[OFB Cafe] Oh boy......more breaking news on NOBama!!

[Fred A. Miller]

http://www.americasright.com/2008/08/q-with-phillip-berg.html

Saturday, August 23, 2008
A Conversation with Philip J. Berg, Esq.

Fairly late yesterday evening, I had the opportunity to speak with
Philip Berg, the Philadelphia attorney who filed suit against Illinois
senator Barack Obama in Federal Court in Philadelphia, questioning the
constitutional eligibility of his candidacy for president.
http://tinyurl.com/58hyxn

I was fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time to
break the story, which only now is beginning to gain traction for a
hopeful leap into the mainstream media. Berg, who served as Deputy
Attorney General of Pennsylvania for eight years, ran twice for
governor in 1990 and 1998 and once for the U.S. Senate in 1994, was
former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County and a
former member of the Democratic State Committee, was more than happy
to speak with me yesterday afternoon in the lobby of the courthouse
following a hearing in the chambers of the Hon. R. Barclay Surrick.

Immediately, we established that we couldn't be more ideologically
dissimilar. He believes that the United States government was behind
the attacks of September 11, 2001; the very mention of such theories
make me ill. He was an ardent supporter of Hillary Clinton's candidacy
during the primaries; I sell tee shirts showing the former first lady
and one of her quotes ("We're going to take things away from you on
behalf of the common good," said in June 2004) juxtaposed under the
words "RE-DEFEAT COMMUNISM."

Needless to say, Philip Berg and I are very different. I'm not sure
that I completely buy into the various allegations made in the
complaint filed late on Thursday afternoon, but I value more than
anything other than my wife and child the United States Constitution
and the ideas and ideals of those who wrote it here in Philadelphia so
many years ago; for that reason, I firmly believe that Berg's action
against Barack Obama must be given the full attention that it
deserves, for the sake of America and everything for which She stands.

Philip Berg, from what I can tell, is not the stark-raving mad
whack-job that people on the American political left are already
portraying him to be. In our two discussions, he was rational, he was
calm, he was congenial and showed a sense of humor -- something I
thought inexistent in most liberals. I'm not afraid to say that I like
the guy.

He found time to fit me in amidst an increasingly busy schedule. He
had just completed a 20-minute live, drive-time radio interview with a
San Diego, CA show, presumably Roger Hedgecock's show, but I don't
know for sure. Earlier on Friday, he taped a 20-minute interview with
Webster Tarpley, apparently an influential figure among those who,
like Berg, feel that our federal government, incapable and cumbersome
as it is, was able to organize and execute the 9/11 attacks and keep
the conspiracy quiet afterwards. I didn't press on Tarpley; I'm like
David Banner when I get angry, only with love handles. Berg also
mentioned that he was to be on Coast To Coast AM early this morning
from about 1:15 to 3:00 a.m., and on Monday was scheduled for another
drive-time interview on a Mississippi radio station.

The mainstream press, once it does grab a hold of this story, will
undoubtedly cast Philip Berg as either (1) a nutjob with a
questionable past or (2) a low-level party operative retained by
Hillary Clinton and her flunkies to do some dirty work in the days
leading up to the nominating convention in Denver. I thought I'd
tackle the latter issue first, perhaps to determine where his
loyalties lie and how he feels about the candidates.


Being the natural skeptic that I am, Mr. Berg, I couldn't help but
think that a relatively well-known and respectable local party
operative such as yourself would be the perfect person to act as
surrogate on behalf of Hillary Clinton and her campaign, only a matter
of weeks after she somehow maneuvered her way into having her name
included in the nomination. Care to comment?

I have had no direct or indirect contact with anyone on the Hillary
Clinton campaign. Did I help her in the primaries? Yes. Was I in favor
of her over Obama? Yes. What did I do? I contributed some money and
made some phone calls to various states for her. Other than that, I
attended one Montgomery County [PA] Democratic Committee dinner at
which her daughter spoke, though for the record, Obama’s
representative was also at the same function. So, am I closely
involved with them? No.

And as I told you this afternoon, even among those who helped me
prepare for this case, while I know they may be against Obama’s
violation of the Constitution, I do not even know nor have I asked
where they stand politically.

What was it that drew you to Hillary's candidacy in the first place?

I think that she is a remarkable woman. I think that over the years
she has shown herself to be a leader. I was looking at everyone at the
very beginning and I thought she really stood her ground. I think that
we could use a woman in the White House, and I think she knows the
issues, and the experience she had being First Lady helped, along with
the experience gained in the Senate since then.

