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BTW, 2004 may have been the last time that a change of the NBC provision was discussed in Congress, but there were many earlier attempts, all of which failed!

The 2004 hearings quoted by WND show Orrin Hatch to be almost as unreliable as Barney Frank in terms of trying to change the Constitution by legislation rather than amendment. This is the same Hatch, it should be remembered, who tried to do an end run around the Constitution by endorsing a notion that DC should get an additional seat in the House while Utah would get an additional seat as well. Both of these episodes are black marks on Hatch's credentials as a "conservative."

Reading behind the lines, this Bob Unruh article suggests that WND sees, thanks in part to Diane Cotter of Examiner.com, the public becoming better informed about the provision in Article II Section 1 requiring natural born citizenship. That is welcome. It is a tangled web by design, I suspect. Obama may or may not have been born in Hawaii, but his British citizenship by birth is a direct invalidation. He was naturally born with multiple allegiances. Only the president and vice president must be born on our soil of parents who are citizens. Every citizen, naturalized or native, has all the protections and privileges of a natural born citizen, but only a natural born citizen may be president.

The new and valuable contribution of this article is the fact that congress was discussing and informed of the correct definition of natural born citizen - the accepted common law definition. Unruh still glosses over the fact that the various legislative efforts to make it appear that McCain's eligibility had been resolved were legally impotent. The issues remain, and can only be resolved by constitutional amendment. That means the idiotic responses by all legislators who misstate the meaning of natural born citizenship, in spite of dozens of supreme court cases with precedent (reinforcing the common law accepted by the founders) are to cover their behinds should he be removed. They knew, and every legislator should be replaced. I don't know whether legislative immunity covers their lies, but regardless, they have not protected our Constitution.

The existence of the bill raises the valid question of whether this was in anticipation of Obama running for president. We may never know, but a fact is that these efforts to amend Article II Section 1 Clause 5 are not unique. An Obama sponsoring law firm, Kirkham and Ellis, funded a Kent Law Review article in 2005 in which the author, Sarah Herlihy cited 24 previous attempts to amend Article II Sect 1 cl 5. (Her review article was about the same issue, and might be presumed to be preparing the path for Obama; though Kirkham also represented McCain, whose NBC status was always in doubt).

Something is all twisted here. I did extensive research on this and now WND & Talk radio news with a 1 minute clip are giving what I think is bogus information. The Senate Judiciary records for that day show something quite different.

http://judiciary.senate.gov/search.cfm?q=Maximizing+Voter+Choice%3A+Opening+the+Presidency+to+Naturalized+Americans&site=judiciary&num=10&filter=0&submit.x=10&submit.y=7

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?id=1326&wit_id=51

In 2004 Senator Nickles introduced a bill(S. 2128) to define ‘natural born’. It is in Part II of my series, A Congressional Natural Born Citizen. Those testifying that day were: Professor Akhil Amar, Doctor Matthew Spalding &
Professor John Yinger. Committee members were: Hatch, Leahy, Nickles & Conyers.

http://constitutionallyspeaking.wordpress.com/a-congressional-natural-born-citizen-parts-i-ii-iii/

If that audio came from Barney, it was not from the Senate hearing, I believe, from reading all the testimony on NBC thus far, that audio pertains to the numerous bills to eliminate the electoral college.

From Barney's statement in 2000: But whatever the rules are by which we elect people, I do not favor putting obstacles on the ability of the people to choose who they wish under those rules. I think the American public is perfectly capable of making those decisions, and for both those reasons I think the amendment is a good idea.

While the coverage is relevant & welcomed, atleast get the facts straight so people know where to look for the information. WND does none of this, they only quote what came from some blog without fact finding for themselves.

A congressional committee deliberated only five years ago a plan that would have opened the door to allowing immigrants and others who do not qualify as "natural born" citizens in the United States entry into the Oval office – but ended up killing the plan.

Let's not forget why this plan was deliberated in the first place.

This was shortly after Arnold Schwarzenegger won the California Recall election for Governor in 2003. There was "bipartisan" support for this at the time because the Democrats also saw Jennifer Granholm as their foreign-born rising star.

-PJ