Very Odd: Rapidly Changing History?

One of the reasons that I shy away from the birther stuff is that for every legitimate issue that has been raised, there seem to be a dozen pretty crazy claims that get made, too.  Here is one that at first glance seems to be worrisome.  The complaint is that dozens of historic Supreme Court decisions archived at justia.com that referenced a particular Supreme Court case were changed starting in 2008 so that this case was no longer referenced, or at least no longer easy to find--and after inquiries were made, all of these cases were restored to their historic content earlier this year.  This is from Dianna Cotter at Portland Examiner:

So far, 25 corrupted SCOTUS have been identified, and this number may continue to rise as the scope of the tampering becomes apparent. These cases all relied upon Minor, some specifically referencing its definition of Natural Born Citizen - a definition which makes Obama ineligible to be President as that definition is part of the holding and continuing precedent, issued from the highest court in our nation making it the law of the land, even now.

The most extreme sabotage so far discovered appears to have been done to the landmark decision United States v. Wong Kim Ark which was sabotaged to remove "Minor v. Happersett" three times, along with one reference to "Scott v Sandford", another to the Slaughterhouse Cases  and some accompanying text relevant to the issue. These surgical alterations would alter and shape the national dialogue; leaving a persistent and  incorrect interpretation of the meaning of the 'natural born citizen' clause. There is no doubt whatsoever that this was the specific intent of those responsible for this illegal editing of American history and law.

As previously mentioned, the specific distinction between Citizen and Natural Born Citizen made in Minor v. Happersett is in the holding of the case, the section which creates the Law, and it is this Law which has been repeatedly cited over the decades since. In order to minimize the importance of Minor, someone at Justia deliberately decided to make these supporting citations as difficult as possible to find.

I decided to check the claim, to see if this is birther madness or not.  It involves an apparently consistent (and therefore almost certainly intentional) change to U.S. Supreme Court decisions at Justia.com that reference Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 21 Wall. 162 (1874), a case that while it is about whether women were citizens of the United States or not, includes a rather lengthy discussion (starting on p. 168) of whether children born in the United States to alien parents are citizens or not.  (The applicability of this to President Obama, born to a citizen of British Kenya and an American citizen, should be obvious.)

The person raising the question used the Internet Archive repository to demonstrate that these changes took place.  I have taken one particular example, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649 (1898), and followed its history through the Internet Archive.  The copy archived April 20, 2008 has this at 169 U.S. 649, 654:

The constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except in so far as this is done by the affirmative declaration that 'all persons born r naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.' Amend. art. 14. In this, as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the constitution. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162; Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 422, 5 S. Sup. Ct. 935; Boyd v. U. S., 116 U.S. 616, 624, 625 S., 6 Sup. Ct. 524; Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 465, 8 Sup. Ct. 564. The language of the constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law. 1 Kent, Comm. 336; Bradley, J., in Moore v. U. S., 91 U.S. 270, 274

  Yet by June 19, 2008, the same page of an historic Supreme Court decision has subtly changed:

The Constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except insofar as this is done by the affirmative declaration that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." In this as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution. 88 U. S. 422; Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 116 U. S. 624, 116 U. S. 625; Smith v. Alabama, 124 U. S. 465. The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law. Kent Com. 336; Bradley, J., in Moore v. United States,@ 91 U. S. 270, 91 U. S. 274.

The Minor case is still referenced in subsequent paragraphs, but it is a bit strange that a case that has not changed in more than a century, stuff is changing.  It remains this way as late as May 15, 2011, the last capture in the Internet Archive for this decision.  Yet today, it is restored to its pre-Obama campaign state:

The Constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except insofar as this is done by the affirmative declaration that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." In this as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162; Ex parte Wilson, 114 U. S. 417, 114 U. S. 422; Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 116 U. S. 624, 116 U. S. 625; Smith v. Alabama, 124 U. S. 465. The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law. Kent Com. 336; Bradley, J., in Moore v. United States, 91 U. S. 270, 91 U. S. 274.

The allegation is that because justia.com is a very commonly used source of Supreme Court decisions, removing many of the references to Minor v. Happersett would cause people attempting to look into the legal question of Obama's citizenship to miss a decision that at least at first glance, has some relevance to the question.

This sounds so paranoid--but why this odd change to a decision more than a century old, exactly at the time that the controversy over Obama's citizenship came up--and now the decisions are apparently back to what they were before these references were flushed down the memory hole?  It could make you run out and download all the Supreme Court decisions to your own hard disk--just in case.

UPDATE: As some readers pointed out, the modified version of the case above replaced not just Minor, but also Ex parte Wilson, with a hyperlink to the newer method of citing Supreme Court cases: 88 U.S. 422 (which seems to be Minor's volume number, but Ex parte Wilson's page number).  Perhaps what happened was that someone at justia.com decided to replace all the old format citations (e.g., 21 Wall 462) with the U.S. format citations, and the script that they used did not do it correctly.  Still, when questions were raised, justia.com should have acknowledged that they screwed up, and were restoring them to the original contents.

As others have pointed out, if you were going to do a Ministry of Truth action like this, changing justia.com's copies would not be terribly effective unless you did likewise to the many other Supreme Court collections as well.  Never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity or accident; conspiracy requires intelligence, and there is not enough of that around to be a problem.

UPDATE 2: Even more reason to suspect incompetence, not conspiracy.  The modified version has the correct hyperlink for 88 US 162 (where Minor is located), but the text displayed is 88 US 422, which makes no sense at all.