Group items tagged

In cases like this, judges sometimes believe the matter is best left to political institutions, such as the Electoral College or Congress, said legal scholar Eugene Volokh of the University of California at Los Angeles.

America is facing potentially the gravest constitutional crisis in her history. Barack Obama must either stand up in a public forum and prove, with conclusive documentary evidence, that he is “a natural born Citizen” of the United States who has not renounced his American citizenship—or he must step down as the Democratic Party’s candidate for President of the United States

And if each of the General Government’s powers must be proven (not simply presumed) to exist, then every requirement that the Constitution sets for any individual’s exercise of those powers must also be proven (not simply presumed) to be fully satisfied before that individual may exercise any of those powers.

Congressional power to withhold citizenship from children of U.S. citizens is not hypothetical; for decades, it was law, and to some extent still is. The Tribe-Olson Opinion proposes that “[i]t goes without saying that the Framers did not intend to exclude a person from the office of the President simply because he or she was born to U.S. citizens serving in the U.S. military outside of the continental United States . . . .” However, the Seventh Congress, which included Framers Gouverneur Morris and Abraham Baldwin among others, did precisely that. In 1961 in Montana v. Kennedy, the Supreme Court construed an 1802 statute to mean that “[f]oreign-born children of persons who became American citizens between April 14, 1802 and 1854, were aliens . . . .” Thus, children of members of the armed forces serving overseas, and diplomats and civil servants in foreign posts, were not only not natural born citizens eligible to be president, they were not citizens at all.

Hawaii also issues Certification of Live Births to children born abroad upon the registration by a family member of the birth.  A Hawaiian Certification of Live Birth is issued to children who are United States “natural born” citizens as well as “naturalized” citizens, who did not qualify for “natural born” status.  Take for instance, Maya Soetoro, Mr. Obama’s half-sister who was born in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1970, she too has a Certification of Live Birth, however, she is not a United States “natural born” citizen.