Throughout the past year, though, she and Barack Obama had shown
themselves to be ideologically planting their flag on the same turf.
Before you knew about all of this other stuff, before birth
certificates, citizenship and eligibility, what was it that so turned
you off to Obama?

Obama just never turned me on. There has always been something missing
there, and as his various associations came out, the kind of people he
was involved with, it really turned my stomach. I couldn’t believe it.

That, and he had an excuse for everything. His phony responses to the
Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright issue turned me off. He said "I never knew what
he was like." He was a member of that church for twenty years. Twenty
years! When the story first broke, he went on all of the television
and cable stations and claimed he was never in the pew when Rev.
Wright made any of these remarks. By the time he made his speech in
Philadelphia days later—a speech that the mainstream media agreed
might have been the best in the history of the world—he did a complete
turnabout and admitted that he was in the pew at the time of the
remarks. At what point is enough, enough?

It should be noted that Oprah joined that church in 1984 and left in
1986 because she felt that the viewpoint of Rev. Wright and that
church could be detrimental to her television career. [I suppose he
meant THIS --Jeff] Obama was somehow there for twenty years and did
not know what Rev. Wright was like? Nobody can believe that.

And then it went on, issue after issue, association after association,
Bill Ayers and so on and so forth. And the media let him slide. They
let him slide on doing drugs. Cocaine, marijuana – some other
candidate saying this would be hammered by the media.

Everything was overlooked. Look at the issue he’s making now, about
John McCain not knowing how many properties he owns.

The way it was phrased in the television commercial, it looked to me
to be an obvious reference to his age. Don't you think?

That’s right. Why can’t we ask Obama about the time he said he had
visited 57 states? If Hillary Clinton had stated that, you’d still be
hearing about it today. If McCain had said that, you’d still be
hearing about it. But Barack Obama says it, and it just disappears.

Not to mention that, in the weeks and months leading up to the 2004
election, the folks in your party were up in arms about any reference
to the considerable wealth of Teresa Heinz Kerry. Now that it is Cindy
McCain and not Ms. Imperceptible Accent, family wealth is fair game.
Why is that?

I don't know. Listen, she’s worth over $100 million dollars. They can
have as many houses as they want. But I must give credit to McCain –
he’s never taken an earmark during all his years in the Senate for the
state of Arizona. Now, the guy has crossed the line on a number of
bills and I cannot say that I’m rooting for McCain, but he certainly
has more pluses than Obama.

Obama is an empty suit. He’s very good when he delivers a speech—I
don’t know if he writes them himself or has a team of
speechwriters—but when he’s off of the teleprompter, his oratory goes
down the drain. That’s why he didn’t want to do all of these town
meetings across the country with McCain, and the atrocious performance
at Saddleback Church last week shows that Obama will likely falter in
the three scheduled debates before the election.

I chalk much of his success up to the influence and agenda setting of
the mainstream media. Speaking of which, are you happy with the
coverage which the mainstream press has given your civil action?

Well, no. First of all, the mainstream media hasn’t covered it yet.
I’m doing an interview with a journalist tomorrow morning at 10:00 who
says he’ll be able to get it out into the mainstream media.

Well, once it bridges that gap for the first time, then it should
spread just as the recent accounts of John Edwards' infidelity did. It
took more than eight months for the story to reach a newspaper or
television show of note.

Yes. I was talking to a producer from one of the Fox shows, and she
said that until it appears in the mainstream press, we cannot cover
it. The Times-Herald, out of Norristown here, they’re airing a story
here either Saturday or Sunday, and I have a feeling that they’ll do a
good job on it, seeing that they’re pretty much my hometown paper.

I’m encouraged by the response over the Internet. I’m discouraged by
the people in the mainstream press but I think we’re going to crack it
on this case. There are just so many people involved at this point …
people are sending out stories all over the place … I’ve been involved
in big cases over the years, and this is the single greatest initial
response I’ve ever received in any case and I think it's because it's
so significant – we’re talking about a serious constitutional issue
which has never been dealt with before. If we’re right, which I
believe we are, Obama really should be taken to task, because he knows
that he violated the law. And I hope, if we’re right, that someone
brings criminal charges against him.

Criminal charges?

I think it’s an absolute disgrace. If you go back to his record when
he was running for the state senate, he threw off a competitor because
he didn’t meet the requirements. So I think this guy has got a lot of
nerve, I really do, and I believe we’re right, and I believe that
action should be taken against him. He could cause, as I said to the
judge today, irreparable harm to people in this country, and if it
happens, there could be all sorts of bad stuff going on.

Is there any historical precedent for this? I'm not entirely positive,
but I think that George Romney--Mitt's father--was deemed
constitutionally eligible to run for president in 1968 even though he
was born in Mexico.

