'Obama was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii': President claims he WAS born in Africa

In the cover for a 1991 booklet, President Obama is billed as ‘the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, (who) was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’

‘It is evidence – not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.’

President Obama released his birth certificate to the public last April. He said during a press briefing at the time that he was ‘puzzled at the degree to which this thing just keeps going on.’ He said: ‘We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.’

The internet took to the Breitbart story like wildfire, with both the left and right coming up with heated responses to the article. Media Matters for America, a politically progressive watchdog group, called the article ‘the latest instalment of the self-serious and wildly incompetent Breitbart.com-let “vetting” of President Obama.’ They point out an article published February 6, 1990 in the New York Times, which declares that Mr Obama, 28, was elected as the first black president to The Harvard Law Review. It read: ‘His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr Obama was born in Hawaii.’ Mr Obama submitted a book proposal to Simon & Schuster imprint Poseidon Press worth more than six figures in November 1990. The book, tentatively called Journeys In Black And White, was later abandoned for the autobiography Dreams From My Father.

I guess I will post this again every week or so. Anyone who thinks that the citizenship of the parents has any legal impact on eligibility of a person to hold the office of President under Article II, Section 1 is not being realistic.
Real Constitutional Lawyers react to this argument the same way the ALJ in Georgia did; the same way the well known Constitutional Lawyer who wrote the Congressional Research Service opinion did; the same way the academic Constitutional Law bar reacts--we don't listen to the argument because it is settled law that a person born in the United States under any circumstances is a Natural Born Citizen for all purposes.

I know you won't like the answer--but the issue is settled law because the academic Constitutional Law community; as well as the professional Constitutional Law bar sees the issue as resolved.

The Natural Born clause is disfavored generally on policy grounds--the establishment would prefer not to need to deal with the issue and the efforts to change it are to substitute a provision that says that a person who is a citizen by any means who has resided in the US for some discrete period (twenty or twenty-five years) is eligibile.

Yes, an anchor baby or other baby who originated with the intention to make him or her eligibile would qualify--no one has ever thought that was a serious risk until now.

In addition to the goal of not being limited in their ability to install someone as President, there is the concern that in the event of a succession issue (because the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, etc. are eliminated in some kind of adverse event) there would be an objective to have an immediate answer to the "who is in charge" question without any issue about where the person holding the office of Secretary of State or Treasury or who is next in line was born.

The academics all think that is a reasonable set of goals. I do not agree but a number of amature lawyers here want to keep rearguing what is not only a settled legal question but also one which interferes with the primary objective of forcing Zero to explain where he was in fact born and what his personal history really is.

No I am not going to write you a brief on the issue--you can read the opinion published by the Congressional Research Service, the first 40 pages of which are a reasonable summary of the law and state the overwhelming view of the bar.

Is that how we ought to make Constitutional Law on unsettled questions? No.

Is that how we do it? Yes.

The actual state of the legal question on the record at present is this.

Zero has gone around for years telling people he was born in Kenya. Those statements are evidence--they are admissible as either an exception to the Hearsay rule or they are not Hearsay depending on the jurisdiction and the character of and parties to the legal action where the issue is presented.

And those statements are the only evidence on this issue. So all you had to do to win before the ALJ in Georgia was make a credible showing that the latest Hawaii birth certificate was fraudulent; and present a handful of affidavits from people to whom Zero made such statements or who heard him make such statements.

We lost because the lawyers who argued the case on our behalf did not do a good job for our position under circumstances where a win was almost certain.

The ALJ wouldn't even let Orly make your argument during her oral presentation.

Do I think he was born in Kenya? Probably not. I know of a number of facts that lead me to think the Kenya story is a fairy tale but so far that is not conclusive.

Place of Birth? In his last twelve pages, the Congressional Research opinion author makes the argument that even that makes no difference--even if it proves Zero was born outside the US, he ought to be eligible. I respectfully disagree although you can expect to hear that argument if it ultimately proves he was in fact born elsewhere.

On that score, the Liberals and the Academic Community made such a conclusive argument against Goldwater and Romney #1 that I think they are pretty well stuck with the proposition that a person born outside the US would be held not eligible.

I am not going to address the possible US birth record for Zero at this time.

Other than that, where he was born is unclear. And given the expensive effort undertaken on his behalf to conceal where he was born, it is going to take significant financial resources to find evidence to prove the actual location.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.