[Kay Ludlow]

Only the headline is posted. You don't suppose the NYT is trying to make sure there is NO republican candidate, do you?

[Mr. Silverback]

NYT: McCain's Birthplace in Canal Zone Raises Eligibility Questions...

Yeah, if you're a complete and total moron. Unfortunately, the Times' nes room is full of complete and total morons.

[CatoRenasci]

I thought this was disposed of back in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran. Goldwater was born abroad to American citizen parents.

[HighlyOpinionated]

Barack Hussein Obama is a expletive deleted Muslim but that's okay with the NYT?

http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm

Barak Obama is 50% Caucasian, 43.75% Arab, and only 6.25% Negro-African. He doesn't have the lawful 12.5% Negro-African to legally claim to be African-American. Barak Obama is ARAB-AMERICAN.

http://www.masnet.org/prof_personality.asp?id=1508 http://www.bufford.politicalgateway.com/main/columns/read.html?col=737 http://www.themidnightsun.org/?p=1613 http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/080115/issues.html?.v=1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/08/wkenya308.xml http://kennethelamb.blogspot.com/2008/02/barak-obama-questions-about-ethnic.html http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_03_12/feature.html http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon212.htm http://barackobamacandidate.org/ http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/3/28/142319.shtml

From an email from someone who returned to the States on Feb 11 this year: “We were asked everywhere about the Presidential race in America. There was great interest. The Jews came up to us and asked us many questions. They said they do not want the Clintons again. They warned us that Obama is a Muslim, not a Christian. In Egypt, the Arabs said the same thing to us; they said Obama is Muslim and they are amazed that Americans would consider electing a Muslim President of America!!”

It's the truth that the NYT is trying to keep the public from knowing. These are all just little smoke screen fires to divert our attention from the truth until it's too late.

[votelife]

the Times couldn’t have know about this when the endorsed McCain for president right?

[weegee]

Hillary and Bill Clinton are both inelligible for a third term as co-presidents.

Bill has admitted he’s running again and will sit in on cabinet meetings. Hillary has claimed credit for her role in the 1990s White House.

The amendment doesn’t say you have to BE president, just acting as president. Hillary fulfilled that role with her Health Care hearings.

[FormerACLUmember]

After foisting McCain upon us (I will vote for McCain) the truly despicable NY Slimes publisher, "Pinch" Sulzberger, is engaged in an all out fraudulant campaign to destroy his candidacy.

"Pinch" back from the NY bar scene:

[LibertyRocks]

Is this really an issue? Weren’t his parents both U.S. Citizens? This is quite ridiculous, IMHO. I don’t like McCain, but geez...

[television is just wrong]

the whole thing about McCain was orchestrated by the liberal press. They have a love/hate thing with McCain...

[Jeff Head]

This is easy stuff, and the NYT knows it. McCain was born at a US military base of two American citizen parents...that makes him a natural born American citizen.

Then, in addition, there is this:

8 U.S.C. § 1403. Persons born in the Canal Zone or Republic of Panama on or after February 26, 1904

(a) Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.

(b) Any person born in the Republic of Panama on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States employed by the Government of the United States or by the Panama Railroad Company, or its successor in title, is declared to be a citizen of the United States.

End of story.

OBTW, where was Obama born?

[COgamer]

Wow... they really will not stop until they’ve completely discredited themselves. Two slimey attack articles in a week? Even liberals turned on them over their last story, and now this? Their circulation will be, well, their newsroom staff if they keep this up.

[Grunthor]

“McCain’s Birthplace in Canal Zone Raises Eligibility Questions...”

We’ve already looked into this, unfortunately there is nothing to be done to stop him.

[M203M4]

Complete BS, John McCain is American. This is crystal clear, there is no room for doubt, no need for analysis, no interpretation necessary. It is spelled out explicitly.

But what IS funny about this is that one could very accurately describe John McCain as an hispanic American. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/1997standards.html.

So we have, each respectively with significantly probability, the first potential female (well, sorta female) president, the first potential black (well, half-black) president, and the first potential hispanic president (well, sorta hispanic). LOL

[airedale]

It worked for Murtha. He gets to run unopposed.

[hope]

hmmm, they can only wish.

[newzjunkey]

How sad the NYTimes has degraded to this level.

[denydenydeny]

The Constitution means so little to liberals that they imagine that it means whatever they want it to mean.

It’s similar to the way the Democrats kept floating the “Bill Clinton as Vice President” trial balloon even though the Constitution clearly forbade it.

