Zivotofsky vs. Clinton (White House Fail)

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the White House trying to pull a fast one on the Supreme Court. Apparently, the Plaintiff is a U.S. citizen who was born in Jerusalem in 2002. Shortly after his birth, his parents went to the U.S. Embassy to get a passport and birth certificate for him. They wanted his passport's country of origin and birth certificate's country of birth to be "Israel". Simple, right? Not so fast.

For a long time, the State Department didn't allow this. However, in 2002, President Bush signed a law that reversed this policy, and would allow a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their country of birth if they so requested it. But to throw another wrinkle in, Bush issued a "signing statement" when he signed the bill, which basically said he thought this infringed on the President's right to recognize foreign sovereigns. So anyway, Zivotofsky sues. (You can read his brief here.)

So the crux of the decision (as I humbly understand it) is whether the President should be allowed to recognize Jerusalem as Israel or not. So, what's really funny is this whole deal is the White House's website refers to Jerusalem as Israel a bunch. Or at least it used to. Someone at the White House got the brilliant idea, that since they had a case pending where their position is that Jerusalem is not "Israel" they should make their website conform to this idea so they can have a less problematic legal position. Obviously, you would look pretty silly if you're trying to argue that Jerusalem isn't in Israel if your own website has references to Jerusalem being in Israel - which it did.

So in a case that has been pending since 2003, the White House changes it's website in the last few weeks in an effort to not look like idiots. The funny part (to me) is how transparently ineffective this is website scrubbing is going to be. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with their opinions, the Supreme Court isn't made up of rubes. They're going to see right through the White House's website scrubbing, and it's not going to affect the outcome. I feel mildly confident that the Supreme Court (whatever the ultimate decision is) will let the IT staffers over at the White House know that they weren't fooled by the late-breaking website changes.