This morning, President Obama finally released the long form version of his birth certificate, and quite possibly undermined his entire presidency.
While it’s taken almost three years since Hillary Clinton supportersfirst brought up the issue of Obama’s birth certificate, it was undoubtedly the constant media harassment by potential presidential candidate Donald Trump (who crowned himself the de facto spokesperson of the ‘birther’ movement) to finally compel Obama to comply.
While media and pundits on both the left and the right had a good laugh at the greatest let down since the ending of the Sopranos, the most prevalent point of the entire ‘birth certificate’ debate went widely uncommented upon: The fact that Obama just proved unequivocally that he is not a ‘natural born citizen’.
The ‘long form’ birth certificate that the White House released confirms that Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was our president’s father. Obama Sr., a Kenyan by birth, was a citizen of the British Empire. While his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was an American citizen, his father never emigrated to the United States, or married her.
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution states,
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 President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
While the definition of ‘natural born citizen’ was never made by the founding fathers, in 2008 then Senator Obama co-sponsored Senate Resolution 511 which was drafted to address the status of senator and presidential hopeful John McCain’s status as a natural born citizen, having been born in the Panama Canal Zone.
Whereas there is no evidence of the intention of the Framers or any Congress to limit the constitutional rights of children born to Americans serving in the military nor to prevent those children from serving as their country’s President;Whereas such limitations would be inconsistent with the purpose and intent of the `natural born Citizen’ clause of the Constitution of the United States, as evidenced by the First Congress’s own statute defining the term `natural born Citizen’;
CHAP IIIAn Act To establish an uniform rule of naturalization
Approved March 26 1790 US Statutes at Large Vol I pp 103 104SECTION 1…And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea or out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural born citizens. ProvidedThat the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.
This distinction drawn between ‘citizen’ and ‘natural born citizen’ is at the heart of the debate over Obama’s eligibility to continue serving as the President of the United States.
It’s this issue that the members of the ‘birther’ movement should have been behind since day one, instead of concocting theories about Kenya midwives and Indonesian home births.
The reason for a distinction between ‘citizen’ and ‘natural born citizen’ was exemplified in the following passage,
On July 25, 1787, John Jay wrote to George Washington, presiding officer of the Convention:“Permit me to hint whether it would not be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government, and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”
What’s important to remember is that senate resolution set the standard of eligibility in the case of John McCain and is therefor applicable to all others after such precedence in its full context to weigh the eligibility of the resolution’s co-sponsor and all future presidential candidates.
