Deez Nutz: Philip Berg, Barack Obama Birth Certificate Challenger and 9/11 Nutjob

Get over it, nutbars. Come January 20, he'll be the Prez, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Weird how the extremes of the far right and far left end up playing patty cake with each other in this country. Take, for example, Philadelphia lawyer Phil Berg, a former Pennsylvania assistant attorney general, and a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Presidential primary. Berg is currently pursuing a quixotic lawsuit aimed a proving that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States, and therefore, not qualified under Article II of the U.S. Constitution to be President of the United States.

Berg's campaign is, of course, complete hooey, though conservative wing-nuts have swallowed this hook so far down their twisted gullets, you might almost think this conspiracy theory was invented to show how freakin' gullible they are.

The legal action has been getting bitch-slapped hard in court. Berg first filed suit in August. A district court judge shot him down in October. Berg then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court. For Berg to get anywhere with this stunt, four Supreme Court Justices would have to agree to review the case. Don't everybody hold your breath at once, now.

While waiting for a response, Berg asked the court for an injunction to stop the November 4 election. He was summarily denied. Naturally, Berg's been getting a buttload of PR for his asinine efforts (and pageviews to his site Obamacrimes.com), mostly from extreme right moonhowlers. There's also gold in that there birth cert. Or at least some green, to judge by Berg's pleas for cash on his site:

"Make a donation to help us with the costs to pursue this case. Donate $2.08, $20.08. $200.80. or any amount you choose. Thank you for your generous support."

Hey, that legal work don't pay for itself, bubbee.

Others are piling on this ship of fools as well, filing their own Obama birth cert lawsuits, including African-American looney tune Alan Keyes, who's never gotten over getting served by B-rock in the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate race, which Keyes jumped into at the last minute as a carpetbagger, only to lose big.

But it's Berg the rightists loves to cite, 'cause he was a Hillary backer, remember? That's the tag they put on him to give him the aura of credibility. What's rarely mentioned is that Berg's a full-blown 9/11 "troofer." You know, one of that ever-dwindling tribe of moonbats who believe that the 9/11 attacks were somehow engineered by the Bushies. I happen to know that Berg's been peddling this insane 9/11 drivel because I met him when I covered the 9/11 Conference in Chandler, which took place in February of 2007.

That conference of kooks was in part organized with the assistance of Holocaust denier Eric D. Williams, author of the Shoah-shirking tome The Puzzle of Auschwitz. When I attended the opening "news conference" for the event as the only member of the Fourth Estate present, and asked about Williams and other Holocaust deniers in the mix, I was kicked out of room. Interestingly, it was Berg, who had been moderating this presser without press, and it was he who came out into the hallway and genially led me back in.

As I found out later from talking to him, Berg is a likable and intelligent guy, though I never really got a handle on whether or not he bought all the malakey he was pushing, along with all the other 9/11 folks. Some of these 9/11 idgits assert that a laser beam might have taken down the Twin Towers on that fateful day, that a cruise missile hit the Pentagon instead of a Boeing 757, and that the crashed heroes flight, Flight 93, was landed elsewhere, and all the people on board murdered by our government.

For his part, in January of '07, Berg called on "the nations of the world...to investigate, arrest and prosecute the people responsible for the murders on 9/11/01, specifically including George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. "

Can someone be a total space cadet, hold outrageous, even insane views, yet otherwise be intelligent and personable? Absolutely. In fact, some of my best friends are crazy people. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, on a personal level, I get along quite well with Michelle Dallacroce, once and future leader of Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, though I've told her more than once she's nuttier than a bag of filberts.

But does Berg really belong in a bughouse, or is he just doing it all for the attention? Whatever the case, my point is that once you sign on to the fundamental lunacy of 9/11 trooferdom, you forfeit all legitimacy. If Berg were pulling this same anti-Obama b.s. while trying to sell plaster casts of Bigfoot prints, it'd be the same deal.

Finally, all of the actual evidence shows that Obama is an American citizen, born in Hawaii. Factcheck.org has posted numerous photos of a legal copy of Obama's birth certificate, showing a raised seal, an official stamp on its reverse, and the actual certificate number, all points of contention for the conspiracy theorists. Furthermore, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, Director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, recently confirmed that Hawaii does have Obama's original birth certificate on file. This is the original birth certificate from which the official copy derives, the one Factcheck.org has published numerous pics of.

Some knuckleheads have tried to assert that Hawaii's state government is covering up for Obama because they're all Democrats. Bzzzzt. Wrong, boner brains. Dr. Chiyome Fukino was appointed to her post in 2002 by -- guess who? -- Governor Linda Lingle, a Republican.

Others say that Obama should release the original birth certificate. To whom, exactly? To wackjobs like Jerome Corsi or publicity seekers like Berg? Why should Obama or anyone for that matter allow these fools within a hundred feet of what will one day be hanging under bullet-proof glass at the Smithsonian?

In any case, Berg already has a backup plan. In a videotaped announcement made as he was submitting his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Berg indicated that even if Obama was born on Hawaiian soil, he believed Obama had become an Indonesian citizen while he was a kid in that country. (No real evidence of this either, natch.) So why bother with the petition to the Supreme Court if that were the case, Phil? Well, because otherwise, there'd be no 15 minutes of minor fame, now would there?




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