations by diagnosis.

We need to stop adopting the worst practices of the other side. We may be upset with the way the press is bowing down to Obama, we may feel frustrated at their declarations that he will win, but we are not the left. We do not engage in smear by psychiatrist, in conspiracy theories and in show trials based on flimsy evidence. We are better than that.

What is the point of winning if we lose our morality? If you want that, then we could just start promising to out tax and out spend Obama and win legitimately. I thought we didn't do that because Republicans had principles. But we don't if we reduce ourselves to DailyKos character assassination and "false but accurate" allegations.

UPDATE

This really is the last I will say on the whole topic of birth certificates, Berg and the rest. I will only mention it again if:

1. I am proved wrong by some new evidence in any aspect. I always admit my mistakes.
2. There is an actual ruling on the lawsuit, as I would have to at least take not of the outcome
3. It somehow plays a part in the bigger picture. eg. McCain starts mentioning Berg (not very likely), or Biden does (much more likely).

So, don't worry, I am done with this. No more from me. Agree of disagree, at leats you can rest assured I won't be rambling about this one any longer.