Birthers, Part II

My internet buddy Ryan, whose blog I follow and appreciate, commented on my previous Birthers post, saying that there was more to the Obama eligibility controversy than I let on about it. He provided this link as an argument, and asked me to comment on it. Alrighty then!

So let’s start with the Birther contention:

Birthers believe Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen and, for that reason alone, he is not eligible to serve as President. They say that, in order to be a natural born citizen, you must meet two requirements:

• You must be born in the United States; and
• Both of your parents must be U.S. citizens at the time of your birth.

OK, agreed. If that were settled Constitutional law, then Barack Obama would not be eligible to be President of the United States. Unfortunately, it’s not the law, no matter what Birthers want to “believe.” In fact, the article outright acknowledges that neither the Constitution, nor Congress, nor Supreme Court law define what it is to be natural-born. Therefore, the whole argument that he’s illegitimate is pointless. It could mean that, but it currently doesn’t mean that, so saying that Barack Obama is an illegitimate president is putting the cart before the horse. And even if it is determined after several years of lawyer-wank that it does mean that, applying that retroactively to the Obama presidency and removing him from office is a dangerously stupid idea.

My contention is that figuring out what it really means could take years and Obama’s natural-born status will probably be confirmed anyway, so why the effort? As the saying goes, it’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The house is on fire and they’re trying to figure out why the kitchen sink’s blocked up.

OK. Back to the argument.

The main controversy boils down to this one question:

If Barack Obama Jr. was born in the United States but, at the time of his birth, his father was a citizen of a foreign country and not a U.S. citizen, does Barack Obama Jr. meet the Constitutional "natural born citizen" requirement for presidency?

Obama apologists say "Yes". They believe there are only two kinds of American citizens: naturalized and natural born. A naturalized citizen is someone who becomes a citizen after his or her birth, through a legal process called "naturalization". A natural born citizen is anyone who is a U.S. citizen at birth. Since President Obama was born in the United States and was consequently a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth, he is a natural born citizen, regardless of his parents’ citizenship.

Birthers say "No". They believe that, when the Constitution was written, a "natural born citizen" was someone who was born in the United States and whose parents were both U.S. citizens at the time of his or her birth. You cannot be a Constitutional natural born citizen unless both of your parents were U.S. citizens when you were born. If you are not a Constitutional natural born citizen, you are not eligible to serve as President.

Thus we have two opposing viewpoints regarding the meaning of "natural born citizen". Which one is correct? So far, the Supreme Court has not answered this question because, until now, there was no reason to. Now, the Supreme Court needs to do its job and answer the question.

The author is stuck on the “both parents” argument. Obama’s father wasn’t an American, but his mother was. I simply contend that the child of an American born in America is a natural-born citizen. This opinion is ignored by the author, but it’s just as valid as anybody else’s since nobody knows either way. Interestingly, the only time the author even mentions Obama’s mother is when he describes a convoluted, hypothetical strawman scenario for which he provides no evidence. His mother’s citizenship doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the author, which strikes me as bizarre.

The author also stretches the 14th Amendment to its limits by suggesting that because Obama’s father was Kenyan and subject to British law, while his mother was subject to US law, Barack Jr. was therefore subject to both, and therefore could not have been a natural-born US citizen. Pfft.

The conclusion of the author comes down to this: Barack Obama’s natural-born status needs to be decided by the US Supreme Court in order to officially determine if having at least one fully American parent is enough to call him a natural-born citizen. And we’re apparently supposed to feel concerned and doubt and fear about this?

Anyway, after taking some time and considering this new evidence, I’ve come to the conclusion that yes, there are some interesting questions here that ought to be clarified. They should be clarified for both the purpose of defining Constitutional terms, as well as for the purpose of getting these navel-gazing, rules-lawyers to shut the hell up and start thinking about shit that matters. The idea of the Supreme Court stripping the citizenship status from a sitting American president on the basis that one of his parents was American and the other wasn’t is completely insane. Insane in a comedic, silly, Don-Quixote, funny-drunk-guy kind of way, but still insane.

The only way any of this affects anything is if the Birthers are able to conclusively prove in a court of law that the government of the State of Hawaii is engaging in a grand conspiracy to hide the foreign birth of Barack Obama, or that there was a secret effort on behalf of Obama’s mother to sneak an infant into the United States in order to guarantee his Constitutional national-born status instead of the regular, Statutory natural-born status for the sole purpose that infant Barack could run for president one day. Note that there is currently NO EVIDENCE that has been provided showing either scenario to be true.

So I leave this with my earlier response to these shenanigans:

There are SO MANY things to attack Obama about. He’s a radically out-of-touch man with a plan to fundamentally alter the American way of life, but instead people are generating news and comment about a non-issue. Folks, forget this birth certificate stuff. We need to beat him on the battleground of ideas, not fight him on some sideshow issue that has nothing to do with the future of our country. That’s where the real fight is, and that’s where good people should be focusing their energies.

Peace out.