At least one clearly wasn’t. Another was found during the course of the investigation to have met the age requirement for the 2008 games, but to have competed in the 2004 games when she did not meet the age requirement.
Our competitors wisely did not make an issue out of it. Our officials pushed it a bit, but then wisely accepted the results of the official investigation. The fact is, there is absolutely no way to prove the birth date of some girl who was born in China 10-20 years ago, and there’s no point pretending there is.
There is also no way to absolutely prove the circumstances of Obama’s birth. If an original birth certificate is produced that shows he was born in Hawaii as he says, we still don’t know if he’s actually the same person as the baby the certificate was issued for. Maybe his mother had another baby, and that one went to Indonesia and stayed there or died, and Obama’s parents had him assume the identity of his US citizen brother, figuring that US citizenship was a handy thing to have. There is just NO way to reach absolute certainty on this point, and there is also no clear case lase or legislation or Constitutional provision that spells out exactly what standard of proof is legally sufficient. THAT is the reason that the everybody with any power wants this issue simply tossed out by the courts. The nation cannot afford to spend years in legal haggles, involving completely new case law and probably new legislation (which would firmly close the door on the matter, as long as the SC agreed it was consistent with the Constitution), with the question of who has the power vested in POTUS through all that time.
Why are some conservatives suddenly convinced that this one issue is the do-or-die save-the-Constitution issue? What happened to confiscate-to-redistribute taxation? And eminent domain used to transfer property from one private owner to another private owner preferred by the government? And concealed carry permits required in 48 of 50 states (and not readily available to all law abiding citizens in several of those)? Why the h*$$ should I care where the President was born, when close to 50% of my income is being confiscated every year via various types of taxes, with at least half of that redistributed by government entities for things I disapprove of and don’t benefit from, and when the government is tracking my gun purchases and threatening me with arrest if I carry without a permit? Heck, if a Presidential candidate came along who’s shown he was serious about fixing those and other *huge* unConstitutional abominations, I’d eagerly vote for him (or her) even if he readily admitted he was born in Saudi Arabia to Saudi parents and still held exclusively Saudi citizenship.
Maybe it's because this is an Article II question, and not a Bill of Rights question?
The Articles defined the basic structure of the federal government, and the limits placed on them. The Bill of Rights were amendments that contrasted the federal defining powers with the rights that were to remain with the people and the states. Your examples were:
What if we just ignored the 4-year term for the president in 2012? How would you feel about that? That's just a Constitutional provision, too, after all.
-PJ