And fewer than half of southerners, while the other three regions are 87, 90, 93.

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2009/0...tizen.html

Are that many people really this crazy?

(07-31-2009 11:32 AM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  Are that many people really this crazy?

Look at the Spin Room. If that's a representative subsection, then yes.

Let me preface this by saying that as far as I'm concerned Obama satisfies the constitutional requirement to be a natural-born US citizen. Even if it did turn out that he was born in Kenya, he's still okay on that issue as far as I am concerned. I think his mother's citizenship should be adequate in any event, and I think the Supreme Court, if faced with that issue, would simply rule the statute then in effect to be unconstitutional. And I believe that would be the right result.

What does concern me is that the birth certificate issue is just one of many where this supposedly "transparent" politician has been less than forthcoming with facts. It has been my experience that people don't usually try to hide things unless they have something to hide (like Shrub's DWI or Nixon and Watergate).

The more I see this go on, the more I think that Obama has a serious problem or two somewhere in his past, that the birth certificate is not where the problems are, and that he is perfectly happy for his opposition to blow time and effort and money and credibility chasing down a rabbit trail. I'd like to see full disclosure of transcripts, publications, health records, birth certificate, travel records, you name it.

At the end of the day, Obama comes across to me as more of a Chicago street hustler than a leader, and I don't like the feeling that I'm being hustled. He does not strike me as being honest or forthright.

Hypothetical Query: Right now the republicans are having a hard time finding an appealing face to put at the head of there party. Suppose some charismatic unknown emerges, and large chunks of his past are hidden from public scrutiny. Suppose he beats Obama in 2012. Are you okay with that?

I'm confused as to why there is the belief that there hasn't been transparency on the birth certificate. Was it not produced and posted on the internet for all to see? From my understanding of the situation (which, admittedly, isn't detailed as I marginalized the Birthers in my mind), the birth certificate has been been produced.

In fact, here it is:



And here is the birth announcement that appeared in the Honolulu newspaper at the time of the birth:



It strains credulity to believe that Obama's mother presciently faked the location of her son's birth by submitting a fake birth announcement to lay the groundwork for his presidency nearly 50 years in the future.

(07-31-2009 02:39 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Hypothetical Query: Right now the republicans are having a hard time finding an appealing face to put at the head of there party. Suppose some charismatic unknown emerges, and large chunks of his past are hidden from public scrutiny. Suppose he beats Obama in 2012. Are you okay with that?

If we know as much about him or her as we know about Obama, sure, (not including policy differences, of course) but then I don't really buy the idea that he's hiding his history. I mean the guy wrote an autobiography before he was even a Senate candidate admitting drug use, for example. Not really the move of someone hiding his past.

(07-31-2009 02:55 PM)JustAnotherAustinOwl Wrote:  I mean the guy wrote an autobiography before he was even a Senate candidate admitting drug use, for example. Not really the move of someone hiding his past.

Maybe, maybe not.
What better way to hide your past than to get a self-serving autobiography on the street before anyone starts digging into your past?
Isn't it a little strange to be publishing an autobiography before you've ever actually done anything?
I guess it's like this. Some of you believed that anything that came out of Shrub's mouth was a lie, just because it passed between his lips. That's the feeling I get about Obama. His mannerisms, his speech, his whole aura just comes across to me as a street hustler trying to con me. I just can't escape that feeling. It's the same feeling that told me from the beginning that Nixon was lying about Watergate.
Maybe one day I'll find out that I'm wrong; or maybe one day you'll find out that I'm right. For now I simply don't trust him.
But then, I have exactly zero trust in government as a whole.

The Constitution says the President must be a natural born citizen, but of course does not define that phrase. So you'd think Congress at some point would have given a clear definition, right? Well, apparently not. There are laws that say a child born abroad to US-citizen parents is a citizen by birth, but apparently those statutes never use the phrase "natural born citizen". Interestingly, the 2008 candidate who was born abroad was John McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone. I remember hearing about that, but had forgotten.

Can I just say that the poll that is being referenced is being orchestrated by the Daily Kos? I don't believe a thing that comes from that website. You can skew statistics to say whatever you want.

Look, I don't care whether he is a citizen or not. I'm not surprised people don't know that little nugget about the requirement for being President. I can imagine that most voters down south don't look at much other than R and D and will listen to anything people say.

Regardless, he is the President. I voted for McCain, but was willing to give Barack a chance. My patience is gone now though. I don't agree with much of anything he is doing with the country.

Remind me again, how many people who signed the Declaration of Independence were born in the USA?

