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"Where does she get the idea that it doesn’t matter where Obama was born if his father was a British subject? I guess she’s never bothered to read the 14th Amendment, either."

Hey, give her a break. There are 27 of them. I'm guessing she's still in the single digits. She'll get there, eventually.

And I'll actually confess that I wasn't familiar with the case law surrounding the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. I knew about the blurb in the Slaughter House Cases, but I generally wrote that off as dicta. For that matter, it's dicta in what I consider one of the most poorly reasoned opinions in the history of the Supreme Court - worse than Roe and rivaling even Swift v. Tyson.

It seemed rather cut-and-dry to me that anyone born in the United States to parents here legally, not part of a diplomatic mission, and (perhaps) not here simply as tourists were "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and, therefore, citizens under the 14th Amendment. Certainly someone whose mother is a US citizen ought to qualify, and I'm not aware of anyone who is disputing that Obama's mother's citizenship.

Yeah, maybe he wasn't actually born in the United States, and that would certainly be a problem. However, the brief here argued that it didn't matter where he was born, which seems absurd.

I don't want to write off the issue of Obama's birthright citizenship, since some of his actions regarding that matter have been questionable. Yahoos like Orly Taitz certainly aren't lending any credibility to that cause, however.