ABC NEWS GETS THE DONOFRIO SCOTUS STORY WRONG

[UPDATE 7:36 pm Terry Owens of ABC News has somewhat corrected his story, but it’s still misleading.  Here’s what it says now:

“The lawsuit was filed by attorney Leo Donofrio who is questioning Obama’s citizenship.”

It’s misleading because I believe Obama is a United States citizen.  I am not questioning his “citizenship”, I’m questioning “natural born citizenship”.  The Constitution uses the two terms, “Citizen” and “Natural Born Citizen” exclusively as they mean different things.  If Mr. Owns will change the article once more to reflect what I’ve said above, I’ll be happy to remove the blog below and credit his correction. ]

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Below is the text of a letter I just sent to ABC News:

Dear Mr. Terry Owens and ABC News.

The story you printed today with the headline, “Supreme Court to Decide Obama Citizenship” is riddled with errors. Allow me to correct the record for you.  I have said in my law suit that I believe Obama was born in Hawaii, so I have no idea why your story makes it seem as if my law suit is centered on the issue of where Obama was born.  You wrote,

“The President-elect has maintained he was born in the United States.”

The main argument of my law suit alleges that since Obama was a British citizen – at birth – a fact he admits is true, then he cannot be a “natural born citizen”.  The word “born” has meaning.  It deals with the status of a presidential candidate “at birth”.  Obama had dual nationality at birth.  The status of the candidate at the time of the election is not as relevant to the provisions of the Constitution as is his status “at birth.”  If one is not “born” a natural born citizen, he can never be a natural born citizen.

Furthermore, the case is scheduled for conference of all nine Justices, not eight. You should correct that.

And your reporting, which could have been complete with a simple phone call to the Public Information Office, is also deficient in that it wasn’t Justice Thomas alone who distributed the case for conference of December 5, 2008.  That was a decision taken after consideration of the full Court.

There are two docket entries for Nov. 19.  One of them shows that Justice Thomas referred the case to the full court.  The other indicates that the full court distributed the case for conference of Dec. 5. I suggest you call Patricia McCabe Estrada, Deputy Public Information Officer for the United States Supreme Court.  She will set you and your story straight.

The case could have easily been denied after Justice Thomas referred it to the full court.  There was no requirement that it be distributed for conference.  In fact, the normal procedure in referred applications involves no public mention of such cases until after the full Court has taken some action.  There is an official Supreme Court Publication entitled

“A REPORTER’S GUIDE TO APPLICATIONS Pending Before The Supreme Court of the United States”

You may find it here:

It will guide you with accuracy to the actions involved in the case you are reporting upon.  On page 3, it states:

“The Circuit Justice may act on an application alone or refer it to the full Court for consideration. The fact that an application has been referred to the full Court may not be known publicly until the Court acts on the application and the referral is noted in the Court’s order.“

Now go back and check the docket url for my case.

http://origin.www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/08a407.htm

Another misleading element of your story is the headline.  The Supreme Court will be focused on the issue of Obama’s eligibility to be President, not on his citizenship status.  Just being a “Citizen” is not enough to be President.  I have no doubt, and I’m sure the Supreme Court concurs, that Obama is a United States citizen.

But the Constitution draws a direct distinction between “Citizens” and “Natural Born Citizens”.  Citizens may be Senators and Representatives, but it takes something else to be President.  So, your headline is wrong as well as your story.

If you would like to respond to this letter, which I have just published in my blog about the case, feel free to do so and I will publish your response as is.

My blog URL is https://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com

Yesterday, a reporter from the Kansas City Star wrote an equally misleading report about my case.  After readers of this blog confronted him, he had the decency to call me and apologize for the wrong treatment my case received in his report.  We struck up a good conversation and I gave him proper respect for his admission.  I am here to talk any time you like. I understand the concepts are technical and non-lawyers have problems with them.

Regards,

Leo C. Donofrio

KANSAS CITY STAR – JUST LIKE MSNBC – GETS THE DONOFRIO SCOTUS STORY WRONG, VERY WRONG

[UPDATE 4:48 pm]

Rick Montgomery just called me from the Kansas City Star and admitted he wasn’t aware that my law suit was not centered on the birth certificate issue.   He was sincere and apologized for the way my case was described in the article.  You have to give him credit for that.  Apparently he received many calls today from readers of this blog.  I should also point out that his story does mention on page 2 that I brought McCain into the law suit.  My original blog below missed that, so I apologized to him in kind.  He said the headline which made it seem like the issue was directed at just Obama was out of his control.  Fair enough and proper respect for the phone call.  We may talk again later this week.

[UPDATE 11:04 AM] Fox News got some of it wrong. The clip below didn’t have the full Baier quote which appears at the FOX NEWS site.

“Meanwhile — the blogosphere is still abuzz over Mr. Obama’s eligibility to serve as president. The Supreme Court will decide Friday if it will hear a case challenging whether the president-elect is a natural-born citizen. One similar case has already been thrown out.”

No similar case has been thrown out.  My case is not similar to any other case except for Cort Wrotnowski v. Connecticut Secretary of State which has been submitted by renewed application to Justice Scalia.  If Baier is referring to Berg’s case, he is twice mistaken.  Berg’s case is not similar to mine.  Berg never raised the issue that Obama is not eligible because he was a British citizen at birth.  Furthermore, only Berg’s emergency application was denied.  His full petition for certiorari is still pending although it probably will be denied on the issue of “standing”.  He went to SCOTUS via the federal courts while my case took the proper State court route.  That’s another thing which makes our cases vastly different but the main stream media can’t seem to get their heads around the chasm of difference between the two cases.  Regardless, Berg’s case hasn’t been thrown out as of yet.

