I looked at that some more, and there was a case where someone went through a sex change operation to become female, had their BC from that state amended to show the new gender, and got married in Kansas to a guy. When the husband died a relative showed up contesting whether the wife could automatically inherit as a wife because Kansas doesn’t allow same-sex marriage. At issue was whether Kansas had to accept the BC-issuing state’s ruling that gender was determined by current anatomy or whether Kansas could use their own criteria for determining gender (based on anatomy at birth).
The court and the appeals court agreed that Kansas could apply its own criteria, not necessarily having to accept the amended BC’s determination that the person was now female at the time of the marriage in Kansas. SCOTUS wouldn’t take the case so the lower rulings stood.
And there’s the big issue whether marriage certificates issued by states which have same-sex marriage have to be accepted in other states which only allow male-female marriage. AND whether the certificates, if accepted, have to mean that people in same-sex “marriages” get the same benefits.
There’s also this at http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-07-99-00570.pdf which talks about how prevalent document fraud is, including with documents that appear genuine. It talks about states needing to decide what documentation to require in order to catch and stop document fraud. The idea is that states SHOULDN’T just automatically accept a birth certificate as proof without other documentation as well.
I haven’t fully digested that report but from the first reading of it I think that the way a person would get to the bottom of identity fraud where a fake is used to create genuine documents would be to have the birth and citizenship records and look at the logs which say when they were generated and/or amended and on what basis. Which is actually what this kind of bill would require.
It would be great if the House would subpoena the records. I contacted Issa and a couple others asking them to do exactly that. They’re not going to though. The media would eat them alive, and they don’t think it would be an effective use of their time.
I begrudgingly looked at other options when I realized they weren’t going to do it. The CRS says the states are responsible for vetting so the states would be a good place to do it, if only because we can quote the “experts” as agreeing. But there are other advantages to the states doing it as well.
The states by actually using the 2-citizen-parent interpretation can force the courts to rule on the definition of NBC, which is critical.
And the states can grant regular people the chance to both scrutinize the records and to present an argument before the court, which is important because that is the only way to insure that an AG who likes the candidate doesn’t just deliberately leave out information or otherwise screw up the court case.
To specifically get rid of Obama before 2012 would require the House or a state AG to investigate, but even at that the process probably wouldn’t be done by the time 2012 got here, and there would be political heck to pay because of the media.
Going the route with the states, we can bring back all the quotes people gave saying that if we had problems with Obama we should pass an eligibility law - which they acknowledged would be a reasonable way to resolve these questions and issues. There isn’t a decent argument that the media could even attempt to make (although I’m sure they will amaze me with their stupidity anyway. lol)
My first choice in dealing with Obama would have been a Congressional or state AG investigation. Believe me, I’ve tried to get that, and it’s just not gonna happen. But we eventually need state eligibility bills anyway, and there are some bright sides to doing it this way as well.
The problem only arises if a state decides that in order to run for president in the state, the person must first prove he/she is a natural born citizen by using a birth certificate. If a state requires a birth certificate, then the state will be required to accept the accuracy of a birth certificate issued by another state and made a public record of that other state.
The constitution doesn't require birth certificates and many of our early presidents probably didn't have one. A state will create a trap for itself if it tries to demand that a candidate submit a birth certificate (probably unconstitutional) and then refuses to accept the accuracy of a birth certificate (public record) issued by another state (also unconstitutional).
If Boehner and his boys refuse to subpoena all of the birth documents, then we're either going to be stuck using the public records that Hawaii chooses to make public or we're going to have to figure out a way to determine qualifications of all candidates without using anyone's birth certificates.