[Scotswife]

wow...if the NYT keeps this up McCain is going to win by a landslide.
They seem to have caught a case of Clinton-flu.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Asked and answered. I thought crack was passe. Why didn’t NYT get the memo?

[Salvation]

Haven’t we been here before?

[MeekOneGOP]

Only the headline is posted.

Well, not anymore. HERE is the link he has and the full post ...

- - - - - - -

McCain's birthplace prompts queries about whether that rules him out

By Carl Hulse

Thursday, February 28, 2008

WASHINGTON: The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

McCain's likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a "natural-born citizen" can hold the nation's highest office.

Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.

"There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent," said Sarah Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. "It is not a slam-dunk situation."

McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.

But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore Olson, a former solicitor general now advising McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. "I don't have much doubt about it," said Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of McCain's closest allies, said it would be incomprehensible to him if the son of a military member born in a military station could not run for president.

"He was posted there on orders from the United States government," Graham said of McCain's father. "If that becomes a problem, we need to tell every military family that your kid can't be president if they take an overseas assignment."

The phrase "natural born" was in early drafts of the Constitution. Scholars say notes of the Constitutional Convention give away little of the intent of the framers. Its origin may be traced to a letter from John Jay to George Washington, with Jay suggesting that to prevent foreigners from becoming commander in chief, the Constitution needed to "declare expressly" that only a natural-born citizen could be president.

Duggin and others who have explored the arcane subject in depth say legal argument and basic fairness may indeed be on the side of McCain, a longtime member of Congress from Arizona. But multiple experts and scholarly reviews say the issue has never been definitively resolved by either Congress or the Supreme Court.

Duggin favors a constitutional amendment to settle the matter. Others have called on Congress to guarantee that Americans born outside the national boundaries can legitimately see themselves as potential contenders for the Oval Office.

"They ought to have the same rights," said Don Nickles, a former Republican senator from Oklahoma who in 2004 introduced legislation that would have established that children born abroad to American citizens could harbor presidential ambitions without a legal cloud over their hopes. "There is some ambiguity because there has never been a court case on what 'natural-born citizen' means."

McCain's situation is different from those of the current governors of California and Michigan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm, who were born in other countries and were first citizens of those nations, rendering them naturalized Americans ineligible under current interpretations. The conflict that could conceivably ensnare McCain goes more to the interpretation of "natural born" when weighed against intent and decades of immigration law.

McCain is not the first person to find himself in these circumstances. The last Arizona Republican to be a presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, faced the issue. He was born in the Arizona territory in 1909, three years before it became a state. But Goldwater did not win, and the view at the time was that since he was born in a continental territory that later became a state, he probably met the standard.

It also surfaced in the 1968 candidacy of George Romney, who was born in Mexico, but again was not tested. The former Connecticut politician Lowell Weicker Jr., born in Paris, sought a legal analysis when considering the presidency, an aide said, and was assured he was eligible. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. was once viewed as a potential successor to his father, but was seen by some as ineligible since he had been born on Campobello Island in Canada. The 21st president, Chester Arthur, whose birthplace is Vermont, was rumored to have actually been born in Canada, prompting some to question his eligibility.

Quickly recognizing confusion over the evolving nature of citizenship, the First Congress in 1790 passed a measure that did define children of citizens "born beyond the sea, or out of the limits of the United States to be natural born." But that law is still seen as potentially unconstitutional and was overtaken by subsequent legislation that omitted the "natural-born" phrase.

McCain's citizenship was established by statutes covering the offspring of Americans abroad and laws specific to the Canal Zone as Congress realized that Americans would be living and working in the area for extended periods. But whether he qualifies as natural-born has been a topic of Internet buzz for months, with some declaring him ineligible while others assert that he meets all the basic constitutional qualifications — a natural-born citizen at least 35 years of age with 14 years of residence.

"I don't think he has any problem whatsoever," said Nickles, a McCain supporter. "But I wouldn't be a bit surprised if somebody is going to try to make an issue out of it. If it goes to court, I think he will win."

Lawyers who have examined the topic say there is not just confusion about the provision itself, but uncertainty about who would have the legal standing to challenge a candidate on such grounds, what form a challenge could take and whether it would have to wait until after the election or could be made at any time.

In a paper written 20 years ago for the Yale Law Journal on the natural-born enigma, Jill Pryor, now a lawyer in Atlanta, said that any legal challenge to a presidential candidate born outside national boundaries would be "unpredictable and unsatisfactory."

"If I were on the Supreme Court, I would decide for John McCain," Pryor said in a recent interview. "But it is certainly not a frivolous issue."