Tuesday, July 28, 2009

This just in: Water is wet

Who would have thought so many idiots banded together could be wrong?

"State officials in Hawaii on Monday said they have once again checked and confirmed that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.

They hoped to stem a recent surge in the number of inquiries about Obama's birthplace.

"I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by theHawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen," Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said in a brief statement. "I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago."

So-called "birthers" — who claim Obama is ineligible to be president because, they argue, he was actually born outside the United States — have grown more vocal recently on blogs and television news shows.

Fukino issued a similar press release Oct. 31, but was prompted to speak out again because of the renewed attention on Obama's beginnings. Hawaii's Health Department has been flooded in recent weeks with questions from individuals and several national TV news networks asking for proof that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

"They just keep asking over and over and over again," Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said.

The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. Birthers contend that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland. They've challenged his citizenship in court."

Granted that this whole flapdoodle is more about President O's ethnicity than his place of birth, it still provides an interesting challenge to those who unquestioningly revere our founding fathers and our constitution, viz. WTF is up with this "born in the USA" requirement to be president?

It makes no sense. If people wanted Neil Young to be prez and Neil would lower himself enough to accept, what possible relevance could his place of birth have on this contract?

Are we afraid that a foreign born president would immediately "sell us out" to his/her country of origin? Would Neil make us all start eating circles of ham and forcing us to call it bacon?

Our founding fathers had a lot on the ball, but this is one of the places where they screwed up.

6 comments:

The Dude said...

Perhaps they should have allowed for this requirement to be phased out after a number of years. Or perhaps they should have relied on the impeachment clause to serve as a deterrent.

Robert S. Porter said...

From what I know (and it could be a myth) the founders wanted the natural born clause to prevent loyal Brits or British spys from becoming president or something.

Of course even if that's true, it makes no sense whatsoever to maintain that at this point in American history.

Anonymous said...

Here’s Obama’s dilemma in a nutshell (READ VERY CAREFULLY AND DIGEST):

If BHO shows his original long form birth certificate, indeed showing he was born in Hawaii, it will also show his father was American citizen, Frank Marshall Davis, not the Kenyan/British citizen, Barack Obama Sr. While that would allow Barack Jr. to be POTUS eligible as BOTH a "citizen"/“native born citizen” AND an Article 2 “natural born citizen” -- that is, born to two American citizens on American soil -- it would simultaneously show he is a fraud hiding his real father -- an unacceptable political debacle.

If, on the other hand, BHO keeps hiding his original long form birth certificate -- while simply repeating, without showing, he was born in Hawaii -- he can still CLAIM BOTH he was born in Hawaii AND his father was the Kenyan/British Barack Obama Sr. This would enable Barack Jr. to claim he's a "citizen"/“native born citizen” but it would mean (if a federal court would ever get around to declaring and thus far no one has standing to bring the suit) that he’s NOT an Article 2 “natural born citizen” and thus not eligible to be POTUS -- a legal/constitutional debacle since all acts under an illegal POTUS are void.

So it seems, BHO has elected option one until forced to go option two because for now it looks like no federal court will ever find a plaintiff with standing. (Of course, there’s the additional issue of BHO losing American citizen status if/when he became an Indonesian citizen -- that is, IF he returned and was naturalized he would be a legal citizen, but would lose both native and natural born status, and, IF he returned and was not naturalized, he would be an illegal immigrant unlawfully in this country -- but we’ll leave that for another day.)

Eames said...

Clearly many "Natural Born Citizens" of the US don't understand what "natural born" means. If you are born on US soil, you are a "natural born" citizen. Children of illegal immigrants could run for pres if they wanted to as long as they have a birth certificate showing they were born in the US. How can so many people get this wrong? Where were they during high school civics?

Eames said...

Google "dual citizenship" AND "natural born citizen". READ VERY CAREFULLY AND DIGEST.

Anonymous said...

In the past England would have never hired an Italian as their coach. 5 or so years ago it was a stretch to hire a Swede. Then they hire an Englishman and don't qualify for the Euro cup--very embarrassing. Now they've turned to the world renowned Fabio Capello and have been the most impressive team in world cup qualifying. There's a point in here somewhere