Les Payne, Newsday
- Two prominent black conservatives are fighting to keep the Oval Office reserved for whites only by attempting to block the seating of Barack Obama as the nation’s first African-American president.
Justice Clarence Thomas placed the lawsuit challenging Obama’s U.S. citizenship on the court calendar for a hearing. Sen. Obama and his campaign say that the president-elect has an authentic birth certificate showing that he was born in Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961, and is thus a “natural-born” U.S. citizen. Hawaiian officials agree.
The New Jersey case, Donofrio v. Wells, however, petitions that the Electoral College delay its ruling on seating Obama until his U.S. citizenship has been verified. An earlier Pennsylvania case, Berg v. Obama, sought to prevent the Democratic Party from nominating the Illinois senator on similar “citizenship” grounds.
Whereas Justice David Souter, acting for the court, dismissed the Berg case, Thomas distributed the Donofrio case to the other justices. The court was not expected to take the case.
