To be eligible for the presidency, a person must be a 'natural born citizen." The overwhelming evidence is that President Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. However that may not be the end of the story.
A scholarly article on The Federalist Blog, "Defining Natural born Citizen" written in November 2008 explains the history of the term "natural born citizen" and discusses the effect of the Fourteenth Amendment. The article contains the following statement in the analysis:
One universal point most all early publicists agreed on was natural-born citizen must mean one who is a citizen by no act of law. If a person owes their citizenship to some act of law (naturalization for example), they cannot be considered a natural-born citizen. This leads us to defining natural-born citizen under the laws of nature - laws the founders recognized and embraced.Barack Obama's father was a British citizen.
Under the laws of nature, every child born requires no act of law to establish the fact the child inherits through nature his/her father’s citizenship as well as his name (or even his property) through birth. This law of nature is also recognized by law of nations. Sen. Howard said the citizenship clause under the Fourteenth Amendment was by virtue of “natural law and national law.”
In other words, it is reasonable to questions Mr. Obama's eligibility to serve, but darned tough to get that issue to court. The Supreme Court has already refused to hear an emergency petition this issue which were raised in Leo Donofrio v. Nina Mitchell Wells, which I believe (from memory, sometimes faulty) in the lower court was decided on a standing issue, i.e., Leo Donofrio, citizen, lacked standing to raise the natural Born citizen issue over then candidate Barack Obama.
The following statement was released by Leo Donofrio after the Supreme Court declined to hear his emergency petition:
Before I address the legal facts of this headline, I want to address all of the other Presidential eligibility cases that went before SCOTUS including my own. It’s true that – technically – Donofrio v. Wells could still be pending if I chose to submit a full petition for writ of certiorari. Many have written to me and asked why I haven’t resorted to that tactic. The answer is fairly simple: my case is moot.Full statement here.
The same is true for Wrotnowski v. Bysiewicz, Lightfoot v. Bowen and the Berg cases, all of which asked for emergency stays or emergency injunctions to stop a candidate from becoming “president-elect” and later president.
Once my case stay application was denied, I had exhausted the only emergency procedure available to me and the US Supreme Court Rules would not have facilitated the resolution of a full petition before the candidate was sworn in as President (or become president-elect).
When Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts as President, our Constitutional separation of powers kicked in big time. Because of the separation of powers enumerated in our Constitution, the United States Supreme Court has no ability to remove a sitting President. Nowhere in the Document does it give the Supreme Court (or the judicial branch) any authority to remove a sitting President.
All of the eligibility law suits – brought before electoral college votes were counted in Congress – sought to challenge the qualifications of candidate Obama to be President. Once he graduated from “candidate Obama” to “President-elect Obama” and later “President Obama”, every single eligibility law suit pending before SCOTUS became moot.
For more reading: Natural Born Citizen blog.
Wikipedia's Natural Born Citizen Clause which includes discussion of other presidents and candidates whose eligibility was questioned.
American Thinker article, Obama and the Natural Born citizen Clause.
Obama Presidential Eligibility, An Introductory Primer.
2 comments:
Hi David. Good post. The 2008 election is over . I'm just wondering and hoping that some conservative or libertarian bloggers or state legislators will stand up and defend our constitution. .Generations of young american men have gone in to battle for these individual rights ,freedoms and responsibilities . Our constitution deserves respect. The alternative is tyranny.
The birthplace issue is meaningful, but it has always been a deliberate diversion away from the constitutional requirement of nbc status for a US Commander in Chief and President.
The courts and lawyers have avoided the issue. After all Obama is a lawyer and did you know he went to Harvard Law School? Isn't that enough? Well no its not.
Our founding fathers did not want a Citizen of the World to be our US president. It is that simple. Their reasons were as valid then as they are now.
Republicans are the majority in congress and in about 30 state legislatures. There is no excuse for them to do nothing. Passing a law requiring President Obama to show his long form birth certificate would be almost the same as doing nothing. It might just show an out of hospital birth that would resolve nothing.
What is needed is for at least one state or several states to pass a law requiring all presidential candidates to meet all the requirements for president.That would include natural born citizen status defined as being born in the US of US citizen parents.
That would force the Supreme Court to make a decision on this matter. Which they should. That is their job.
That is their responsibility.
This needs to be done now ,before the primaries start. I think I'm doing what I can by writing this post. I hope you will do what you can . I don't think another 4 years of Obama would be good for our country.
To those of us who have spent time over the past two years researching this it is clear that he does not have nbc status based on the constitution or by the 14th amendment. Leo Donofrio and others deserve a lot of credit. Bloggers and Tea Party people can accomplish a lot if they work together.
I hope you guys bang the drums about this issue now while you can or spend the next 20 years regretting that you did not speak up when you had the chance.
Best Wishes,
Barry
Thanks.
This blog is one thing I am doing.
I am not optimistic that after a full term that a court, specifically the Supreme Court, would declare him ineligible for a second term if there is any doubt about the meaning of natural born citizen. I could see the court deferring to the wisdom of the electorate.
I saw something like that happen in a case in Arizona in the late 1980's. A judge was caught at the border with marijuana in his pocket. While the highly publicized disciplinary process was underway, he was retained in an election. The Supreme Court said that they would not remove the guy, because the electorate had spoken.
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