Getting ready for a new presidential election?

Ouch.

If you have not been aware of it, there have been a number of people that are challenging Barack Obama’s status to be President. I have thought that all of these were frivolous law suits being led by sour and sore losers, or by racists determined to keep Barack Obama from assuming office.  And I guess that could be the case. However, I have just read a compelling article on why the Supreme Court should decide if Barack Obama meets the requirements to become President of the United States. It may be unconstitutional for Obama to be President.

There is no question that Barack is a citizen of the United States, at least not by any rational thinking adult. He has the birth certificate, he has had two comprehensive FBI background checks, and he had an American mother. If you want to read a good post about why Barack is a citizen, then I suggest you read Ed Darell’s piece over at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.

The question is: Does Barack Obama fulfill the constitutional requirements to be President?

Clause 5. 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.

Barack Obama may not meet the requirement of ‘natural born citizen’ according to this article by Judah Benjamin over at TD Blog

Mr. Benjamin describes what was meant by the term ’natural born’ at the time the Constitution was crafted. Among other things,  it was a question of divided loyalty between the allegiance resulting from a place where one was born (and perhaps raised) versus one’s biological parents and their citizenship and allegiance.  Barack Obama possessed dual citizenship: British and US.

“Natural-born citizen” is a Common Law concept of the type known as “a term of art”. There are innumerable references to it and to its older cognate “natural-born subject”. In essence, a natural-born citizen is an individual born with only one, single, undivided allegiance or loyalty and who is, and has always been, subject to only one legal jurisdiction. There is not, and has never been, any real doubt that this is true and correct. The term itself is not vague, it is in fact, provably, quite precise and anybody who attempts to deny that is fudging the issue because they have an agenda.

Anybody born in territory over which the United States claims legal jurisdiction, at the time of birth, and both of whose parents are United States Citizens is inter alia, and by definition, a natural-born citizen of the USA.

Anybody born abroad of two US Citizen patents is a natural-born citizen, if they are born in a country which does not use ius soli law on birthright, if they are the child of a diplomat, or if the country in which they are born does not for whatever reason assert jurisdiction over them. A secondary condition is that the individual must not have been expatriated by any legal process.

Which leads the author to eventually conclude:

 BHO II is a much more straightforward case. Let us assume for the purposes of this article that the information on the so called “COLB” is correct, truthfully we have no evidence that it is not, though equally we have no evidence that it is, and even under Hawaiian State Law such an abstract is regarded as insufficient to fully establish one’s status in law. BHO II’s own surrogates have freely admitted that he was born bipatride under the UK Nationality Act of 1948 and that in virtue of his father he was a United Kingdom and Colonies Citizen and a Subject of the British Crown at birth. That would have been true had he been born on the moon. Assuming that he was born in Hawaii, BHO II was born a US Citizen under ius soli also. No act of volition was required in either event. Thus he was first a Subject of the British Crown and a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and second a citizen of the USA.

I am not convinced that there is a heirarchy and that a person with dual citizenship is first one thing and secondly another. I would have to know more before I could accept that fact.

Yet Barack Obama does not appear to meet the test of possessing a single and undivided allegiance to the United States as intended by the Constitution, if you believe the assertions in this article. The idea that Obama may be declared ineligible to assume the Presidency is startling.

As the article points out, Congress cannot pass legislation overruling the Constitution. This may become a Supreme Court case that involves determining what was meant by the term ‘natural born citizen’.

This is an interesting article to read in full. It concludes with a list of people who would have faced this same challenge of dual citizenship if they had been elected: John McCain and Bill Richardson.

It is quite possible the Supreme Court will decide not to hear this case at all in advance of Barack Obama becoming President. Because a risk exists to public order, they may choose to refuse the case until the lower courts have reviewed it. This may well delay this for years. To this point in time, all court cases challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility have been dismissed for various reasons.  

It is all speculation as to whether the Supreme Court will choose to hear this case and it is speculation to consider how they would define ‘natural born’. However, this is the first that time that I have given a mote of credence to anyone’s claim that Barack Obama is ineligible to be President.

I would not like to choose between Obama and the Constitution. But if I did, the Constitution would win and I would be unhappy about that. It would lead to another federal election and Nancy Pelosi would become President of the United States until a new President is elected. You already know that I do not like the Speaker of the House. This result would be painful for everyone.