The plaintiffs in Tuaua v U.S. have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. circuit, to rehear their lawsuit. The issue is whether the 14th amendment, which says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”, applies to persons born in American Samoa. A three-judge panel had ruled against citizenship. The request for rehearing asks that all judges of the D.C. circuit participate.

That section of the Constitution has always been interpreted to mean that residents of the District of Columbia are U.S. citizens. Congress has by statute made residents of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico citizens, but Congress has never extended citizenship to persons born in American Samoa. See this press release. Thanks to How Appealing for the link.

The Harvard Law Record has this detailed account of how corrupt officials in Pennsylvania were assisted by the prominent law firm Reed Smith, in the matter of Nader’s ejection from the Pennsylvania ballot in November 2004. Not only was Nader removed from the ballot, his bank account was seized for over $70,000 in court costs. Later evidence came out that the challengers themselves were illegally using state employees on state time, and state computers, but no Pennsylvania court would do anything about it.

Beth Clarkson is a Kansas mathematics professor who has been struggling for years to get the documents from various Kansas governments to test her theory that Kansas vote-counting machines yield faulty counts. See this story.