Daily Thought Pad: Eligibility Rulings Vanish from Net

A New Jersey attorney who brought the first legal challenge to Barack Obama's occupancy in the Oval Office to the U.S. Supreme Court has published a report revealing that references to a U.S. Supreme Court decision addressing the definition of "natural-born citizen" were scrubbed at one of the key online resources for legal documents.

The Minor v. Happersett case is significant because it is one of very few references in the nation's archives that addresses the definition of "natural-born citizen," a requirement imposed by the U.S. Constitution on only the U.S. president.

That case states:

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners."

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In the dispute over Obama's eligibility, dating back to before his election, it has been argued that the Minor case does not apply. Some have argued that it applies only to voting rights.

But now Leo C. Donofrio, whose original Donofio v. Wells against the New Jersey Secretary of State alleged Obama does not meet the Constitution's Article 2, Section 1 "natural-born citizen" demand for presidents because of his dual citizenship at birth, has released research suggesting that even as Obama was preparing to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, someone was scrubbing court records of that case.

"New evidence conclusively establishes that 25 U.S. Supreme Court opinions were sabotaged then republished at Justia.com during the runup to the '08 election," he reported

He initially reported several months ago on a few of the adjustments in the text of the Supreme Court opinions at the online resource, "but last week, a third sabotaged case was discovered which led to a thorough examination of all U.S. Supreme Court cases which cite 'Minor v. Happersett' as they appeared on Justia.com between 2006 and the present."

President Obama

Arguably, under the definition in the case, neither candidate in 2008, Democrat Obama nor Republican Sen. John McCain, would be eligible. McCain was born outside of the United States at a U.S. base in the Panama Canal Zone, and Obama's father never was a U.S. citizen.

Donofrio explained in his report that he did not know who made the changes inside the documents purporting to be U.S. Supreme Court opinions, and "the deception might have been undertaken on behalf of either one.

"Regardless of who you supported in 2008, or whether you agree with the assertion of Minor's relevance, every American should be outraged that 25 Supreme Court cases were surgically sabotaged and then passed off to the public as if the tampered versions contained the 'Full Text of Case,'" he wrote.

"This is the very definition of 'Orwellian' Fascism. It's propaganda. And there is no place for it in the United States. The sacrifices for truth and justice which created and have sustained this nation are wantonly debased by the subversive deception emenating from Justia.com servers."

Justia staff did not return a WND message requesting comment.

Donofrio wrote that it's not just a prank-level matter.

"Since Justice placed affirmations on each tampered opinion which state 'Full Text of Case,' personnel may also be guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. 1018 by intentionally passing off tampered versions of U.S. Supreme Court opinions as if they were official versions published by the U.S. Supreme Court."

The public information officer for the U.S. Supreme Court, Kathleen Arberg,declined to respond to a WND call and email query about whether there could be any ramifications from posting an incomplete court document and representing it as the full document.

Among the dozens of examples identified by Donofrio was the Luria case.

The case from 1913 was an appeal out of New York that concluded: "Where a point involving sufficiency of the complaint is not raised and defendant does not challenge the statement of the court that it supposes the point will not be raised, it is too late to raise it in this court.

"This court concurs in the conclusion reached by the district court that the residence in a foreign country of one whose certificate of naturalization was attacked as fraudulent was intended to be and was of a permanent nature and justified the proceeding on the part of the United States to cancel the certificate under § 15 of the Act of June 29, 1906."

Using the online Wayback machine, Donofrio found a 2006 image of the pertinent reference to Minor v. Happersett in the document. The reference is near the highlighted word:

Then Donofrio found a 2008 image of the same page, but the Minor v. Happersett reference had disappeared:

A subsequent image of the same page, from 2010, revealed that the Minor v. Happersett still was gone:

Finally, the current image, as of Friday afternoon, revealed that the reference had been restored:

"We do not know at this point if Justia personnel were behind this or if their site was hacked. That being said, Justia's reaction to my last report (in July) mirrored the deception of the sabotage. Instead of addressing the proof, Justia quietly and with stealth un-scrubbed the evidence without acknowledging or addressing the issue at all. And they placed '.txt robots' on their URLs for the two previously identified cases so the Wayback Machine could no longer provide historical snapshots of those cases as published at Justia," Donofrio explained.

He said he found 25 instances of tampering, and in some cases not only was the case scrubbed, the numerical citation also was taken out.

"The reality that both candidates eligibility was questionable according to Minor v. Happersett appears to have been known and handled by somebody's legal team. However, Justia CEO Tim Stanley was associated with 'Obama For America 2008,'" he wrote.

He said the case should have been used to prevent the outcome of the 2008 election.

"McCain clearly does not meet the definition since he was born in Panama. And since Obama's father was never a U.S. citizen, the current POTUS doesn't meet the Supreme Court's definition of a natural-born citizen either. Minor v. Happersett has, therefore, been the subject of an intense disinformation campaign. Falsehoods about the case have been widely spread," he said.

He said the most common are that Minor was a voting rights case and is not binding on citizenship issues, or that it was overruled.

But he said both criticisms are false.

Donofrio explained that the pattern of sabotage was consistent: The original documents included the Minor reference and subsequent copies did not.

"Some cases scrubbed the words 'Minor v. Happersett' every time they appeared, and some left it in one time, but removed it in other places. References to The Slaughterhouse Cases, Scott v. Sandford, and Osborn v. Bank of United States (citizenship cases which prove troublesome for Obama's eligibility) were also scrubbed along with full sentences from majority opinions (as was done in Pope v. Williams), and dissents (as was done in U.S. v. Wong Km Ark). The scrubbing was surgically precise as to the issue of POTUS eligibility. The Wayback Machine snapshots prove that the tampering stayed in effect through the final snapshots taken in 2010.

"This tampering happened at Justia.com. That is a fact. The questions which need to be answered now are who ordered it and who carried out the subversive plot," he wrote.

Dianna Cotter wrote in the Portland Civil Rights Examiner: "This was done in these specific cases in order to prevent their being found by Internet researchers long before anyone had even begun to look for them, even before Obama would win the Democratic nomination at the DNC Convention in Denver, Colo., in August '08. This is premeditation and intent to deceive."

She noted that attorneys working on arguments always would return to the originals from the Supreme Court, "but 99.99 percent of the population has no access to dusty law texts or expensive legal research services such as Lexis and Westlaw.

"The manipulation at Justia.com diluted the importance of Minor by killing the citations in Supreme Court cases spanning over 100 years. Since Google most often returns Justia.com's version of the case being searched for as the first or second hit, Justia's version of Supreme Court opinions are most influential in the blogosphere's forums and comments. Erasing those citations and text on the Internet literally erases the importance of Minor and its precedents to millions of Americans otherwise unlikely to ever step into physical Law Library," she wrote.

There have been multiple court and other challenges to Obama's occupancy in the Oval Office. Essentially they have argued that he either isn't eligible because he wasn't born in Hawaii as he's said, or that he was never qualified because his father was a Kenyan citizen, giving Barack Obama dual citizenship (the U.S. and the United Kingdom) at his birth. Those people argue that the Founders, with their requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen," disqualified dual citizens.

The White House in April released an image of a "Certificate of Live Birth" from the state of Hawaii in support of Obama's claim that he was born in the state. However, many computer, imaging, document and technology experts have stated it appears to be a forgery.

The image:

Obama long-form birth certificate released April 27 by the White House