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WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court refused Monday to take up the question of President Barack Obama's citizenship, which a core group of skeptics continues to challenge despite presentation of his US birth certificate....   >>>

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US Supreme Court refused Monday to take up the question of President Barack Obama's citizenship, which a core group of skeptics continues to challenge despite presentation of his US birth certificate.



The high court, without comment, rejected the request by Orly Taitz, a California lawyer who has emerged as a leader of the "birther" movement of mainly rightwing protesters who question where Obama was born.



In October 2009, Judge Clay Land in the southeast state of Georgia determined that Taitz's pursuit of the case was "breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional," and scolded her for expressing "no contrition or regret regarding her misconduct."



She had filed a stay of deployment request on behalf of Captain Connie Rhodes, a US Army medic who challenged Obama's legitimacy as president. When Land threw the case out, Taitz publicly branded it "an act of treason."



The US Constitution allows only "natural born" Americans to be elected to the presidency. Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in the US state of Hawaii.



According to a survey early last year of 2,000 Republicans, 36 percent said they believed Obama, the country's first African-American president, was not born in the United States.



Hawaii has published the birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama, which states he was born August 4, 1961 at 7:24 pm in the maternity ward of Kapiolani hospital in Honolulu.