Impeach Clarence Thomas

It's time for you to go, Clarence. You've now proven that you're not worthy to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Justice Thomas (there's a classic oxymoron) has referred Donofrio v. Webb to the full Court for its weekly conference session today, after Justice Souter had rejected it. Donofrio is the completely ridiculous New Jersey case that attempts to show that Barack Obama is ineligible for the presidency because he is not a "natural-born citizen" as contemplated by Article I of the U.S. Constitution.

Leo Donofrio, the plaintiff in the original lawsuit, has conceded that Obama was born in Hawaii. Case closed. His place of birth automatically confers U.S. citizenship, and because there is no justiciable issue in the case (the birthplace having been stipulated to), the only motivation for Thomas' decision to refer can be political. Therefore, he ought to be impeached.

The plaintiff tries to argue that there are two prerequisites for one to be a "natural-born citizen," birth in the United States and the U.S. citizenship of one's father:

"Don't be distracted by the birth certificate and Indonesia issues," Mr. Donofrio said in a statement on the Citizen Wells Web site. "They are irrelevant to Senator Obama's ineligibility to be president.

"Since Barack Obama's father was a citizen of Kenya, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of Senator Obama's birth, then Senator Obama was a British citizen 'at birth,' just like the framers of the Constitution, and therefore, even if he were to produce an original birth certificate proving he were born on U.S. soil, he still wouldn't be eligible to be president."

Balderdash. The only authority Donofrio can cite in support of his highly specious claim is some 18th Century pamphlets and treatises allegedly relied upon by the framers of the Constitution in establishing the "natural-born" threshold. Set aside for the moment the fact that, in the 21st Century, the notion that citizenship is patrilineal (much as religion traditionally was matrilineal) is so anachronistic and outdated as to be laughable. The bottom line is that there is not one shred of American legal precedent suggesting that "natural-born," since the ratification of the Constitution, means anything other than "born on U.S. soil." And since the plaintiff has stipulated that Obama was born on U.S. soil (Honolulu, Hawaii, 1961), the entire basis for the lawsuit is moot.

The very idea of Justice Thomas, presumably one of the nine most accomplished and learned jurists in America, referring this absurd lawsuit to the Court for conference is irresponsible and a clear dereliction of his responsibilities and duties as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. As such, it undoubtedly and certainly constitutes grounds for impeachment.

UPDATE (9:57 am 12/5/08): Forgot to add that of course SCOTUS won't grant cert and hear the case. I realize that, and I'm not at all concerned about the risk that the case will reach oral arguments. My point merely is that, lacking a justiciable issue, the case never should have gotten this far, and Justice Thomas' complicity in allowing it to get to this point is impeachable because he knew or should have known that it was nonjusticiable.

Random thought

If Barack Obama visiting his grandmother in Hawaii was "exotic," what is it when you're the governor of Alaska?