Hopefully we will soon know

"We will file lawsuits on his actions, every time. As long as we have money , we will keep filing lawsuits until we get a decision as to his citizenship status," Gary Kreep, chief of the United States Justice Foundation, .

"We're already talking to groups who are willing to be plaintiffs," he said.

The complaint urges the California secretary of state to refuse to allow the state's 55 Electoral College votes to be cast until Obama's citizenship and related eligibility to hold office is resolved.

It is just one of more than a dozen legal challenges brought forward so far over Obama's citizenship. The cases all cite Obama's clouded history and the U.S. Constitution's requirement that a president be a "natural-born" citizen.

Sign the petition to insist on release of birth certificate.

There have been allegations he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as his campaign has reported, that he could be considered a British subject because of his father's residency in what then was a British protectorate that later became Kenya, and that the "Certificate of Live Birth" posted on his website simply shows his mother registered his birth in Hawaii after he was born but does not document a location.

There also have been questions raised about his travels as a youth, including the years he spent registered as a Muslim in an Indonesian school, and his later travels to Pakistan at a time when U.S. passports weren't welcome in that nation.

The biggest question is why Obama, if a Hawaii birth certificate exists, simply hasn't ordered it made available to settle the rumors.

The governor's office in Hawaii said there is a valid certificate but rejected requests for access and left ambiguous its origin: Does the certificate on file with the Department of Health indicate a Hawaii birth or was it generated after the Obama family registered a Kenyan birth in Hawaii?

Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has named two different Hawaii hospitals where Obama could have been born, while a video posted on YouTube features Obama's Kenyan grandmother Sarah claiming to have witnessed  Obama's birth in Kenya.

The California action was filed on behalf of Keyes, as well as Wiley S. Drake and Markham Robinson, both California electors.

"Should Senator Obama be discovered, after he takes office, to be ineligible for the Office of President of the United States of America and, thereby, his election declared void, Petitioners, as well as other Americans, will suffer irreparable harm in that (a) usurper will be sitting as the President of the United States, and none of the treaties, laws, or executive orders signed by him will be valid or legal," the action challenges.

Kreep is now working with several groups that could serve as plaintiffs to challenge Obama's actions, even from the Oval Office, should the issue remain in dispute.

"There is a reasonable and common expectation by the voters that to qualify for the ballot, the individuals running for office must meet minimum qualifications as outlined in the federal and state Constitutions and statutes, and that compliance with those minimum qualifications has been confirmed by the officials overseeing the election process," the complaint said, when in fact the only documentation currently required is a signed statement from the candidate attesting to those qualifications.

The issue is much more important than a single candidate, said Judge Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.  He now runs the Foundation for Moral Law.

Moore had his own constitutional confrontation when he was removed from his position Alabama Supreme Court chief justice after he refused to remove from state grounds a monument recognizing the Ten Commandments as the foundation for U.S. law.

"We can survive four years of any president; we cannot survive without a Constitution,". "This calls for a major investigation. Our Constitution is at stake."

Moore said the requirement for a president to be a natural-born citizen is clear in the Constitution. The document, he added, provides procedures to amend the requirement, but that hasn't been done.

"We live under the rule of law," he warned, "If we start ignoring that. ..."

"If Obama is allowed to take office without proving his citizenship, then we have no Constitution. America as it's been will be dead. If an easy to understand rule is ignored, then the others harder to understand will be easy to ignore," wrote Tony Costello.

Moore said, "If a person is not qualified, he's not qualified. It doesn't matter who it is, Republican, Democrat, black or white, rich or poor."

He added the members of the Electoral College have an obligation to verify Obama's qualifications before voting for him.

But he said the dispute may end up with court action, too.

"The courts are there to uphold the law. People have a right to change the Constitution. But until then it's the rule of law," he said.

"I don't see any reason a candidate who has such a serious question would not come forward with the truth about where he was born," Moore said.

"The Supreme Court has to answer this. They have to do it by law and not by the popularity of a person. If we do that, we might as well throw the Constitution out the window," Moore said.

"[Obama] has the answer. He knows where he was born. If he tells something that's untrue that's another matter. It's not an Obama issue, it's an American issue. It's about the Constitution of the United States."

U.S. State Department officials declined to respond to inquiries about the process for keeping a U.S. citizenship while attending schools in Indonesia, or the possibility of a U.S. citizen keeping that status while traveling on another nation's passport.

