Interesting article. It seems amazing that Obama was ever allowed to run, given that there is no doubt that one of his parents was not a US citizen. How does this happen, who enforces this thing? As I suspected, the place of birth is less important than who the parents are.

I rather suspect that BHO was born in Kenya, and his mother got him his certificate of live birth in Hawaii when she brought him back in the one week when all the arrival records have been “lost”. It seems it was only three years into his actual presidency that he needed to fake the full long form certificate, and now he’s the President, who’s going to pull him up on it? The FBI? Don’t make me laugh.

I am sure that if we ever get to see his “sealed” college records, we will see grant applications based on his foreign status. BHO is a freeloader, and has sailed through life on the kindness of strangers. But if I had to show a long form birth certificate to get into a British university, what sort of entry requirements did Columbia and Harvard have? I think we should be told.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I thought that the law stated that the President of the United States had to be a “natural born” citizen, without actually stating he had to be born within the US. Does the child of a US citizen (and I think we all accept that BHO is that) fail to quailify as “natural born” if she happened to be outside the USA when she gave birth?

Anyhow, we agree about the nature of the man. As to the birth certificate question, I do recall that before I could go to university, I had to send my long form birth certificate up to them first. They specifically wrote that short form certificate would not do. How come it seems to be easier to qualify for President of the USA than it is to get a place in college? Crazy old world we live in.

“The objection to Obama is not where’s he’s from, it’s what he’s been doing in and to the USA.”

…et al.

Actually, place of birth is a BIG objection, because it happens to be the law of the land that if you want to be President, you have to have been born in the United States. If you think it’s okay to break a law (regardless of how reasonable or stupid you think the law is), then we are no longer a nation of laws.

But that’s not the point. Even if he IS found to have been born in Kenya, that particular bullet has onlg since passed through the church, and all we can do is ensure that it never happens again.

More important is the reason why this is in the Constitution. Growing up in a society means that the tenets and mores of that society inevitably become part of one’s character, and if a society owes nothing else to itself, it is to perpetuate its basic culture through succeeding generations.

Going from the general to the specific, it is painfully clear that whether or not Obama was born in the U.S. or not, he has governed as though he wasn’t. He is in truth America’s first Third-World president. Note that among his first actions in office were the churlish return of Churchill’s bust to the U.K. and the unbelievably insensitive gifts to Queen Elizabeth. These are not the actions of an American: as a nation, we value and cherish the “special relationship” we have to Britain, not the least because we share a common heritage and language, never mind shared values such as Enlightenment thinking, respect for the rule of law, appreciation of our Western classical roots and so on.

Someone who has never been exposed to all those concepts through childhood will not have them implanted in their character — and I challenge anyone to show me that President Obama has NOT acted more like a Third World ruler (both in utterance and action) and not governed like, oh, JFK or Herbert Hoover.

Everyone keeps talking about Chicago politics when they talk about Obama’s presidency and administration. (I lived in Chicago for ten years, and I know all about Chicago politics, believe me.) What people have missed is that “Chicago politics” is not American politics; it is Third World politics: the cronyism and nepotism, the kleptocracy, the corruption, the willful disregard for the law and cheerful ignorance of matters which do not affect the [tribe] directly.

Third World politicians find allies not among the civilized nations of the world, but among other Third World nations — hence Obama’s closeness to thugs and filth like Venezuelan President Chavez, ZimPres Mugabe and SAfricanPres Mbeki.

So once again: it really doesn’t matter anymore where Obama was born (other than from a legal perspective); it matters that all his actions have demonstrated that his perspective and his actions are not American, but Third World in nature.

And if it turned out that Obama is in fact the illegitimate son of an actual American citizen (more likely Malcolm X than F.M. Davis??? I don’t think he looks anything like Davis–but then, I kinda think he looks a little like Obama Sr.), and actually was born in the middle of Waikiki Beach, then that fact also should be made known and well-publicized, along with the question of how we make sure no such unAmerican American can ever be elected again.

I don’t see how to do that via the Constitution, myself–nor even less, by statute. I think it has to be done through education, that is, by spreading ideas and facts, and trying to teach the voters to recognize con-men and snake-oil and evil agendas when they see them.

And, it’s vitally important to get the Constitutional requirements for eligibility clearly set out. I agree with Laird–I don’t think SCOTUS will touch this one. Maybe in a hundred years…. I think there should be an Amendment, but reached by the Congressional sponsorship/state ratification route, and DEFINITELY not via a Constitutional convention.

But, returning to Mike’s point, even that will never fly unless we kick up a god-awful ruckus about it. Too many in Congress are happy to make a limp-wristed gesture at most and then go back to doing whatever they do when they’re not actively campaigning.

My native country of Australia does forbid holders of dual citizenship from holding federal elected office, and from time to time this has led to people being disqualified from office after discovering that they had a citizenship that they were previously unaware of. On one occasion, the MP in question was disqualified from parliament and his seat declared vacant, a by-election was called, he then immediately renounced his (British) citizenship, stood at the by-election and was re-elected, a complete and costly waste of time. Plus there is the issue that some countries *will not allow* citizenship to be renounced, which could theoretically disqualify citizens permanently from office merely because their grandmother came from somewhere or other. (The courts have ruled in Australia that if you have taken “all reasonable steps” to renounce that foreign citizenship, you are then okay, but…).