Obama Presidential Eligibility - An Introductory Primer

Tonchen does an excellent job summarizing the facts!

Go read it here

Leahy and Chertoff's Opinions: Big O is Ineligible!

I have followed the posts at The Obama File for quite some time. They are not afraid to ask the questions that the obamedia want to silence. Make sure to check out their latest news page.

Today, 6/12/2009, they revisit a conversation about the meaning of the phrase 'natural born citizen' from April of last year. It seems everyone knows what NBC means unless they are referring to HWHTTOPOTUS.

Sen. Leahy Says Obama Not Eligible


On April 10, 2008, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) introduced a resolution expressing the sense of the U.S. Senate that presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was a 'natural born Citizen,' as specified in the Constitution and eligible to run for President.

"Because he was born to American citizens, there is no doubt in my mind that Senator McCain is a natural born citizen," said Leahy. "I expect that this will be a unanimous resolution of the Senate."

At a Judiciary Committee hearing on April 3, Leahy asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a former Federal judge, if he had doubts that McCain was eligible to serve as President.

"My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen," Chertoff replied.

"That is mine, too," said Leahy.

What's interesting here is that Sen. Leahy, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary, confirms that a "natural born" citizen is the child of American citizen parents.

Parents -- that's two. That's BOTH parents.

Every time the words, "citizen" and "parent," are used by Sen. Leahy and Sec. Chertoff, the plural case, "citizens" and "parents," was used. The plural case is the operative case.

It is Sen. Leahy's opinion -- his own recorded words, on his U. S. Senate website -- that Barack Obama is not a "natural born" citizen, and therefore not eligible to serve as Commander-in-Chief, regardless of his birthplace.

Obama had one American parent --singular -- his mother. His father was a citizen of Kenya, and a subject of Great Britain.

Obama, himself, "at birth," was a citizen of Kenya, and a subject of Great Britain -- he says so on his own campaign website. This fact introduces the concept of "divided loyalties," -- the reason the founders created the eligibility requirement in the first place -- a fact that further underlines Obama's ineligibility.

The source of this information is Sen. Leahy's own website. The webpage contains a statement about the resolution; the resolution, itself; the Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and an excerpt of Sec. Chertoff's testimony.

The plural word "parents" is used four times. When used to identify the parents, the word "citizens" is used five times. That's nine times that Sen. Leahy, on his own website describes the eligibility requirement. There is NO PLACE in any of these four documents where the singular case of "parent" or "citizen" is used as in reference to presidential eligibility.

On Being a Natural-Born Citizen

Please note that there are two types of US citizenship. Basic citizenship (a 'citizen') can be acquired by birth or naturalization. Natural-born citizenship (a 'natural born citizen') is the condition where a citizen is born to two parents who are also citizens and has no foreign-citizenship granted at birth by another country. This distinction is made to insure that a natural-born citizen president will have no split allegiance to a former homeland or those of the parents. There are no laws or amendments to the Constitution (including the 14th) that have changed this distinction that the Founding Fathers made.

If you are born to parents where one is a US citizen and the other is a foreign national, you may have US citizenship and/or foreign citizenship (a 'citizen'), but you will never be a 'natural-born citizen'.

If you are born in the US, you are a 'citizen' and a 'native-born citizen', but are only a 'natural-born citizen' based on the citizenship status of your parents at the time of your birth.

If what Obama has stated is true, then Obama's birth certificate is a red herring. His father was Kenyan, not a US citizen. Therefore, Obama is not a 'natural-born citizen'. He is a 'citizen' by virtue of his birth in Hawaii, but he is ineligible to hold the office of POTUS.

On the other hand, if his birth certificate shows he has a different father who was a US citizen at the time of Obama's birth, then he is a 'natural-born citizen' unless he was born in a foreign country. In that case, he is a 'citizen' but may not be a 'naturally-born citizen', if he acquired foreign citizenship at birth.

The law around this is something that I will cover in detail in a later post, but briefly.

Article II of the Constitution requires that the POTUS be a 'naturally-born citizen' (NBC) OR a citizen at the time of the Constitution's adoption (1789?). The Founding Fathers used the Law of Nations by Vattel for much of their work on the Constitution. Vattel defines NBC as a citizen born without multiple allegiences (I'll quote in a later post).

An early immigration act (1791?) specifically granted 'natural-born citizenship' to a certain class but this law was repealed and/or replaced (1795?) and the new wording deleted 'natural-born' and granted only 'citizenship'.

The XIV Amendment grants 'citizenship' to a certain group, but never utilizes the term 'natural-born citizen', and does not remove the NBC requirement for POTUS.