But several online "fact" sites have reported that the concerns over Obama's citizenship are much ado about nothing.

Factcheck.org, for example, has posted an image described as Obama's "birth certificate." But within the image can be seen the words "Certificate of Live Birth," which is not the same document. In Hawaii at the time Obama was born the state would issue a "Certificate of Live Birth" to a parent registering a birth, but it does not indicate the location of the birth.

"FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate," the group said in a statement accompanying the image of the "Certificate of Live Birth."

Snopes, also, attested to Obama's U.S. citizenship, citing information from the campaign itself.

However, there are too many questions to ignore.

"In Hawaii, a Certification of Live Birth is issued within a year of a child's birth to those who register a birth abroad or one that takes place outside a hospital," she said.

She cited the work of Ron Polarik, who holds a Ph.D. in instructional media and specializes in computer graphics with over 20 years experience with computers, printers and typewriters.

"Polarik has submitted a signed affidavit and has now released his findings on video at www.ObamaForgery.com with his identity masked and voice altered to guard against the carrying out of threats, which he has already received," Porter wrote.

"The Summary: The Certificate of Live Birth documents posted on Mr. Obama's website www.fightthesmears.com, Daily Kos (a pro-Obama blog) and factcheck.org, (a pro-Obama political research group), were found to be altered and forged," she said.

The researcher cited problems with pixels in the image and a fold line and a blurry border. He asserts the border is a 2007 version while the seal and signature are from 2008.

She also cited issues beyond the birth certificate.

"There's the matter that Obama traveled to Indonesia, Pakistan, Southern India and Kenya in 1981. He said he went to Indonesia to see his mother. This seemed plausible, except for the fact that his mother returned to Hawaii in August of 1980 to file for a divorce from her second husband, Lolo Soetoro. Unless she went back to pal around with the man she divorced, she wasn't there at the time of Obama's visit," Porter wrote.

"There's another problem. No record of Obama holding an American passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has been found. If he traveled to Pakistan with an American passport, he wouldn't have been allowed in – since Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and under martial law. It was also on the State Department's travel ban list for U.S. citizens," she wrote.

"If he couldn't get into Pakistan with a U.S. passport, perhaps he went there with an Indonesian passport. But the only way you can get one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen," she wrote.

Porter encouraged residents to contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee with a request to hold congressional hearings and write to the U.S. Supreme Court to request a ruling.

On the FederalistBlog the writers concluded:

"A child born to an American mother and alien father could be said to be a citizen of the United States by some affirmative act of law but never entitled to be a natural-born citizen because through laws of nature the child inherits the condition of their father."

Obama's mother held U.S. citizenship, but his father never did.

Herb Titus, the Constitution Party's running mate to Howard Phillips in 1996 and recognized authority on the U.S. Constitution, said it is up the electors from the 50 states to make certain Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen before they cast votes for him in the Electoral College Dec. 15.

"If they do their duty, they would make sure that if they cast a vote for Mr. Obama, that Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen,"

"I think it should be resolved. The duty is in the Electoral College. Every Obama elector that is committed to casting a vote on the 15th of December, they have a constitutional duty to make certain whether Mr. Obama is a natural-born citizen," he said.

If the electors fail their duty and Obama proves ultimately to fail the eligibility requirement of the U.S. Constitution, there would be only the laborious, contentious and cumbersome process of impeachment available to those who would wish to follow the Constitution, he suggested.

The level of frustration is rising. Dozens contributed their thoughts immediately after the forum was posted:

"What makes Obama non-respon[sive] to the simplest of requests?" asked one reader. "Does he think that it is politically incorrect to ask for authentication of the myriad of facts about himself … Is he testing the grounds to see how far he can play with this charade?"

Other comments included:

• "Obama won his first election ever by getting three Democratic opponents thrown off the ballot? He's all for using the law to help himself win. Wouldn't it be ironic if he is not allowed to serve as president due to the law? … Turn around is fair play!
  
  
• "Obama's refusal to produce the ORIGINAL given birth certificate gives us all pause. His silence on these allegations is deafening. The anointed one believes that if he can hold us all back until he's in the Oval Office he's hit a home run and he's 'safe.' Ah, not so! Check your law, Obama, and you will see that even if were to make it to the White House you will no longer be able to hide behind those red velvet ropes."
  
  
  
• "There must be something that would have caused him great harm prior to the election, and would have stopped him from becoming elected. What could that little piece of information be?"