(Posted 5:00 a.m. EST Monday, December 8, 2008)
(Updated 3:00 p.m. EST Monday, December 8, 2008)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Barack Obama has another date with history on January 20 when he will be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States -- and the first African-American to hold the nation's highest office, right?

Right -- in spite of a determined, but so far futile, legal effort by a small but vocal minority of naysayers determined to bar Obama from taking office.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey lawyer who adamantly insists that Obama is not a U.S. citizen and is therefore ineligible to be president.

The justices, without comment, dismissed a lawsuit by attorney Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to bar Obama from taking office on the grounds that Obama was a British national at the time of his birth, based on the fact that his late father from Kenya was a British national and thus cannot possibly be a "natural born citizen" of the U.S., as required by Article II of the Constitution to be eligibile to run for the presidency.

For the case to be placed on the high court's docket, four of the nine justices must agree to hear the case.

Article II of the Constitution states that "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution [1789], shall be eligible to the office of president. . ."

Critics argue that the term "natural born citizen" in Article II is ill-defined.

Yet the 14th Amendment of the Constitution makes crystal clear who is a citizen of this country: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. . ."

Donofrio contends that Obama is not a native-born U.S. citizen despite documentation by the State of Hawaii that Obama was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, just two years after Hawaii became America's 50th state (The Aloha State will celebrate its 50th anniversary of statehood next summer).

The suit, originally filed in U.S. District Court against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells, sought to stay the November 4 election -- despite the federal Elections Act (Title III of the United States Code), which mandates the presidential election must be held "on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of November."

The lower court dismissed Donofrio's lawsuit on the following grounds:

1. Obama was born in the United States and that, as made clear by the 14th Amendment, he is a citizen of this country,

2. his mother was a Kansas-born U.S. citizen,

3. there are literally millions of Americans born here whose parents were born and raised on foreign soil -- including an estimated three million American-born, U.S. citizen children of illegal immigrants, who, because they're U.S. citizens by birth, cannot be deported.

DONOFRIO NOT ONLY PLAINTIFF SEEKING TO BLOCK OBAMA FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT

The Donofrio case is just one of a handful of lawsuits challenging Obama's citizenship, one of which is also before the Supreme Court and is certain to be dismissed as well.

That second, better-known case was filed by Philip Berg, a former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general. He unsuccessfully sought to bar the Democratic Party from bestowing its presidential nomination to Obama.

Unlike Donofrio, however, Berg, a self-described "moderate to liberal" Democrat who supported Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign, insists that Obama was not born in the United States, but rather in his father's Kenyan homeland. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he spent the latter part of his childhood.

Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg's lawsuit, citing a lack of any proof that Obama is a citizen of either country.

Donofrio and Berg are just two of a small but vocal minority of people who adamantly insist that Obama is a foreigner and therefore ineligible to be president.

Both plaintiffs made the same claim about Obama's Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was born in the former Panama Canal Zone. But the Canal Zone was U.S. territory when the 72-year-old McCain was born in 1936. And McCain's parents were both U.S. citizens, rendering the plaintiffs' argument null and void.

But the claims against Obama have been persistent, despite repeated rejection by the courts. At least one of the people making the claims against the president-elect is known to have ties to white-supremacist groups, raising suspicions that the accusations against Obama are motivated, in part, by racial animus.

ACCUSATIONS AGAINST OBAMA'S CITIZENSHIP IS FODDER FOR CONSPIRACY THEORISTS

Legal experts said Friday there was little chance that the Supreme Court will agree to hear Donofrio's lawsuit. Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, told Salon.com that since 2000, the court has considered in conference over 840 cases that sought a stay. Of those, the justices agreed to hear only 60 of them.

Regardless of whether the Supreme Court would or would not agree to hear any of the lawsuits, a stubborn gaggle of right-wing conspiracy theorists have made one thing abundantly clear: They will never accept an Obama presidency under any circumstances, according to several experts in conspiracy theories.

