Gizmos, are you implying that a citizen is not the same as a citizen of the United States?
Hi Spaulding,
No. My point was simply that the citizenship issue affected Alan Keyes' Senate race against Barack Obama, assuming that Obama never actually achieved citizen status (because of any of the various theories about his birth abroad, his childhood in another country, etc. etc.) and that "green card" residents are not citizens.
It would be mildly humorous if Obama (who, as I understand it won his Senate seat by having his opponents disqualified), was found to be ineligible to serve as a Senator, much less as President. Would he lose his fancy Congressional health-care? Would he still be in favor of his own health-care reform???
The thorny issue around much of this discussion, however, does involve the "levels" of citizenship. My personal opinion is that there are three types of citizenship: Naturalized (those born abroad who achieve citizenship by law or statute), Citizen (or Native Citizen, by birth to citizen parents or, as we currently interpret the anchor-baby issue, simply by being born on U.S. soil); and ultimately, Natural-Born Citizen (being born to two U.S. Citizens).
I think the case for these three types of citizenship has been very well presented on this thread and many others at FR, but it is certainly not a universally accepted standard.
However, I find it interesting that our courts have created standards for the first two types (laws and statutes, again) which are wholly unnecessary for Natural Born. Or, to put it another way, if a person achieves citizenship equal to other citizens because of a court-ruling or a law that was passed along the way, they cannot be a "Natural Born Citizen."