[Lancey Howard]

The law that supposedly DQ’s Obama was in effect when he was born, but no longer applies to thise born in the last 40 years. If he had been born 4 months later, he would no way be DQ’d. All this assumes that he was NOT born in the US.

Say what?

[cookcounty]

The law I’ve seen cited repeatedly here at FR was superseded in the 1970’s by a further clarification. Yeah, technically Obama falls under the previous law about the citizen mother spending 5 years after her 14th birthday and before the birth of her child in the US, but with Obama being born to a teenage mother, it would literally be impossible to fulfill this requirement.

Was the intent to DQ children of teenage mom’s? or to discourage divided loyalties that could result from spending too much time in the years around the birth in a foreign land?

Obama’s mom DID live in the US five years before, and 5 years after Obama’s birth (with a possible short visit oversas), so the DQ comes because she did not sandwich the “five years” between her 14th bithday and Barack’s birth, 4 years and 8 months later. I don’t think the courts are going to do anything. It’s too easy to wiggle out of this, and wiggling is what they desperately would want.