Pissant, you’re a great asset to this community, and I know that this is an issue that you’ve researched in great depth. By no means am I asking for or inciting a flame war here, but I don’t understand the issue.
Article 2, Section 1 Paragraph 5 of the Constitution states: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
Now, Obama’s mother was a citizen of the United States. Does that not make him a natural born citizen, regardless of his place of birth? Do you have to pop out of the womb in US territory to be a natural born citizen?
And if we’re going into semantics, if we want to get really, really literal, can a caesarian baby hope to grow up to become president, since by definition they never traveled down the birth canal?
I’m not trying to pick a fight. I’m trying to pick my battles. This one seems hollow to me. He’s going to be president for then next four to eight years and I don’t want to spend that time screaming at a wall.
It is very simple. The Constitution did not specifically define natural born citizen (NBC). So it was left up to the congress, the states, and common law. And from nearly the beginning they have stipulated what it meant to be considered a NBC. The law, as it stood in 1961 would not have let Obama’s mother (a citizen) confer NBC status to a child if he were foreign born and the father a non-citizen. She needed to be 19 years of age for that to happen. She was not.
here’s a good discussion of it:
http://federalistblog.us/2008/11/natural-born_citizen_defined.html
The key here is that until the facts are establsihed, the law can not be applied to the situation, and the defendant has failed to produce the documentation requested in the lawsuits.
His contesting of the lawsuits, and stonewalling of the demands to produce proof of his place of birth, creates the very reasonable inference that he is hiding the truth (as he has also concealed his medical, college and law school records).
I have been a birther since the early fall, but as the Kenyan moves the country in very strange directions, more and more people are going to want to know more about his hidden past.