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Obama's Birth Certificate Gadfly
Democratic nominee Barack Obama is still in the fight with John McCain, but it appears that he has managed to beat one foe: Philadelphia attorney Philip J. Berg. Berg is not running for political office, though. He has tried to use the U.S. Supreme Court to call off today's election so that it can hear, on appeals, his already-dismissed claims that Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen and is thus ineligible for the presidency.
Berg claims that Obama's birth certificate is a forgery, and that the senator was in fact born in Kenya. He makes these claims despite the fact that there is already a birth certificate with Obama's name on it that shows he was born in Hawaii. Still, Berg is unswayed. "That document is a forgery," he says. "Our experts have determined it's non-valid."
Most other experts differ with Berg. Snopes.com debunked Berg's claim, saying that it would make little sense for Obama to base his entire candidacy on a lie that is easily checked simply by examining state health records. Factcheck.org went even further, claiming that its researchers have seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate and have found nothing amiss.
Berg responds that Factcheck.org is suspect because it is owned by a group called Annenberg of Chicago. Adding insult to injury, he noted, it was on the board of this very firm that Obama sat with the now infamous William Ayers. So the fix is in.
Annenberg of Chicago has no website, and a phone number reached through information was disconnected. A message left with the Annenberg Public Policy Center was not returned by press time.
As for Snopes.com, it is also part of the problem, as it is also simply saying the forged birth certificate is legit, Berg says. "They're all playing on the same document."
Of course, even if the Supreme Court fails to return Berg's calls, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has already weighed in on Berg v. Obama. It dismissed Berg’s case on October 24, despite his pleas that Obama's nominee status will result in "irreparable harm to the Plaintiff and other 'Democratic Americans.'" In its 34 page decision, the court called Berg's case "frivolous and not worthy of discussion."
--David Serchuk