idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And funny how there needs to be sufficient evidence of a crime to try it in the first place.
These were civil suits.
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It's kinda why we don't just have murder trials just because someone cried murder.
These were civil suits.
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You need sufficient evidence of a crime to launch a criminal investigation.
These were civil suits.
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It's this nice side effect of not living in a fascist state where the government just assumes you're breaking the law.
These were civil suits.
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Plus, Obama had a legally issued and valid birth certificate. His "original" birth certificate was legally meaningless. My sister is in the same position - the county that issued her birth certificate reissued all certificates printed during a certain span, and hers was one. I doubt she has the original document, because the original document is legally meaningless.
Irrelevant. In a civil case, examination of evidence (like say documentation supporting someone's qualifications to hold an office) is part of the "merit" of a case. Standing has nothing to do with that.
Dismissing a case on standing means that the judge has ruled that the person in question is not harmed by the claimed event, even if it is true, and thus has no "standing" to bring a civil suit. If I believe that you cut down a tree and it fell and smashed a fence, I can't sue you for damage done to the fence
unless it's my fence. If I attempt to do so, the judge will rule that I lack standing to bring a suit. I can't show how the fence being smashed harmed me, thus I can't sue. The question of whether or not a fence was smashed is completely irrelevant to that determination.
So when a judge dismisses a lawsuit challenging Obama's qualification to be president on standing (which is how all the cases were dismissed), the judge isn't saying "You don't have sufficient evidence to show that Obama doesn't meet that qualification". He's saying "You aren't harmed if Obama doesn't meet the qualification to be president". And that's a problem because there is a requirement in the Constitution, but apparently there's no means to actually enforce it.
Again, just in case you're still confused: The evidence regarding Obama's place of birth was not a consideration in these cases. The rule to dismiss on standing means that the same person would have no standing to sue even if the evidence that the candidate in question wasn't a natural born citizen was overwhelming. Because that's what standing means. It has nothing to do with whether the claim of the plaintiff is true, but only if the plaintiff can show he is harmed *if* his claim is true.
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And my god, is there really so little going on nowadays that we're back to the birther argument?
I didn't start it. But if someone's going to go out of their way to misrepresent my position on an issue, I'm going to correct them.