Replies

We were always taught in school, born in the U.S. of two citizen parents. I remember it being pretty well understood that if you were born outside the U.S. for any reason, you couldn't be President.

Seems to me a lot of people are clouding the waters of what used to be a pretty widely understood standard.

I went to pretty good schools during my primary education years. Mostly Army schools for the dependents of US servicemen. They were on par with the parochial schools of my day.

As I recall, we studied very little of the Constitution itself, mostly memorizing the preamble, and digging into the first ten Amendments. The rest, they sort of left for college, I guess.

But to your point, I can specifically remember learning that a president was required to be born in the US to two citizen parents. It was just part of the package of general things we learned about the nation's founding.

It astounds me that the requirements for NBC have become muddied so badly, just since I was a kid.

In practicality, there are nine types of children:

l. Child of citizen mother and citizen father, born in the United States. (natural born citizen)
2. Child of citizen mother and alien father, born in the United States. (Obama's case)
3. Child of alien mother and citizen father, born in the United States.
4. Child of citizen mother and citizen father, born outside the United States. (McCain's case)
5. Child of citizen mother and alien father, born outside the United States. (Cruz' case)
6. Child of alien mother and citizen father, born outside the United States. (discussed in the proviso of the Naturalization act of 1790)
7. Child of alien mother and alien father, born in the United States. (Anchor baby, questionable unless one supports birthright citizenship) (Jindal's and Rubio's case)
8. Child of alien mother and alien father, born outside the United States. (not a citizen until naturalized)
9. Child of unknown origin. (naturalized citizen)

The dichotomy argument is too narrow to have a full robust discussion of the matter. It needs to be expanded to encompass all eight scenarios within the context of the Preamble's intent to secure liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

In other words, which of the above nine babies would you want to be President someday?

Levin is apparently in one or both of two camps: 1) Any child of an American is a natural born citizen, and 2) no court will take up a "political" issue so it's a waste of time. Listening to him, my impression is that he really doesn't care about it unless you were foreign born to two non-citizens. He seems to take the negative logic approach: define what is clearly NOT a natural born citizen (like Arnold Schwarzenegger), and everyone else is.

-PJ