Such a stupid thing for people to be focusing on really. I expect it I guess from some folks but not Rice grads. If you don't like Obama for other reasons, fine. But anyone actually worried about this is a nutcase IMO.

Unfortunately, willful ignorance is rapidly injecting itself into the platform of the Republican party.

The problem I have with the birth deal is that it would have been very easy to simply produce a certified copy of the "long form" birth certificate filled out by hospital personnel, i.e. people with personal knowledge of what happened, rather than the "short form" certification of birth which has been produced, which is taken wholly from state records rather than having the self authenticating credibility of the hospital version. That would have been honest and transparent. It would have given names of witnesses to the events. It would have dispelled the rumors. Instead, the Obama campaign put out what it had to know would be attacked on these and other grounds. While I think, based on the evidence that I have seen, that Obama was more probably than not born in Hawaii.the lack of candor bothers me immensely. Simply put, Obama could have taken the high road like McCain did (and he was born in a US military base "overseas", which under US law is considered to be US territory, making him "natural born"), but Obama chose not to do so. That makes me wonder what he is hiding. Perhaps it is the hometowns of his parents that would be on the long form? Perhaps something else? I don't know, but it doesn't make sense to not quash the rumors when it should be easy to do so.

Having said all of that, I don't know if ther is any court issued interpretation of the phrase "natural born". Does it mean born on US soil? I suspect there are immigration cases that would support that position. Does it include children born to two US citizens who happen to be abroad at the time of the birth? I suspect there are cases on that too, but I don't know and haven't looked. What about a child of a US citizen and a non-US citizen? That is what I think we have here and in that case, place of birth does become important to determining whether he ws born a US citizen or not. And like it or not, whether it makes sense or now (and I happen to think it has a basis, althought it is a very conservative solution to the issue of alliegiances), it IS a constitutional requirement. And under the "slippery slope" theory, I don't think we can simply ignore it just because it has become an almost academic exercise. If you don't like it, amend the constitution, but don't ignore it.

Moreover, what I think gets lost in a lot of this discussion is a more viable argument - that he had to renounce his US citizenship to get into the schools he went to in Indonesia and then had to regain it later. If "natural born" is interpreteed to mean that naturalized citizens are not eligible (and I think that is a correct interpretation), then I think it likely Obama is NOT eligible from a constitutional standpoint; not because he was not a natural born citizen (I think he probably wins that argument), but because by operation of law he renounced his citizenship and was later naturalized,

But what do I know, I tend to be a strict constructionist.

(07-31-2009 05:31 PM)Fort Bend Owl Wrote:  Remind me again, how many people who signed the Declaration of Independence were born in the USA?

And the point of this comment is...?
As I'm sure you know, the constitution specifically provided for people like George Washington to become President: the exact requirement is that the President must be either "a natural born Citizen" or "a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution." [Note the 18th century Practice of capitalizing Nouns.] So if you were a citizen at the time, regardless of where you were born, you were eligible to be be President.

The legal concepts are actually pretty simple.

If you are born in the US, you are an American citizen by birth under lex solis (literally, "law of the soil").
If you have a parent who is a US citizen, you are an American citizen by birth wherever you are born under lex sanguinis (literally, "law of blood").

Until the crazies took over, it has pretty much always been understood that either one would work for the constitutional requirement for being president.

There is the matter of a statute in effect at the time of Obama's birth, that would tend to deny lex sanguinis citizenship to him, but as long as he was born in Hawaii he would meet the lex solis test. Even if he did turn out that he were born in Kenya, I firmly believe that if the matter got to the Supreme Court, the court would declare the statute in question to be unconstitutional and rule him to be a citizen by birth under lex sanguinis.

That's why this whole birth certificate thing seems crazy to me. Even if the birthers prevailed, I don't believe that they would reverse the 2008 election, or accomplish anything else legally.

My problem is that I simply don't believe Obama is often telling the truth. I wish I did, but I just don't. There were too many things in the platform that simply could not all be true (and I think the drop in popularity that he is now experiencing results in large part because events are exposing many of those untruths). There are too many gaps in his resume, gaps that in theory could be easily closed, but closure isn't forthcoming. I can't shake the notion that he is a Chicago street hustler and we are all being conned. I think he seeks always to say what he thinks people want to hear, what will make him popular, instead of teling the truth. If I'm right, I'm fairly certain that will catch up with him at some point, and that won't be good for Obama or the USA.

That's a terrible way to feel about a president, and I wish I didn't feel that way. But unfortunately, I just do.

