What if you are a serviceman in Korea or Iraq and you had a kid, they are not eligible to be president? No way this is the case I would imagine.
No mention of Trader_Jorge filing a lawsuit, withholding all details, and calling it a "special project?"
there are some old countervailing court cases on what it actually means so it's not entirely clear that McCain's Panama Canal Zone situation counts. This question doesn't come up very often and it certainly doesn't matter in this case as Obama's citizenship has never been credibly questioned so I can kind of see why courts have stayed out of it and Volokh called it a nonjusticiable political question-type deal.
ah. you're right, i can't remember this ever coming up before...and was unaware of the history of it.
i don't know. i'm just reading the language of the constitution. on its face it seems to imply that, unless you're born in the US, you're not qualified. i'm not saying that's the way it should be. and i have no idea how this thing has been interpreted by courts in the past, beyond what SamFisher just shared.
Ok, if that is case I guess if you are born on the bases or consulate, etc you can be president. That sounds fair.
The only qualification I am aware of is you have to be a Republican party member or a Democratic party member to be president.
Eugene Volokh's blog is a good read. just for kicks, assuming this case had merit and obama were somehow declared ineligible, i assume this means Biden would become president? W's and Cheney's terms end at noon on Jan 20th. Biden was legally elected VP, and would be sworn in as such, immediately ascending to the presidency? i assume a similar scenario were Obama, or any president elect, were to die before taking office.
Seems like Obama has provided his proof, in a Hawaii birth certificate. I have yet to see proof from the other side, as in a birth certificate from another country, Doctors, Nurses, or a midwife that delivered him in another country, eye witness accounts, etc. The only "proof" is the African grandmother or Aunt or whatever she was mentioning that he had been born in Africa, but I have never seen it followed up on or examined.
I was told (I don't know how accurate this is) that it would go to the speaker of the house. VP only gets instated if the president gets impeached or upon death of the president. I thought a natural born citizen included if both parents were citizens of the US. I think it would be a bit silly if a mom was in canada for some reason and had an accident that required the child to be born immediately. Would you still support obama if he is found not to be a US citizen?
he IS a US citizen. that's been determined. the question is whether he's naturally born citizen...whatever that means.
If it were an honest mistake, of course. If it turns out he knew and was lying about it and covering it up, I would most definitely notl
Just reading the language of "natural-born citizen" wouldn't suggest anything about the geography of your birth, I wouldn't think. If you wanted to say that, you'd say something like locally-born, or domestically-born. There are 3 ways to be a US citizen: (1) Born on US soil, (2) Born of a US parent, (3) Naturalized after birth. Given that, I'd think the clause was meant only to exclude the last group. Anyway, I'm embarrassed for Alan Keyes.
