“The burden of proof is on Obama, Soetoro, or whatever his real name is, to prove he is Natural Born, not on others to prove he is not.”
You may wish this were the case, but it is not. The Constitution specifies no process for certifying presidential qualifications.
The fact that no detailed process has been specified is irrelevant to the question of burden. There is a long history of “burden of proof” in litigation, and in general that burden lies with the proponent of a fact essential to the cause of action, here, the purported fact that Obama is eligible under the Constitution to be President. Once the initial burden has been met, the denier of that fact must then produce evidence the fact is false.
The problem is, while the constitutional rule still implies a burden of proof on the candidate and his party, the current system relies too heavily on internal party vetting of candidate qualification. There’s a pathological conflict of interest in that. The adverse political party is a far better source of contrary evidence, but it often comes too late in the process, or not at all if bringing it up could backfire on other under-qualified candidates (as with the McCain eligibility flap). Once, Lord willing, we are done with Obama, this deficiency in the system needs to be revisited.
However, this is not strictly a litigation question, and runs more to the political sense of “burden of proof,” and all the legal fineries of burden of proof logic go pretty much out the window in favor of the common sense rule, which is still this, that if you say something is so, it’s up to you to prove it, and if you don’t prove it, the electorate has a right to doubt you, and to act politically on that doubt.
So really, the burden of proof is still on him no matter how you slice it. And he has failed to meet that burden, and we need to continuously remind the public that their intuition of doubt, brought on by his evasiveness and unwillingness to acknowledge his burden of proof, is fully justified, and not only so, but potentially explanatory of his aversion to policy that advances genuinely American interests. And if this self-inflicted doubt accelerates the dampening of his political power and his potential for reelection, then we can only count it a good thing to sustain that doubt by continually highlighting his obligation, his burden, to remove it, if he can.
Not true. In fact, The Twentieth Amendment, Section three REQUIRES that Congress verify that a President elect meets qualifications for the office of President or they, Congress, must name an interim President. Did Congress do it's job? If so, what evidence did they see to determine that we have a legal President? We the people certainly deserve to know whether or not we have a legal President don't we?
Here's why Congress is who we should be targeting for an answer to this question: