But why is it so hard to get people to understand this simple set of facts?
Obama, by concealing records has "hinted" that we check on his birth certificate, passport data, school records, etc. What he hs done is to distract from the real issue.
He certainly has "distracted" a fair number of FReepers who ought to know better.
People, including myself, found it hard to accept that senior legislators would assiduously avoid the Article II issue. Having spent some years in the military I was sure some experienced officer, having seen men die, and seen the tortured families of the men who don't return, would raise the question. After all, fewer and fewer legislators have military experience.
Then there is the the well-funded, and with our dollars, campaign to besmirch the motives or concerns of those who take an active roll. Perhaps you too have read some of the dozens of legal briefs leading up to the campaign discussion natural born citizenship, but remarkably avoiding the very court cases in which the definition is cited and stated.
It took me some time and much reading to have no doubt that the definition we know was very much the mainstream, and exactly what our founders intended. I even came across data counting the legal citations of the time and which not only confirmed that Vattel was familiar to the legal community, Vattel was the most cited legal reference between 1789 and 1820.
What seems clear is that those in authority are not willing to protect the Constitution. Perhaps they feel that its authority has been so weakened that acting on what amounts to a jeering rebuke of our founders, Obama told everyone, “I was born a subject of the British Commonwealth.” He knew he wouldn't be challenged.
I have asked myself if McCain was a partner. McCain has received Soros funds. That is a matter of public record. Did McCain have such a feeling of entitlement that he cooperated with the Obama camp? McCain is very familiar with his issues, unfair though they may be to someone who has been a POW. The law firm defending McCain in one of the legal challenges of his ineligibility, Kendall & Ellis, had a senior partner on Obama’s campaign committee, and sponsored a Chicago Kent Law Review article challenging Article II, and of course, never referencing chief justices Marshall or Waite, or The Venus, or Happersett.
I have also begun to wonder if the GOP is avoiding the issue because they anticipate large gains in both houses with Obama in office. It is probably wishful thinking, but if and when the Constitution is observed, no act by Obama is law. Meanwhile, our legislators are, in my view, playing strategic games with our Consititution. Could decision makers have so little faith in our courts, including the Supreme Court (with its idiotic decision on CO2) that they will spring ineligibility when it will erase the most damage?
Whatever the case it is in our interest that people like you, rsxid, and some other very knowledgeable FR contributors to calmly explain what the law is, and perhaps to explain why our founders chose that precept of natural law, that parents shape the child, to help keep us free.