The continuing saga of “My Favorite Kenyan,” Part 2

Ray Bolger starred as the Scarecrow in the 1939 motion picture classic “The Wizard of Oz,” originally filmed in black & white, it is a fairytale dream sequence in which Dorothy Gale (played by Judy Garland) is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Gee, I kinda’ wish they hadn’t.

Now, I wonder if the sales of my Special Kansas Tin Hat will decline.

Be sure to get yours now, while your thoughts are still yours!

You never know those sneaky feds, next thing, they’ll put micro-neurotransmitters in each and every kernel of corn.

C’mon “Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

Dorothy: How do you talk if you don’t have a brain?
Scarecrow: Well, some people without brains do an awful lot of talking don’t they?

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Ballot Challenge in Kansas Over Obama’s Birth Is Ended

By JOHN ELIGON

September 14, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Citing a wave of angry backlash, a Kansas man on Friday withdrew a petition in which he argued that President Obama should be removed from the state’s election ballot because he did not meet citizenship requirements.

The challenge filed this week by Joe Montgomery of Manhattan, Kan., prompted state election authorities to seek a certified copy of Mr. Obama’s birth certificate and reignited long-running conspiracy theories that the president was not born in the United States. The state will continue to try to obtain the birth certificate, and officials will meet on Monday as scheduled to close the case officially. But without the petition, Mr. Obama will remain on the ballot, Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach told The Associated Press.

Mr. Montgomery, the communications director for the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine, explained his decision in an e-mail to Mr. Kobach.

“There has been a great deal of animosity and intimidation directed not only at me, but at people around me, who are both personal and professional associations,” he wrote. He added that he did not “wish to burden anyone with more of this negative reaction.”

After a hearing on Thursday, the state’s Objections Board, led by Mr. Kobach, a conservative Republican, said it needed more information before issuing a ruling.

Mr. Montgomery argued that under case law, to be eligible to become president, a person must be born in the United States to parents who are citizens. Mr. Obama’s father was from Kenya, and his mother was from Kansas. Mr. Montgomery also speculated that the birth certificate that Mr. Obama released last year may have been forged.

But a lawyer for the Obama campaign, in a letter to Mr. Kobach, said that Mr. Montgomery’s interpretation of the law was contrary to what the Supreme Court had held for “over a hundred years.”

Because no representative of Mr. Obama appeared at the hearing on Thursday and the only response his campaign provided was the one-and-a-half-page letter, which the state deemed cursory, the board decided it could not rule immediately.

Brad Bryant, the state’s election director, noted that in other states like Arizona, officials had also sought to verify Mr. Obama’s birth certificate to ensure his eligibility for their ballots.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Kobach’s office said that the state was required to review objections to the ballot.

The Objections Board is made up of Mr. Kobach and two other Republicans, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and Lt. Gov. Jeffrey Colyer.

In a lengthy brief filed with the state, Mr. Montgomery cited 19th-century case law in arguing that Mr. Obama was not a natural-born citizen. “Our nation’s founders wanted to prevent our president from having any citizenship conflicts due to parents who were not citizens and who did not intend to become citizens,” Mr. Montgomery wrote.

Later, Mr. Montgomery wrote that “Mr. Obama has failed to provide any valid, certified documentary evidence to legally establish birth in this country, much less to citizen parents. Further there is substantial evidence showing that much of Mr. Obama’s alleged birth certificates have been forged or doctored, and have not been confirmed as legally valid, true and accurate.”

Mr. Montgomery did not respond to e-mail and telephone messages seeking comment.

Fearing that the “birther” conspiracies had started to move into the mainstream, in large part because one of their loudest advocates was Donald Trump, Mr. Obama pushed back last year, releasing his long-form birth certificate. It shows he was born in Hawaii in 1961.

“We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Mr. Obama said at the time.

A spokesman for the Obama campaign declined to comment on Friday. But in a letter sent to Mr. Kobach on Wednesday, a lawyer for the campaign, Kip F. Wainscott, wrote that both state and federal courts had rejected Mr. Montgomery’s legal contentions.

“These tired allegations are utterly baseless, and the objector’s arguments are entirely without merit,” Mr. Wainscott wrote.

This challenge to Mr. Obama comes in a state where the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, is heavily favored, and where the electorate has shifted sharply to the right over the past couple of years. With the backing of the state’s first conservative governor in decades, Sam Brownback, several far-right Republicans defeated moderate state senators in primary elections last month, opening the way for conservatives to win control of the State Senate. Conservatives already control the House, meaning the state is expected to swing even more heavily to the right, with major tax cuts and stringent social policies.

Mr. Kobach, one of Kansas’s leading conservatives, has pushed for tougher voter identification laws, helped write Arizona’s controversial immigration law and called two years ago for Mr. Obama to release his long-form birth certificate.

Mr. Kobach declined an interview request on Friday. But The Topeka Capital-Journal quoted him as saying Thursday that the board was doing its due diligence.

“I don’t think it’s a frivolous objection,” he said. “I do think the factual record could be supplemented.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/us/politics/kansas-election-officials-seek-copy-of-obamas-birth-certificate.html?_r=2&hp&pagewanted=print