I’m not sure about that, but if you remember [Thomas] Eagleton, he was
forced out because of mental treatments--shock treatments--and was
replaced with Sergeant Shriver who, along with McGovern, lost.

A change of this sort is always detrimental, and that’s why we believe
the Republicans are aware of this, they’re waiting, and they will
bring it out in September or October and, at that point, would destroy
the Democratic Party. Because of the backlash and the people who will
be so disgusted, it will lose the presidency, and it could lose the
Senate, the House, the governor races and other races across this
country. I really think that Obama owes it to everyone to produce,
right now, a vault birth certificate and proof of the oath of
allegiance he took upon his return to this country from Indonesia,
which I don’t believe exists. If he has these documents, he owes it to
everyone to bring them out right now.

I've written a lot over the past few months about race and politics,
and back in February and March warned of the potential for Barack
Obama and his supporters to counter substance with charges of racism
and cries of racial intolerance. What do you say to those people who
inevitably will, perhaps looking at the underlying African story, call
you a racist?

Of course some people might look at me and assume I’m doing this
because he’s black. I’m not. I’m Jewish, and I’m a life-long member of
the NAACP, so people will be hard-pressed to confront me on any of
those issues.

Rumors as to Barack Obama's citizenship have been swirling around the
Internet for months. Why did you wait so long to file suit?

They asked me the same question when I was doing the radio interview
for the San Diego station. I received a phone call about ten days ago,
and someone said "you’ve got to do this." I explained that, before I
went forth with it, I had to do due diligence, check all of the
sources and check all of the information to find out if it was for
real. And I believe it is for real.

Factcheck.org released a statement yesterday, including images showing
an embossed seal and appropriate signatures, and maintained that after
fondling the certificate they could attest to its authenticity. How
satisfied are you with the independent forensic document experts cited
in your complaint?

Well, I'm not familiar with that site [he asked me to spell it --Jeff]
but I’ve seen documentation supporting our arguments just the same and
I’m satisfied with that. Look, the truth comes down to this -- at this
point in time, it’s time to fish or cut bait, time to stop
pussy-footing around. At this point in time, Obama owes it to people
to produce the documents. If I’m wrong, even if he doesn’t want to
handle it himself and has the person in charge of his campaign
communications come out and say, "here is the vault copy of the birth
certificate, here is the certified copy of his oath of allegiance from
when he came back from Indonesia, this issue should be put to bed and
Mr. Berg should withdraw his suit immediately or we’ll sue him to high
heaven," then I’m wrong. If they do not do that within the next day or
so, then I know we’re right. If they let the case linger, then I
believe we’re right. The challenge I’ve made to them is that, if they
don’t produce these documents, then we know they’re wrong.

Yes, but in a constitutional issue such as this one, wouldn't you
carry the burden of proof, Mr. Berg?

Yes, it is on me, but what I am saying here is that I’ve created an
issue which I’m sure will be all over the convention next week,
whether the reporters want to deal with it or not. It should be
brought up with the delegates, someone should bring it up and confront
them with it. I’d like to go to Denver, and if I have the chance to
speak in front of Obama delegates, I would explain that "if I’m wrong,
I’m out of here – but it is incumbent upon you to ask your candidate
to confirm that he is a citizen and produce the necessary
documentation, and if he doesn’t do it, then this party is going to go
down the drain."

Switching gears now, the mainstream media has proven to be very
protective of Barack Obama up to this point. I've even suggested that
sitting on the John Edwards story in the weeks prior to the Iowa
caucus was done not so much to protect Edwards, but to protect Obama
from Hillary Clinton, who stood to benefit from Edwards' votes should
he have dropped out early. Do you worry that you will be discredited
as a result of bringing attention to the various issues,
inconsistencies and unanswered questions surrounding the mainstream
media's chosen candidate?

No. I’m not worried about that. I can handle myself in front of the
media. If the media wants to confront me, I’ll confront them. I’ll ask
them why I need to do this, why they didn’t do this months ago. With
the resources at their disposal, with the access and the ability to
travel, it is incumbent upon them to have properly vetted Obama, and
the fact that they have not done so is a disgrace.

A couple of years ago, in 2005, you were subject to sanctions and
fines for reported ethics violations. A few years before that, there
were the Federal Racketeering actions filed against President Bush and
others suggesting prior knowledge and a coverup of the September 11
attacks. And, of course, in the wake of the 2000 election, you called
for the resignation of three Supreme Court Justices. You and I
discussed, this afternoon, the effect of credibility on the
authentication of rumor -- how do you transcend such issues with
regard to this action?

