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You are making a lot of assumptions and ignoring the facts. Obama lived in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. He returned to the US and lived in Hawaii thereafter. More than likely, he traveled to and returned from Indonesia using a US passport.

You claim I am "making assumptions" and then YOU state "more than likely he traveled to Indonesia using a US passport"?

Huh? How do YOU know what passport he used when entering and leaving Indonesia? You are just "making an assumption."

It would have been very difficult for him to live with his grandparents other than as a US citizen. The contemperaneous notification in the Hawaiian newspapers of his birth is evidence that the mother and grandparents wanted US citizenship for him, no matter where he may have really been born.

You are not paying attention to what I am saying.

I am not saying he went in and formally renounced his US citizenship before a State Department official and surrendered his US passport. WHAT YOU DON'T SEEM TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT A FORMAL RENUNCIATION IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO LOSE US CITIZENSHIP UNDER OUR LAW.

If little Barry had an Indonesian passport, how would the US even know? I hope I am not shocking you when I tell you that whenever some country in the world issues a passport to one of its citizens, they do NOT send a letter to the US State Department.

The US State Department has no way of knowing when Indonesia issues a passport to somebody.

Stop and actually think for a moment about what the natural course of events for this family most likely would have been.

When Lolo and Stanley Ann married, they could not look into the future and know that the marriage would break up. They undoubtedly expected that they would be married for the indefinite future and therefore that Lolo and Stanley Ann would together be raising Barry to adulthood.

Also, when Lolo was denied a visa for permanent resident status and told he must leave the United States, their only expectation at that time was that they would be living and raising their family in Indonesia for the indefinite future.

Barry was a very small child at the time of the marriage in 1965, only three years old. We are not talking about a teenager. And Obama Sr. had abandoned him before he was even born.

It would have been a natural step for Lolo to adopt Barry under Indonesian law in order to have full parental authority over him, given that their expectation must have been that Lolo and Stanley Ann were going to raise him in their family in Indonesia until he became an adult.

So we should not be too surprised if Barry gained Indonesian citizenship. If Lolo adopted Barry before he turned five (or if they told the authorities he was not yet five) then they could have automatically registered Barry as an Indonesian citizen.

And indeed, we know that Barry was listed as an Indonesian citizen on his Indonesian school records.

This doesn't mean they notified the US State Department of what they were doing under Indonesian law. And if they didn't notify the US State Department, then as far as US records were concerned, Barry continued to be a US citizen.

If Barry became an Indonesian citizen, and the family expected to live together in Indonesia indefinitely, then it should not surprise us if they also obtained an Indonesian passport for him.

But obviously things took a dramatic turn in a different direction when the marriage started to fall apart. Stanley Ann made a decision that Barry would be better off living with his grandparents in Hawaii and being taught in US schools.

AT THAT POINT, the expectation changed - the expectation was that Barry would then be raised for the indefinite future in the US, with occasional visits from time to time back to Indonesia.

We know from her passport records that Stanley Ann had previously removed Barry from her own passport (in 1967 or 1968 IIRC) and at the time referred to him by an Indonesian name, Soebarkah.

NOW THAT THE SITUATION HAD CHANGED, and he was going to be raised in the United States, it would have been natural for them to go to the US embassy and get a US passport for 10-year-old Barry. Since he had previously appeared on Stanley Ann's passport, undoubtedly, this was not a difficult task. And I very much doubt they would have volunteered the information that as far as Indonesia knew, Barry was an Indonesian citizen and they had in their back pocket a passport issued by Indonesia.

And by the same token, when they went to the US embassy and got a passport for Barry, they probably did NOT call up the Indonesian authorities and tell them what they had done.

If we don't read history backwards, and we think about what would have been the natural decisions this family might have made on the basis that they could not see in the future, it should not be surprising to us if when 10-year-old Barry was sent back to the US to live indefinitely with his grandparents, he traveled on a newly-issued US passport and was planning to live in Hawaii as a US citizen from that time forward. And that he had in his back pocket an old Indonesian passport and that as far as Indonesia was concerned, he was an Indonesian citizen.

And hanging onto his Indonesian passport might have been useful from time to time. He could use it to enter or leave Indonesia. He could use it to travel to other countries if for some reason he did not wish to identify himself as a US citizen. He could use his Indonesian status to hold himself out as a foreign student if he thought it advantageous in applying for college. He could use it to stay for months in Bali while working on his book.

I said: If Obama decided to do some such thing prior to turning 21 in order to hang onto his Indonesian nationality then he likely lost his US nationality under paragraph (1), without even taking into account actions he may have taken under paragraph (2) or paragraph (5). Again, he would have lost his nationality even if no one in the US State Department even knew about it.

You said: Again, lots of assumptions without any facts. And if no one in the State Department knew about it, then he never renounced his citizenship. Certainly, the Indonesians would have such a record if they issued him a passport.

You say that if no one in the State Department knew about it, then he never renounced his citizenship.

Again, let me repeat: FORMALLY RENOUNCING CITIZENSHIP TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO LOSE US CITIZENSHIP.

I even quoted to you THE OTHER SECTIONS OF THE STATUTE IN EFFECT AT THE TIME. Are you just pretending these other parts of our law do not exist?

If, in those years (which was before our law was relaxed in a number of respects) Obama on his own application obtained Indonesian nationality, then he would have lost US citizenship. Whether or not anyone in the US State Department was told about it.

Similarly, if, in those years Obama was deemed to have made formal allegiance to Indonesia, he would have lost his US citizenship. Whether or not anyone in the US State Department was told about it.

And there were other ways to lose US citizenship, not relevant to Obama. If he had served in the armed forces of a hostile state, he would have lost US citizenship. Whether or not anyone in the US State Department was told about it.

The reality is that it is very difficult to lose your citizenship. There are plenty of SCOTUS cases on the issue

Actually, there are not "plenty" of Supreme Court cases on this issue. But in my view, the legal analysis must start with the Supreme Court opinion in Kawakita v United States. There, the Court, albeit in an earler version of the law (the Nationality Act of 1940), addressed generally matters of expatriation and allegiance. In that case, the appellant had argued the reverse, that is in order to escape a conviction for treason he argued that he had taken actions which had the effect of expatriating himself from the US and making allegiance to Japan. The Court held based on the facts in that case that Kawakita did not expatriate himself and affirmed a conviction for treason. (JFK later pardoned him.) An analysis of the approach and reasoning of the Supreme Court in that case in my view supports a determination that Obama would have expatriated himself if as an adult he obtained or renewed a passport in Indonesia under circumstances where it was clear that to get such a passport one could not be a citizen of another country (even though it is the opposite result reached in Kawakita).

And there are plenty of cases where people tried to renounce their citizenship and it was rejected. Applying for a passport from another country is not ipso facto evidence for loss of citizenship. I bet Rahm Emanuel has or had Israeli citizenship when he served in Israel assisting the Israeli military.

I explained in post 51 earlier in this thread how under our law a situation like Israel is different from Obama's situation in Indonesia.