Already, some of these conspiracy theorists have taken out full-page ads in the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Times challenging the validity of Obama's birth certificate. One right-wing group is engaging in a major drive to raise funds for a TV ad campaign calling Obama's citizenship -- and eligibility for the presidency -- into question.

AT LEAST ONE CONSPIRACY THEORIST'S ACCUSATIONS AGAINST OBAMA MAY BE RACIALLY MOTIVATED

The right-wing Web site WorldNetDaily.com has been almost incessantly ballyhooing Obama's alleged alien status for weeks. And no wonder: One of the site's most senior writers is Jerome Corsi, who made a name for himself four years ago as the co-author of Unfit for Command, which attacked the Vietnam War record of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Corsi made headlines last June for his highly controversial -- and largely discredited -- anti-Obama book, The Obama Nation, in which he makes numerous unsubstantiated and, in some cases, patently false accusations against the president-elect.

But Corsi apparently had another motivation for going after Obama: Racism. After The Obama Nation was published in June, several bloggers noted Corsi's lengthy dwelling -- in highly condemnatory language -- on the two interracial marriages of Obama's white mother from Kansas, Ann Dunham, first to his black father from Kenya, Barack Obama, Sr., and later to his Asian stepfather from Indonesia, Lolo Soetero.

Other bloggers -- including The 'Skeeter Bites Report, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors white-supremacist groups -- quickly exposed Corsi's promotional tour of his now-discredited book on several Web sites operated by white supremacists, including a guest appearance on the Internet radio show of the white-supremacist group, Stormfront.

RIGHT-WING LAW GROUP'S EXPECTED CHALLENGE TO OBAMA'S LEGITIMACY AS PRESIDENT LIKELY TO BE FUTILE

Meanwhile, a right-wing lawyers' organization said it will go forward with plans to mount a sustained legal assault on the legitimacy of Obama's presidency after his inauguration -- although in the wake of the Supreme Court's rejection of the Donofrio lawsuit, that assault is also likely to be futile.

But Gary Kreep, head of the United States Justice Foundation, which states on its Web site that it seeks "to advance the conservative viewpoint in the judicial arena," nonetheless vowed that his organization will mount legal challenges to "every executive order, every proposal, every piece of paperwork" generated by Obama, adamantly insisting that he is not a U.S. citizen and will hold the presidency illegally.

"We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time," Kreep told WorldNetDaily. "As long as we have money, we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status."

Kreep's California-based USJF has filed a complaint with the California secretary of state's office demanding that it bar the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast "until Obama's citizenship and related eligibility to hold office is resolved."

But the USJF's demand is likely to be rejected by the California secretary of state's office on the grounds that it lacks the authority to stop the state's electors from casting their votes for president and vice president.

While the Constitution allows each state to designate a method of choosing individual electors, the electors are required by federal law to meet "on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December [In 2008, on December 15]," at which time they cast their votes for president and vice president. Thus, no state can bar their electors from casting their ballots at the appointed time.

PEOPLE BEHIND THE LAWSUITS WILL NEVER ACCEPT OBAMA AS PRESIDENT

The bottom line is that there are people on the far right who, for whatever reason, will never accept Barack Obama as their president. In the case of Corsi, with his links to white supremacists, it's apparent that that he cannot accept a black man holding the nation's highest office.

That some on the far right refuse to accept Obama's impending presidency should not be surprising, since there are people on the far left who for the past eight years have never accepted George W. Bush's presidency either, insisting to this day that Bush has held the presidency illegally because he stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, who lost to Bush in the Electoral College despite winning the nationwide popular vote by a half-million votes.

Never mind the fact that never in the 232-year history of this country has a candidate ever won the presidency without winning his home state. Gore lost his home state of Tennessee -- rendering all the subsequent shenanigans in Florida moot.

But unlike their counterparts on the far left, those on the far right appear to be hell-bent and determined to do whatever it takes to keep Obama out of the White House.

Exactly how far they're willing to go is anybody's guess.

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Copyright 2008, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.