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Birthers, Lawyers, Billables and Obama

By John Bringardner

We're a little late in addressing the "birther" movement, but the unending controversy over Obama's birth certificate has generated so much legal work that, try as we might, we couldn't ignore it anymore. A recent thread in the right-wing blogosphere has it that law firm Perkins Coie has billed Obama's lobbying organization more than a million dollars while trying to suppress lawsuits over Obama's eligibility to be president, an issue that has long been considered settled by the courts but continues to simmer on the Internet. For anyone who has managed to avoid cable news for the past year, a little background: The Constitution states that only natural-born citizens of the United States are eligible to become president. This came up from time to time over the years (see Chester A. Arthur, Barry Goldwater), but the 2008 presidential election presented the unique circumstance of two candidates whose far-flung birthplaces were hazy enough for their citizenship to be called into question. Arizona Sen. John McCain was born in a hospital in Colon, Panama, just outside U.S. territory in the Panama Canal Zone, where his father was stationed as a naval officer. Then-Illinois Sen. Obama was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 27, 2009 (boomark / email).