Alan Keyes Sues Obama Over Citizenship

This is pretty significant.

Presidential candidate Alan Keyes, vice-presidential candidate Wiley S. Drake, and the Chairman of the American Independent Party, Markham Robinson, have filed suit in California Superior Court in Sacramento seeking to bar Secretary of State Debra Bowen from certifying to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger the names of Electors, and from transmitting to each presidential Elector a Certificate of Election, until documentary proof is produced and verified showing that Senator Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States, and does not hold citizenship of Indonesia, Kenya or Great Britain.

In addition, they have asked that the court issue a peremptory writ barring Senator Obama’s California Electors from signing the Certificate of Vote until such documentary proof is produced and verified.

In response to questions about why the suit was being filed, Ambassador Alan Keyes commented, “I and others are concerned that this issue be properly investigated and decided before Senator Obama takes office. Otherwise there will be a serious doubt as to the legitimacy of his tenure. This doubt would also affect the respect people have for the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. I hope the issue can be quickly clarified so that the new President can take office under no shadow of doubt. This will be good for him and for the nation.”

What was the burden of showing his birth certificate if it were legitimate?

This post from Free Republic has a decent bullet list of the arguments.

• Petitioners note that the 2007 birth certificate offered by Senator Obama is of questionable credibility for several reasons, including that it is a copy of suspect authenticity and that it does not detail actual birth location.
  
  
• Petitioners note that the only person claiming witness to Senator Obama’s birth is his own paternal grandmother who claims he was actually born in Kenya, then the British East African Protectorate of Zanzibar. Other records and recollections of family members suggest either Queens Hospital or Kapiolani Hospital in Hawaii. The disclosed Registry of Live Birth is a short-form of the birth certificate that does not state whether Obama was born in Hawaii or that his birth was subsequently registered there within the year following birth as then allowed by state law.
  
• Petitioners note that around 1967, Senator Obama moved to Indonesia with his mother and new stepfather. Records indicate that once in Indonesia he adopted his stepfather’s name and citizenship. Since dual citizenship was not allowed by Indonesian law, and U.S. law and treaty obligations required respect of this, Mrs. Obama-Soetoro had to relinquish her minor son’s U.S. citizenship. Elsewhere, they note that if he later recovered it, and no records apparently substantiate this, it would by law be as a “naturalized” citizen, not a “natural born” and, thus, ineligible for the office of President under the Constitution.
  
  
• Petitioners also note that in 1961 what is now known as Kenya was then the British Protectorate of Zanzibar which, if he was born there as his paternal grandmother claims, he would be a British citizen based on his father’s citizenship.
  
• Petitioners also note that in 1981 Senator Obama traveled to Pakistan, which was then banned by the U.S. Since he could not legally travel with a U.S. passport, they question whether he used one of his other passports: Indonesian, Kenyan, or British. (Interesting point is that the petitioners state affirmatively that he had other passports.)