(kind of a fun legal brain teaser)It's not Buenos Aires nor Argentina ...but it is yanqui and expat related so I've decided to pile-on this faux controversy. Lots of comments over at TPM regarding Rep. Bill Posey's (R-FL) bill requiring all presidential candidates to submit a birth certificate ...in order to show that they qualify as candidates or US President ...or something. This particular bill, however, seems designed to keep alive a wingnut fantasy that Obama was not a "Natural Born Citizen."
Obama (with the help of the Republican governor of Hawaii) has removed as much doubt as to his qualification for office as is humanly possible.
Mr. Posey, however, is opening a can of worms that he is probably not aware of.
The funny thing about challenging President Obama's natchal bornness is that it inevitably draws the spotlight to John McCain's inelegibility to run for US President last year.
Obama was born the City and County of Honolulu in the State of Hawaii on August 4, 1961.
John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone on August 29, 1936.
Hawaii became a US State in 1959. The Canal Zone never became a US State.
Both men are US citizens. One qualifies as eligible for US President ...one does not.
154 comments have weighed-in on the TPM post, most of them pretty rational. However, it's pretty obvious that intelligent people of all political leanings don't generally have a good handle on what it is the US Constitution says as regards who is eligible to run for president ...and who is not.
I'll admit that the Canal Zone issue is unusual. Congress felt that way ...so much so that in 1937 Congress declared that any person born in Panama to parents that are both US citizens are "declared to be a citizen of the United States." That gave the mommies and daddies and babies a break: they didn't have to register the birth with a US Embassy or Consulate to get baby's citizenship recognized. (That sound familiar to some of you? Sorry, Hankycito.)
But Congress did NOT say that children born in Panama after 1904 were automatically "Natural Born Citizens" nor citizens under the 14th amendment. Probably an oversight, in my opinion, but an oversight, none the less.
Long story short: if John McCain had been born in Shanghai (for example) to a US mother and US father ...he would not be eligible for the office of US President even if his parents had registered his birth with the US Embassy. The fact that Congress granted him citizenship also did not make him natural-born.
Believe it or not, there is no controversy over Obama's eligibility ...McCain's run for the presidency, however, could have ended up as a major constitutional crisis.
4 comments:
There were also issues with Romney during the primary season, wasn't he born in Mexico, or something like that?
YEAH! I forgot about that! That was a good one.
There's two kinds of citizenship rights, it varies from country to country, Blood or Soil.
Here in the New World, it's generally soil ...we don't go in for blood requirements like our non-revolutionary European forebears.
But Mexico changed it's rules for a while because of the continuing invasion and "filibustering" of US citizens.
It about put ol' Mitt in a bind... especially since his Grandfather's citizenship was in question, thereby putting at least one of his parents' citizenship in question.
Not to make light of the fact that, when born, Mitt was not a citizen of either country.
I would have to argue with that one. McCain was still born in a US zone. Shanghai is definitely not a US zone. Obama however hesitated forever about his citizenship yet Congress and the media just seemed to take him at his word...like everything else. That's why the US is still falling to shambles. The US will not turn around as long as Obama is taking his political pleasure cruise. When he decides to wake up, let me know.
Nope, Anon.
Get your fact straight.
Mike
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