I agree, it should go to the Court for definition, especially given the ease of travel we have today. However it is defined though - Vattel or English common law - it won't be retroactive to President Obama, meaning he was eligible based upon the inconclusive phrase as it exists today.
At best, he may be prevented from running in 2012, but there is nothing that'll toss him out now because his eligibility is changed at some future point.
Obama’s campaign waived a statement that his father's children were governed by the BNA of 1948 like a red flag for all to see, yet he was inaugurated, which is a disgusting shame to me personally. I assign a probability near zero any chance that he will be removed or even prevented from running again by a SCOTUS ruling that Obama is not NBC due to his father.
Obama may have been so bold knowing that his parent's bigamous marriage might argue that he had sole legal loyalty to his single mother's country at birth and thus no legal foreign influence that John Jay warned about to Washington.
There remains, however, something that will toss him out and that is any proof that he was born outside the USA, which would also be an NBC violation, especially if if could be proved that Obama fraudulently concealed that fact. Other frauds, such as representing himself as a foreign student or social security number fraud could also trigger non-NBC risk of impeachment.
This is the eventuality that Obama shows every sign of fighting hardest to prevent, and he displays a high degree of conscious guilt that a non-USA birth is true by his refusal to release his contemporaneous HI vital records.
I believe that FReeper’s investigations and historical research do inform the legal cases that are still pending on both the paternal citizenship and birth location cases and can aid the lawyers in those cases in the fight to gain standing for discovery of the HI vital records. That is very much worth fighting for!
That is a matter of conjecture - subject to SCOTUS ruling too. The operable phrase would be:
"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President ...
If Obama was ruled ineligible by SCOTUS - he almost certainly would be removed from office immediately under the 25th Amendment or by impeachment. Congress could NOT let him stay in office - it would destroy the system of checks and balances upon which our government is based. As to the laws, treaties, and EO's he signed, who knows, again - it would be up to SCOTUS. Would they be invalidated ???
Biden would then become POTUS - assuming that SCOTUS DID NOT disqualify him based on a vote for Obama being a vote for him too. If disqualified, Pelosi would be POTUS.
When I first started researching the NBC eligibility question, I had no idea that it might have these POSSIBLE far-reaching consequences. I became convinced that the government [Congress, SCOTUS, or combination thereof] have failed to address this deficiency far too long.
How would they rule ??? I don't know. You know my opinion - I know yours. But, that is NOT the point - the point is that it needs to be resolved [one way or the other]. If SCOTUS were to rule for Obama [and the majority of the public disagreed with it], it could be changed via amendment. If they agreed with it, fine [but I would not be happy about it].
I believe in the Constitution and [when it is found to be deficient], its meaning needs to be clarified or amended - as needed.