Your post is 100% correct and I wish more birthers were as logical as you. Obama’s in office until 2012 - there simply is no way to remove him at this point. What needs to happen is clarify the requirements, get it nailed down what each candidate must do before being placed on a ballot, and dealing with it then.
Even doing it in one State will accomplish the goal. I suggest we choose Texas or another very conservative State and get the Secretary of State to require a long form birth certificate from each candidate to be on the ballot. Drop the issues over who is or isn’t a natural born citizen (there are valid interpretations and case law supporting one or two citizen parents), just make it about proving you have at least one citizen as parent and were born on US soil or US possession, and a long form BC is required to prove that.
Either President Obama presents his long form birth certificate for the 2012 election, or he drops out.
But for now, well, we have 3 more years to go and I don’t see him being removed from office any time soon, especially with a Democrat stranglehold on Congress. Even if the GOP retakes Congress, they will not have the 2/3rds majority in the Senate to remove him from office.
Stop personalizing it. You’re 100% correct.
I agree, but as long as Obama is in office, the argument is publicly and unavoidably attached to him, and, unfortunately, he will still be in office until a) he is sworn in for a second term (ugh!); or b) his successor is sworn in. No court will touch this until Obama is out of office and the current POTUS is indisputably, by any definition, a natural born citizen.
It would be nice to settle this issue once and for all, but it will have to wait, so I hope those who argue this issue somewhat interminably here continue to pursue it when that happens, for their own sake, if nothing else. And if the issue is litigated, and a decision made, I hope that will end the argument, and not result in accusations that the court was corrupt because they may not rule in the manner wished for here.
On the issue of the long form, a state may be able to demand a valid birth certificate (preferably supplied directly from the issuing authority, as transcripts are, to preserve the chain of custody), but I believe the requirement for the "long form" will be shot down legally, since the short form, which is being issued exclusively by more and more states, is sufficient and legal proof of birth. I think a court would rule that if a valid short form BC is sufficient proof of birth for a passport, for instance, it is sufficient proof of birth for anything else, including the Presidency.
Some of the state draft legislation I've seen doesn't distinguish between short and long forms, so if passed, the short form will have to be acceptable. None of the drafts I've seen specify that the BC must come directly from the issuing authority, either, which would leave room for accusations by conspiracists that it was tampered with along the way.