“Obama’s fathers was not a U. S. citizen, therefore Barack Obama II cannot be a natural born U. S. citizen. It doesn’t really matter where the birth took place.”
That’s the camp I fall into. Everything else is just useless noise.
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Except that ‘natural-born citizen’ SCOTUS precedent does seem to take the location of birth into consideration. I agree that the father’s citizenship is important, as would be the fact that BO was born in Kenya. It was certainly important to McCain as well, where he was born. I’m not sure which would have been more important in McCain’s case, but the non-binding Senate resolution ‘declared’ he was a ‘natural-born citizen’ and that seemed to be enough at the time.
I think the SCOTUS needs to address this. While I don’t normally cite wikipedia - here are the cases and such that govern this, to date, and they are instructive to a point - and the sources may be good references also.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen
imho, the SCOTUS has not made a definitive statement about this, perhaps because it’s never come up in quite this way.
The larger goal is to get him to open ALL of his records. So far it is alledged that much of his life, as he reported it, is a lie. So let’s see what’s there and let the chips fall where they may.
Yes, you're exactly right. There have been other cases that have touched on the issue in a peripheral way, but never one that addressed this central issue directly. Ark v. US, comes closest. And, I think it can be fairly said that the majority opinion in that case does go quite a long way in narrowing or clarifying what "natural-born" actually means. And, in their definition, Obama would be eligible. But, they don't go all the way.
As I said to another poster on this thread. It's my opinion that Obama doesn't qualify (assuming he's born in the States), but I could argue the position that he does with equal force and perhaps even more substantiation in case law. But, as the framers wrote and intended, I don't believe he qualifies. Unfortunately, that standard is not always the law of the land.