Frankly, the whole Obama birther thing never really interested me very much, and surely doesn’t now. It is far more important to combat the ideas that constitute Obama’s very real political “alien-ness”, than to worry about whether he was born in the U.S. or in a taxicab in Nairobi (there is also the possibility that if we can ultimately defeat what is considered by many to be a popular and attractive messenger, we will go a long way toward finally destroying the appeal of the message).
Besides, if we’re talking about birthplaces, the more fascinating issue is not what country Barack Obama was born in, but what planet Joe Biden was born on.
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I agree that the "birther question" is foolish, and approaches the same level as "Trig Palin's parentage". Obama says he was born in Hawaii, and there are documents to support that (forget a state-issued birth document, how about the newspaper announcements?). This is a loony-conspiracy issue.
ReplyDeleteI want to see his college transcripts. I want to see how much of a lefty radical he was in his young adult years. It's not that he couldn't have changed his views as he grew older, it's that he apparently didn't, given his relationships with Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, among others, and his apparent dedication to the precepts of Saul Alinsky and the Chicago Political Machine.
We have a far-left, socialist-minded, anti-American president. There's no longer any way to refute that. It's time to get the bald facts out.
Said the same thing, albeit with an arguably better joke.
ReplyDeleteI'm aware of the signficance of the whole natural born thing of course but even if his Obamaness was born in Nairobi, aren't the children of US citizens born overseas automatically US citizens themselves? Granted his Dad was a Luyo but I gather his Mum was American going back several generations.
ReplyDeletecac: I believe you are right.
ReplyDeleteObama is presumably very unusual if not unique in having a foreign parent. I suspect he is the first president since the 1820s or thereabouts to have been born to a British subject and I assume that virtually all presidents since then have had natural born citizens as parents as well. Paco, as a man of immense learning and erudition (as well as creative business practices) can the Presidential Ancestory Computation Organisations shed any light on this?
ReplyDeletecac: The organization of which you speak does, indeed, possess the truth; however, the world simply wouldn't be able to handle it.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the laws of the time and the age of his teenage mother, no, Obama would not be a citizen of the United States if he were born in Kenya.
ReplyDeleteIt has always been my understanding that an American citizen, in order to be eligible for the presidency, had to be born on American soil, regardless of parentage. This requirement would be satisfied if he or she were born in an American embassy or on an American military base, for instance (both considered under American sovereignty).
ReplyDeleteObama claims to have been born in Hawaii (after statehood), and the paperwork thus far supports that. This is an unproductive line of inquiry in trying to discredit his presidency. Let's focus, instead, on his obvious inexperience and incompetence, his Harvard-generated elitist mentality as regards the American public, and his past associations with anti-American radicals. I don't even think Obama's possible views on race matter at this point, given all the other flaws in his governance.
Article 2, Section 1:
ReplyDelete"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 the President.
Joe Biden-proving the valdity of String Theory almost every day.
RebeccaH, the newspaper announcements are without much value as evidence. The only solid evidence of Obama's birth in Hawaii is the definitive statement that he was born in Hawaii, made by, I believe, the Director of the Hawaiian Department of Health, Dr Fukino. Contrary to other statements by the same and similar people, although today you could not easily get a Hawaiian birth certificate if you were not born there, in 1961 it was indeed possible. So the COLB document itself is not definitive.
ReplyDeleteThe statement by Dr Fukino should be regarded as authoritative, unless one wants to take the position that the Director is lying. The wording of the statement specifically says "born in Hawaii", not "has a valid Hawaiian birth certificate" or some such. Case closed on that one.
Whether he is a "natural born citizen" is less clear to me although I doubt that any clarification is likely from the only authoritative place on constitutional matters, the Supreme Court.