The sanction and fines are on appeal.

The RICO action was withdrawn because we wanted to put together a more
detailed RICO complaint, and that’s why, when I represented Ellen
Mariani she subsequently did not want to pursue the action. I got a
second plaintiff named William Rodriguez, and things were moving along
in the case, when he decided to withdraw for personal reasons. The
case has put me into personal bankruptcy, but I plan to come back out
a proceed with the case.

And yes, I asked three Supreme Court Justices to resign because of
their involvement with the 2000 election. I think what they did was
improper. I spent three weeks down in Florida and, on the Saturday in
question, I was sent out to a county in the panhandle and discovered,
personally, white-out painted on ballots. Serving as a volunteer sent
to check on things, I confronted the judge for that single county—I
forget the name of the county at the moment—and some people say I was
lucky to have survived, and only did so because an NBC affiliate was
there filming and a reporter was there taking pictures which ended up
running on the front page of the paper in that area. Other people
said, "you know, you were ten miles from the Alabama border, and if
those news media people hadn’t been there, you might never have been
heard from again."

See, I’m not afraid to come forth with issues which need to be
exposed. Am I perfect? Of course not. In this case, however, I feel 99
percent that we’re right on this particular case.

In terms of credibility, my very successful record in big cases shows
some of that. I’m the only attorney in the country to defeat "cell
phone" legislation in Hilltown Township, Bucks County, PA, meant to
ban the use of hand-held cell phones while behind the wheel of a car,
and did that pro bono. I have also represented PAWS—Performing Animal
Welfare Society—in California, pro bono, protecting the rights of
abused circus elephants, and was extremely successful in that case. My
record, over the years, is such that I can stand on my own two feet in
front of anyone.

This is also my 27th year as a member in the Barren Hill Volunteer
Fire Company/Fire Police, where I have served as lieutenant, as
sergeant, and just as a member. I average over 100 calls per year.

Regardless of credibility, how do you get past the circumstantial
nature of the evidence cited in your complaint -- for instance, the
account of Barack Obama's mother staying in Kenya and not flying back
to Hawaii until after Barack's birth, all based on a custom at the
time which prevented late-stage pregnant women from boarding airplanes?

Well, that’s going to be tough, but the way around it is the
grandmother—I’m not sure if she is still living—or the sister and
brother who, according to reports, stated that they were at the
Mombasa, Kenya hospital when Barack Obama was born. By subpoenaing
records from that hospital, by subpoenaing the family members, we can
obtain the evidence we need.

I think that, in this type of case, the burden of proof shifts. I
think that Sen. Obama owes it to his party and to the citizens of this
country to show that I am wrong. If I am, if he produces the
documentation, the case will go away, I’ll go away, and he can go
forth and do what he can in the election. But if he ignores this
topic, I believe it shows guilt on his part.

Now that Judge Surrick denied the temporary restraining order, where
do you go from here?

We plan to wait until the various parties are served, and then I’ll
make the appropriate motion to the court for expedited discovery. At
that point, we’ll probably have a conference call with the judge to
see where and when we will be proceeding, but this case, because of
the nature of it and because the judge said he will make an effort to
keep the case moving along, it needs an expedited track to overcome
the normal time frame of six months to one year and beyond. This case
cannot take that long.

This has to be brought to the forefront. That’s why, again, Sen. Obama
really owes it to everyone to confront this. He should threaten me.
“Berg,” he should say, “here are the documents and, if you do not
withdraw the suit, I will sue you.” Right now, he has no basis to sue
me. If he does have the documents, he should show them, and I’ll walk
away. I’ll withdraw the case. But, again, he must show me a certified
vault copy of his birth certificate and must show me a certified copy
of the oath of allegiance taken between the time he was 19 to 21 at a
Consulate, U.S. Embassy or the like.

If those documents can be presented, again, I’m out of here. But I
don’t think he can, I don’t think he will, and I think it is a total
disgrace on his part.

Okay, in twenty seconds or less, why is it so important that these
proceedings move forward?

It is important for these proceedings to go forward at this time
because the later it goes on, the more disheveled the Democratic Party
will look. If it is proven later on, or if it is otherwise not
acknowledged until after he is elected, then procedural steps will
have to be taken whether the news comes before or after January 20.
Either way, we’re looking at the destruction of the Democratic Party.

It is a disservice to every citizen of this country, especially those
who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to his campaign. It is a
disservice to the entire voting public, and indeed to the system as a
whole.

-- 
Linux is an old Latin word meaning, "I don't have
to support your Windows anymore."