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To: rapndiamond
The Constitution refers to a requirement that a President have been a “natural born citizen”. If at the time of birth, Nobama had dual citizenship or had actually been born outside the USA, then that would call into question his status as a “natural born citizen”, don’t you think?

No, I don't think. There is nothing in the Constitution that forbids a President from having dual citizenship. The United States has no control over how foreign countries bestow their citizenship, only its own. And there is no provision in American law that allows a parent or stepparent to renounce the American citizenship of a minor child. So any renunciation by the stepfather has no force and effect, no matter what Indonesian law says. You don't want the Indonesian Parliament deciding who is and isn't an American citizen, do you?

No one has been able to provide proof that he was born outside the country. Even if they could under law passed in 1994 an American parent only had to reside in the U.S. for two years after fourteenth birthday, and the law was retroactive, covering births back to 1952.

And to quash your last dying hope of an argument, the no ex post facto doctrine only applies to criminal law. Citizenship law is not criminal law.

Personally I have no doubt that he was born in the United States, and believe all talk otherwise is just hot air. Those who believe otherwise, provide actual proof.

Do I think it is a good idea to have this man as President? No. But the American people have proven by their votes that they don't care. They will endure the consequences, whatever they are. Elections do have consequences.

73 posted on 11/17/2008 5:12:17 AM PST by Cheburashka (Democratic Underground: where PCP is not just for breakfast anymore.)
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To: Cheburashka

........They will endure the consequences,......

That remains to be seen. If the cities don’t become heaven on earth, there may be riots and destruction.

No pie......fire and looting


74 posted on 11/17/2008 5:18:55 AM PST by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . Save America......... put out lots of waferin)
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To: Cheburashka
Elections do have consequences.

So do violations of the Constitution upon which those elections are based.

77 posted on 11/17/2008 5:41:09 AM PST by Uncle Chip (TRUTH : Ignore it. Deride it. Allegorize it. Interpret it. But you can't ESCAPE it.)
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To: Cheburashka

“There is nothing in the Constitution that forbids a President from having dual citizenship.”

True, it is now recognized even at Obama’s officially sanctioned website that Obama was born with dual citizenship.

The entire notion of natural born citizen is embedded in “allegiance.” By common law, someone born on the king’s land automatically owed allegiance to the king (and conversely, was owed protection by that king).

The Founders COULD have decided that ANY citizen who had “been fourteen Years a resident within the United States” could serve as president. But one can infer that 14 years of residency did not in their eyes confer sufficient proof of allegiance to the U.S. to warrant someone being entrusted with the powers of the president.

Likewise, the Founders COULD have determined that an infant born in another country would be eligible so long as they moved to the U.S. and became a citizen within 1 year (or 1 month, 1 week or 1 day) of being born. But they didn’t even do that. It clearly was REALLY important to have as a president someone whose allegiance to the US was beyond dispute, i.e., a natural born citizen.

In theory, a child born as a dual citizen has (or could be argued to have) mixed loyalties. Suppose Obama had been born under identical circumstances, but his parents’ marriage turned out differently, i.e., they returned to Kenya with Senior and Obama stayed there until age 30—but never renounced his American citizenship. Then, like many Africans, he ended up getting both his college education and law degree from the very same schools that Obama did. After returned to Kenya after his JD, Obama decided to move to Chicago and try his hand at community organizing etc. According to your theory, there would be NO constitutional bar to Obama’s becoming our president. But in this counterfactual example, I hope you can see there would be some serious questions raised about where his real loyalties lay.

Obama never did live in Africa and one could argue that despite living far more of his life outside of the US than is typical of Americans his age born in the US, he has never indicated any allegiance to a country other than the US. If this were litigated, this presuming is exactly the argument that would be made on his behalf. But remember that an equally strong argument might be made for someone born in Mexico who legitimately immigrated to the US at age 1 and had been a US citizen ever since. But the latter individual unequivocably would not be constitutionally eligible to be our president.

The identical logic applies to Obama. A natural born citizen is one whose allegiance to the US was automatic and unequivocal. A dual citizen at birth does not meet this test. This is NOT an issue of some country retroactively declaring a presidential candidate one of its own citizens in order to trip up that candidate’s eligibility for office. This is an issue of what laws were on the books at the time Obama was born: he was born a dual citizen and up until age 21, he COULD have opted to become a full-fledged Kenyan citizen. And had his parents’ marriage worked out, that might well have been what would have happened to him.
Thus, the fact that he didn’t is irrelevant to his legal standing. By the logic of the Founders in setting the natural born citizen requirement in the first place, the fact that for nearly half his life Obama COULD have pondered being a citizen of some other country raises sufficient concerns about his allegiance to the US as to render him ineligible to serve as president.


80 posted on 11/17/2008 9:22:19 AM PST by DrC
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