Eligibility lawyer to become election favorite?

A lead plaintiff in one of the early lawsuits alleging Barack Obama is not eligible to occupy the Oval Office – a case still pending at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – has filed another lawsuit against the sitting California secretary of state, Democrat Debra Bowen, and a GOP challenger that could leave her attorney, Orly Taitz, as a top contender for the state office.

Pamela Barnett was a lead plaintiff in the case Barnett v. Obama that sought a court ruling that Obama does not qualify to be president under the Constitution's demand for the president to be a "natural born citizen."

Some of the plaintiffs in the case were represented by Taitz, an attorney and dentist who has spearheaded several of the high-profile cases against Obama. Other plaintiffs were represented by Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation.

There's a new strategy to get answers to Obama's eligibility questions. See how you can help.

The case ultimately was dismissed by Judge David Carter, who held hearings on the issue but finally concluded his court had no role to play in the proposed removal of a sitting president for ineligibility.

Later, Taitz, who has sued Bowen several times to get her to take action on Obama's alleged ineligibility, announced her plan to seek the office of secretary of state in California so she could demand the documentation of eligibility from Obama herself.

Now comes the new case from Barnett, who told WND it was filed pro se and seeks to remove Damon Dunn from the Republican primary election in opposition to Taitz. It also seeks to remove Bowen from the general election ballot as incompetent and untrustworthy, she told WND.

Such a scenario would position Taitz, whose name is well-known across the state from her work on the Obama eligibility issue, as probably the highest-profile candidate to remain.

Barnett told WND her challenge to Dunn is based on evidence he was registered as a Democrat in Florida shortly before staking his claim to the GOP nomination for secretary of state in California. The challenge to Bowen is based on her refusal to act on complaints about election law infraction allegations. Barnett also targets California Attorney General Jerry Brown for not responding to her documentation about Bowen and Dunn.

Brian Burch, who is with the Dunn campaign, said about Taitz, "You're looking at someone who's really trying to get her name in the paper."

He noted the case was filed by "one of her supporters."

The earlier eligibility case by Taitz in which Barnett was a plaintiff involved nearly four dozen people who mostly hold various military ranks. Another plaintiff was former presidential candidate Alan Keyes.

In his opinion dismissing the earlier case, Carter wrote, "Plaintiffs argue that despite the fact that President Obama has produced a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii, there is evidence to show that the president was actually born in Kenya, thus making him ineligible to be president."

In fact, the only document released that would fit the description the judge used is a "Certification of Live Birth" that was posted on the Internet. It's a computer-generated image, and experts have said it doesn't prove much, since such documents under Hawaii law were available to children not born in the state.

The judge did acknowledge the value of Kreeps argument that Obama never met the constitutional requirements to run for president.

"There may very well be a legitimate role for the judiciary to interpret whether the natural born citizen requirement has been satisfied in the case of a presidential candidate who has not already won the election and taken office. However, on the day that President Obama took the presidential oath and was sworn in, he became president of the United States. Any removal of him from the presidency must be accomplished through the Constitution’s mechanisms for the removal of a president, either through impeachment or the succession process set forth in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment," the judge found.

Barnett's new case, filed in Superior Court of California in Sacramento, explains that to be eligible to run for secretary of state, the state's chief elections officer, "a declared and a nominated candidate shall under [Paragraph] 201 of the California Elections Code 'be a registered voter and otherwise qualified to vote for the office at the time nomination papers are issued.'"

But the lawsuit alleges Dunn filed a registration to vote in California and to affiliate with the California Republican Party March 13, 2009. It explains that state law requires that a candidate not have been "registered as affiliated with a qualified political party other than that political party the nomination of which he seeks within 12 months."

The complaint explains that Dunn on Nov. 5, 2009, "who had been registered and enrolled/affiliated with the Florida Democratic Party within 12 months, filed the declaration for his candidate for the California Republican Party nomination."

Further, the case accuses Dunn of trying to expunge his Florida record so it could not be traced.

"According to a letter written April 13, 2010, by Jean Marie Atkins Director of Voter Administration the Duval County Board of Election and obtained in person by Dr. Orly Taitz while in Florida … Defendant Dunn contacted the Florida Board of Elections to have any record of enrollment or affiliation with the Florida Democratic Party in the Duval County database expunged from the official record," the lawsuit claims.

An earlier complaint to the state's elections office generated no response, the lawsuit explains, despite the evidence of an infraction.

WND has covered a multitude of challenges and lawsuits over the issue. Some have alleged that he was not born in Hawaii in 1961 as he has written, or that the framers of the Constitution specifically excluded dual citizens – Obama's father was a subject of the British crown at Obama's birth – from being eligible for the office.

Besides Obama's actual birth documentation, the still-concealed documentation for him includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.

"Where's The Birth Certificate?" billboard helps light up the night at the Mandalay Bay resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

Because of the dearth of information about Obama's eligibility, WND founder Joseph Farah has launched a campaign to raise contributions to post billboards asking a simple question: "Where's the birth certificate?"

The campaign followed a petition that has collected more than 500,000 signatures demanding proof of his eligibility, the availability of yard signs raising the question and the production of permanent, detachable magnetic bumper stickers asking the question.

A new effort now asks those in authority regarding the nation's elections to demand the full proof.

The "certification of live birth" posted online and widely touted as "Obama's birth certificate" does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same "short-form" document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true "long-form" birth certificate – which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician – is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Oddly, though congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a "natural born citizen," no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama's claim to a Hawaiian birth.

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