"No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."
Obviously the "Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" does not apply. So that leaves the "natural born Citizen" as the other operable requirement. I assume he has satisfied the age and residency requirements. It all goes to this natural born Citizen requirement.
Bushing off the arguments because Obama is a Citizen is the intellectually lazy way of trying to win the "argument". He may indeed be a Citizen. So is Henry Kissinger. So is Arnold Schwarzenegger. But they are ineligible to hold the office because of the natural born requirement.
Exactly. But why may Obama not be a natural born citizen? Because, at the time he was born, the rule was that if one of your parents was not a US citizen (and his father wasn't, everyone agrees to that), then either:
1) Your other parent had to have been a U.S. citizen for 5 years after having attained the age of 16 years; or
2) Notwithstanding 1), you were born within the borders of the United States or one of its territories.
OK, #1 doesn't work for him - his mother was only 19 when he was born - she would have had to have been 21 or older (and, similar to the fact that his father wasn't a US citizen, everyone agrees to this). That's why the issue of his birth in Hawaii (or the lack thereof) is so critical.
I would LOVE IT if someone convicted of a crime under a law signed by Obama would make the argument that they didn't violate the law, because there WAS NO LAW - THE BILL PASSED BY CONGRESS WAS NEVER SIGNED INTO LAW BY THE PRESIDENT, only by a man named Barack Hussein Obama, who was Consitutionally ineligible to hold the office of President of the United States. Either the case would have to be dismissed, or the BC would have to be obtained.