(07-31-2009 06:20 PM)RiceDoc Wrote:  and he [McCain] was born in a US military base "overseas", which under US law is considered to be US territory, making him "natural born"

Actually, I don't think being born on a US base is what makes him eligible to be President. I don't think a German woman can produce an American citizen simply by having her kinder inside the gates of Wiesbaden. Bases are generally leased land, and while the host country might allow the US to regulate the territory for the sake of convenience and comity, ultimate sovereignty of that land certainly lies with the host country, unless there has been a genuine transfer of that sovereignty, which is pretty rare. What makes McCain eligible is that, by law, he was a U.S. citizen at birth*, because he was the child of U.S. citizens. Thus McCain would be equally eligible if he had been born off the base in the middle of Colon city.

*Assuming that the statutory phrase "citizen at birth" satisfies the constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen". The alternative view is that such "citizens at birth" are not really "natural born citizens" but have merely been automatically, instantaneously and involuntarily naturalized. It all certainly seems like a Jesuitical argument, but empires have changed hands on less -- witness the "Salic law" issue in the Hundred Years War, colorfully played out in Kenneth Branagh's 1990 production of Henry V.

(07-31-2009 05:00 PM)d1owls4life Wrote:  I can imagine that most voters down south don't look at much other than R and D and will listen to anything people say.

To be fair, I doubt that voters in California, New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Austin look much beyond those labels, either.

(07-31-2009 03:30 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Isn't it a little strange to be publishing an autobiography before you've ever actually done anything?

It's not unheard of. The book which was arguably the most influential autobiography of the 20th century was exactly that. (Hint: it was published in German.)

(07-31-2009 06:53 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(07-31-2009 03:30 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Isn't it a little strange to be publishing an autobiography before you've ever actually done anything?

It's not unheard of. The book which was arguably the most influential autobiography of the 20th century was exactly that. (Hint: it was published in German.)

Now, that's reassuring.

(07-31-2009 06:53 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(07-31-2009 03:30 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Isn't it a little strange to be publishing an autobiography before you've ever actually done anything?

It's not unheard of. The book which was arguably the most influential autobiography of the 20th century was exactly that. (Hint: it was published in German.)

Careful! You are rapidly straying into a theological discourse regarding whether divine inspiration is the same thing as self written such that the Bible would be an "autobiographical" work. By the way, the Gutenberg press churned out what, for the time, was an astronomical number of these little gems.

(07-31-2009 06:38 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(07-31-2009 06:20 PM)RiceDoc Wrote:  and he [McCain] was born in a US military base "overseas", which under US law is considered to be US territory, making him "natural born"

Actually, I don't think being born on a US base is what makes him eligible to be President. I don't think a German woman can produce an American citizen simply by having her kinder inside the gates of Wiesbaden. Bases are generally leased land, and while the host country might allow the US to regulate the territory for the sake of convenience and comity, ultimate sovereignty of that land certainly lies with the host country, unless there has been a genuine transfer of that sovereignty, which is pretty rare. What makes McCain eligible is that, by law, he was a U.S. citizen at birth*, because he was the child of U.S. citizens. Thus McCain would be equally eligible if he had been born off the base in the middle of Colon city.

*Assuming that the statutory phrase "citizen at birth" satisfies the constitutional requirement of "natural born citizen". The alternative view is that such "citizens at birth" are not really "natural born citizens" but have merely been automatically, instantaneously and involuntarily naturalized. It all certainly seems like a Jesuitical argument, but empires have changed hands on less -- witness the "Salic law" issue in the Hundred Years War, colorfully played out in Kenneth Branagh's 1990 production of Henry V.

George - you are generally right, in theory (I believe). However, for McCain's specific situation, he was in the clear. The Panama Canal Zone (which actually technically was not a military base) was an unincorporated territory and some specific elements codified in the 1930s to address citizenship for those born their to at least one American parent. As I found on Wikipedia, the Canal Zone even had its own US District Court. It was an interesting governmental set-up.

(07-31-2009 07:55 PM)RiceDoc Wrote:  

(07-31-2009 06:53 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(07-31-2009 03:30 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Isn't it a little strange to be publishing an autobiography before you've ever actually done anything?

It's not unheard of. The book which was arguably the most influential autobiography of the 20th century was exactly that. (Hint: it was published in German.)

Careful! You are rapidly straying into a theological discourse regarding whether divine inspiration is the same thing as self written such that the Bible would be an "autobiographical" work. By the way, the Gutenberg press churned out what, for the time, was an astronomical number of these little gems.

The book I was referrring to was actually a badly-written 1920s prison diary. I don't think Gutenberg would have touched it.