Election 2004, USA Today
Should the Constitution be amended for Arnold?
By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Abolishing slavery. Giving women the vote. Establishing the income tax. Limiting presidents to two terms.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-12-02-schwarzenegger-amendment_x.htm
Through more than two centuries, it usually has taken a weighty cause to survive the burdensome process of amending the U.S. Constitution. Americans hold the work of the Founding Fathers in such reverence that they’ve added to it only 17 times since 1791. That’s when the first 10 amendments were codified as the Bill of Rights.
Now, debate over a proposed 28th Amendment is focused on the popularity and political future of one man: macho Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former bodybuilder and action-movie star who has been California’s governor for barely a year.
With a bit of encouragement from the Terminator himself, some of Schwarzenegger’s supporters are pushing for a constitutional amendment that would allow the Austrian-born governor to run for the White House as soon as 2008. Schwarzenegger is blocked by Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution. It reads, “No person except a natural born citizen ... shall be eligible to the office of president.” The 12th Amendment says the vice president cannot be foreign-born.
The U.S. Constitution, as amended, does not mention anything about the President’s place of birth to determine eligibility. We assume a natural born citizen must be born in the continental U.S., but there’s nothing in the Constitution that affirms the theory without doubts.
Examing the birth certificate is the beginning of eligibility confirmation for POTUS. Examing the candidate’s immigration file, if any, should be standard procedure for eligibilty confirmation.