Again, why can’t the main stream media simply call the SCOTUS Public Affairs Office and get their facts straight.

[UPDATE 10:30AM] FOX NEWS gets it right in very brief clip.  It’s short but accurate. Bret Baier mentions Friday’s SCOTUS activity on the case.

KANSAS CITY STAR – JUST LIKE MSNBC – GETS THE STORY WRONG, VERY WRONG.

Does the main stream media even know how to research a story any longer?  Or are they reporting the story wrong on purpose?  The MSNBC fiasco by Pete Williams was bad enough when the report made it seem as if Berg’s law suit had been distributed for conference on December 5 along with mine.  It wasn’t.   Furthermore, people have reported back that their comments to that story which tried to correct the record were not allowed to be posted.  I guess the MSNBC policy is to make up stories now.  Just make it all up.  Is this case exposing major media mavens as propaganda ponies?  We report, you decide.

Now comes the Kansas City Star and reporter Rick Montgomery with another very misleading account of the case.  I phoned Mr. Montgomery this morning and left a relaxed message giving him the benefit of the doubt and offering to speak with him to correct the story should he be so inclined.  We will assume for now he was simply lazy and not assertive in his mistaken reporting.  There are three blatant mistakes in his piece.

MISTAKE 1: the headline is completely misleading on two fronts

“Anti-Obama bloggers challenge birthplace”

If Mr. Montogmery had done the slightest bit of research, he might have found my application now before the SCOTUS.  That application firmly argues that John McCain was not eligible to be President along with Roger Calero and Barack Obama.   Anyone following this story knows I have handled McCain’s decision to run – and the Senate’s faux resolution saying he could run – with very harsh treatment.  McCain is not a natural born citizen since he was born in Panama and, despite popular belief, (as per the Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual 1116.1-4(c)) the military base there was NOT US soil. Calero was born in Nicaragua and also is not a natural born citizen like Obama who was a British citizen at birth.

Montgomery’s report fails to point any of this out opting for the more salacious headline.  The headline is bunk, but hopefully not intentional bunk.  We shall see.

MISTAKE 2: My lawsuit before the United States Supreme Court is not focused on challenging Obama’s place of birth.  I have repeatedly, in interview after interview, as well as in the actual application submitted to the Court, asserted my belief that Obama was probably born in Hawaii and that I expect to see him eventually produce a solid birth certificate which puts these other law suits to rest.

My original lower court suit mentions the BC issue as an ancillary matter in that the person I sued, the New Jersey Secretary of State, should have, at the very least, requested to see Obama’s BC.  But that is not a core issue in my case.  And I have publicly criticized those who brought law suits but failed to nail the main issue – that Obama can never be a natural “born” citizen – even if he was born on the mall in DC with two million witnesses, since, at the time of his birth, he was “born” as a British citizen/subject.

As anybody with even the slightest hint of awareness knows, my law suit is challenging Obama’s eligibility on the fact that he has admitted he was a British citizen “at birth”.  His own web site told me so.  And factcheck.org backed it up with their analysis of Britain’s Nationality Act of 1948.  Montgomery cites factcheck.org as a “nonpartisan” source so he should have been aware that same source has confirmed that Obama was a British citizen “at birth” through his Father.

My law suit correctly points out that the framers would never have sanctioned somebody born as a British subject/citizen for President of the United States.

Here is what Montgomery said:

“In the outer cosmos of the blogosphere, the presidential election isn’t over.

Barack Obama, now busily forming his administration, isn’t just the wrong person to lead the nation, claim Web sites such as America Must Know and Right Side News.

He is, they contend, constitutionally ineligible to be president.

The argument is over his place of birth — Hawaii…”

Wow.  It never mentions the main argument of my law suit.  Nada.  Zippo.  Zilch.  Nothing about it.

MISTAKE 3:

Montgomery fails to get the facts of the Distribution for Conference of Dec. 5 right.  He fails to mention that the full Court distributed it for conference AFTER considering a refferal from Justice Thomas:

“One litigant’s U.S. Supreme Court filing is scheduled to be discussed in private by the justices later this week.

Justice Clarence Thomas distributed to his colleagues a request that the high court weigh in before the Electoral College makes Obama’s victory official later this month. The justices may decide in a Friday conference whether to hear or cast away a lawsuit dismissed in a lower court and appealed by a retired New Jersey lawyer named Leo C. Donofrio, who also has his own Web site.”

All he had to do was call the Public Information Office at the SCOTUS and they would have explained to him what the entries on my Docket mean.   As was reported by Bob Vernon of Honest American News and Plains Radio Network two days ago, Justice Thomas referred the case to the full Court on November 19, and then the full Court distributed it for conference of December 5, 2008 after an initial consideration on the Thomas referral.  There has been multiple docket activity on my case this week.  One would think reporters would actually use the resources SCOTUS makes available to them.

No mention of Cort Wrotnowski’s case by Montgomery.  That case is now before Justice Scalia.

Montgomery mentions my site in his report, so I don’t know why he didn’t see all of this explained in my blogs below.  Hopefully he will fix the record.  There’s a place to comment on his report for those so inclined.