The Morphing Obama Biography and the Skeptics (a biography that can adapt itself)

An odd taboo has been created on noticing that the president of the United States has a biography that can adapt itself to the needs of the moment. Go too far in raising an alarm, and be labeled "birther" and shunned in polite society.

The credit for creating the "birther" label was claimed in 2008 by columnist David Weigel:

I think I originally coined the term "Birthers" to describe the people who think the state of Hawaii and its time travel machine are concealing the truth about Obama's birth on the roof of a mosque in Kenya. It's not just the reference to 9/11 "truthers" that I like. It's the callback to the John Birch Society, id est the "Birchers."

Weigel was also the most notorious "JournoLister." In case you've forgotten about that left-wing media cabal, this Daily Caller article described the JournoList's coordinated efforts to bury the Jeremiah Wright story during the 2008 campaign. (Although JournoList was disbanded in 2010, the mainstream media, in remarkable unison, have covered up the recent revelation that Wright was bribed $150,000 to keep quiet.)

The sarcastic "birther" post was written by Weigel long before the Breitbart discovery of the literary agency biography that claimed Obama was born in Kenya. That portion of the biography's claims survived for over 16 years through multiple other updates. Likely, many in the circles of publishing, Chicago politics, and Obama's college and early career days had heard or read about a Kenyan birth somewhere. Which leaves open the possibility that Weigel and his fellow JournoListers tripped over the story, or were slipped a tip, early in the campaign, and chose to utilize Alinksy tactics in case such tidbits oozed through any cracks in the preferred narrative.

For those interested in the truth, Obama was in the legal custody of Catholic Social Services of Connecticut from age 10 to 18 while living with his grandmother in Hawaii as a Permanent Resident Alien with Indonesian Nationality. Obama’s grandmother was his appointed guardian, commonly referred to as his foster parent.

In 1983, Obama naturalized as a U.S. Citizen. His Certificate of Naturalization is on file with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

It is an argument that I have no current qualms with. It is as plausible and fits the known facts as well as anything else i've heard so far.

I also like to point out this sentence in Minor v Happersett.

The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens.

In light of the fact that the court was well aware of the 14th amendment, (Which explicitly says who shall be a "citizen") I take this as an absolute acknowledgement that 14th amendment citizenship is NOT the same thing as "natural born citizenship."

If it were, the court would not have made the above statement.

Disagree. Particularly with regard to the sex of the citizen parent being critical.

You simply need more knowledge of our history and our law. It was the Cable act which first allowed women to transfer citizenship. This ability was later reinforced by the Women's citizenship act of 1934. It is only on the bases of these two statutes that women were ever allowed to transfer citizenship, and as the court noted in Rogers v Bellei, a citizen created through statute is subject to the requirements congress placed on the statute when they created it.

I would further point out that the U.S. Constitution only grants Congress the power to "naturalize". It has no other means of creating a citizen than "naturalization." Therefore all citizens created by acts of a statute, are "naturalized" citizens.

Modern courts (after Roosevelt got through screwing them up) would regard sex discrimination in law as repugnant, but it was in fact the norm for most of this nation's history. Even the Court in Minor acknowledges the legitimacy of sex discrimination in law.

U.S. Supreme Court: United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)

The Constitution .... must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution.

The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law.

IOW, the first and most important place to look when attempting to figure out the meaning of language in the Constitution is the common law. It was the source for the legal language used when the Constitution was written.

It could hardly be otherwise. Many, perhaps most, of the Founder were attorneys who worked with the common law every day. Those who weren't attorneys had been thru a course of education of which study of the common law formed a major part. Common law legal texts were found in every gentleman's library, and were undoubtedly owned by every member of the Convention.

The issue of what is meant by the term "natural born citizen" is most definitely a matter of The language of the Constitution and can not be understood without reference to the common law.

It is certainly a much more logical place to look than a somewhat obscure book on international law by a Swiss German attorney working from an entirely separate and foreign body of law.

I suspect references in legal works and on the internet to Vattel were practically non-existent prior to Obama's run for the presidency.

It would be interesting for someone to go through all Supreme Court decisions and enumerate the number of times reference is made to common law as compared to the works of Mr. Vattel.

I cheerfully agree there is no such clause.

However, the Supreme Court in the Wong Kim Ark case, and no doubt in many others, specifically stated that the language of the Constitution must be interpreted in light of common law.

Since the language of the Constitution is what is at issue here, the definition of NBC, will you not agree that common law is the first and most important place to look for guidance as to the meaning of the term?

The jurisidiction of federal courts is defined by the Constitution. That written law does not grant to the federal judiciary the authority to incorporate other systems of law of its own chosing, does not incorporate the common law of England, nor the law or consitution of the several states.

To deny these constraints is a dangerous usurpation and a direct subversion of the fundamental principle of seperation of powers.

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