There are the conspiracy guys who claim that anyone and everyone from the Mafia, Fidel Castro, LBJ, the Soviets, or my Aunt Lilly had something to do with the JFK assassination. By the way, my Aunt Lilly was nowhere near Dallas on November 22nd.1963. She was probably at a beauty parlor in Brooklyn getting ready for my cousin Lenny's Bar Mitzvah the next day. There are those who believe that Neil Armstrong did not really walk on the moon and they the whole thing was shot in a movie studio or somewhere out in the Arizona desert. Or that green M & Ms are an aphrodisiac.
Now, New Jersey can be proud that we have our own tin-foil hat wearing guy with his own conspiratorial theories about President-Elect Barack Obama: Leo Donofrio, an East Brunswick attorney.
Donofrio claims that since Barack Obama was not a "natural born citizen" — since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be eligible to be president, under the U.S. Constitution.
Donofrio also claimed that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also were not "natural-born citizens" and thus ineligible to be president. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, and Calero was born in Nicaragua in 1969, and holds a green card as a resident alien. So, we have to give credit to Donofrio for at least exposing the Calero controversy. Glad we got that over with.
Now, Donofrio's problem seems to be with the phrase "natural born citizen" from Article II Section I: No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President;
How does Donofrio define "natural born"? Does that mean that if someone is conceived through artificial insemination or through in vitro fertilization, that person may not be eligible to become the president? After all, since that is not ‘natural child birth', that person could never be a natural born citizen.
Anyway, don't worry. This week, the Supreme Court denied Donofrio his day in court. United States Supreme Court Docket for case number 08A407 – Leo C. Donofrio v. Nina Mitchell Wells will not be heard—in spite of Justice Thomas asking.
Now maybe he can go back to the street corners of East Brunswick screaming that the world is flat.
