December 01, 2008
Readers Weigh In On President-Elect Obama’s "Natural-Born" Status; Peter Brimelow Comments.
Letters Editor Joe Guzzardi writes: As Barack Obama races to appoint his Cabinet, rumors surrounding his eligibility to be President continue to swirl. Some skeptics claim that Obama is rushing his appointments to establish himself as de facto president and to render any challenges to the legitimacy of his presidency as after the fact. [A Handpicked Team for a Sweeping Shift in Foreign Policy by David Sanger, New York Times, November 30, 2008]
Still, agitation mounts that Obama may be unqualified to be president because he does not meet the Constitutional requirement that he is “natural born citizen.” Obama’s parental grandmother has been quoted as saying she was present in the delivery room during his birth—in Kenya. Obama claims to have been born in Hawaii.
According to some analysts, if born abroad, Obama does not even meet U.S. citizenship standards, because his father was a Kenyan citizen and his mother was not old enough to qualify him.
Obama could presumably resolve the uncertainties about his citizenship by proving the necessary documents. But his critics claim he has evaded the questions posed to him.
Two readers offer their analyses; Peter Brimelow comments.
An Australian Reader Says “Emperor Obama” Threatens The Constitution
From: Andrew Fraser (e-mail him)
I don’t understand the deafening silence of VDARE.COM on the question of whether Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen.
Surely, the fact that the ever-sensible Reverend Manning Marable has seen fit to take up the issue in the video linked here provides prima facie cause to have your site investigate the pleadings in the Leo Donofrio, the Alan Keyes, and the Philip Berg lawsuits all challenging Obama’s citizenship.
Where’s there’s so much smoke, there must be a good chance that a fire is about to break out. Here’s a link to one exposition of the basic issues.
In another lawsuit, one of the most sharply focused, the plaintiffs, including Alan Keyes who was on the California ballot as Presidential candidate for the American Independence Party and who in 2004 ran against Obama as Republican Party candidate for the Illinois US Senate, ask that the California Secretary of State and Democratic electors certify that Obama does in fact meet the constitutional qualification for eligibility.
More is at stake than a mere legal technicality—although, to be fair, any ordinary person reading the pleadings in the Berg or Donofrio case will throw up his hands at what appears to be legalistic double-talk.
But in making almost any case every lawyer customarily argues "in the alternative." For example, "I contend that Obama was not born in the U.S. but, even if he was, he is not a ‘natural born citizen.’" What some might call a "technicality" seems to Berg, Keyes et al to be a fundamental question of Constitutional legitimacy.
The courts, however, and the Supreme Court in particular, may refuse to deal with the problem. The Electoral College, too, may wash its hands of the issue. Congress may be indifferent as to whether or not the incoming President is a usurper. The people may remain in their stupor. The Mainstream Media may pretend that the Messiah has come by a miracle outside the Constitution.
But if Obama takes the oath of office under fraudulent circumstances, the Constitution will be dead.
From the moment Obama places his hand on the Bible held before him by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he will know that his will to usurp the presidency has become a law unto itself, higher even than the Constitution.
Obama is a Harvard Law graduate. He is well aware that his life story reads like a well-crafted hypothetical problem on a Constitutional Law exam. Obama knows that the Constitutional meaning of the phrase "natural born citizen" has never been raised, much less resolved, in a court of law.
He must be counting now on the obvious damage to the established order that would follow any assertion, from the Supreme Court or the Electoral College that he is a Constitutional impostor.
Altogether apart from legitimate fears of civil disorder should Obama’s eligibility be questioned, the issue of natural born citizenship is a matter of the deepest significance. Obama’s campaign has always presented (albeit until now implicitly) a revolutionary challenge. From the beginning, Obama has presented himself, not as an American patriot but more as a citizen of the world. He now represents the Third World immigrant invasion in the most literal sense.
The symbolism of the coming Obama presidency goes to the heart of what is means to be an American citizen.
The Constitution implies that a distinction must be made between ordinary "citizens" who are not eligible for the Presidency and those "natural born" citizens who are.
Obama may be, in fact and in law, a natural-born citizen. But why doesn’t he p
Yes. This man has yet to provide irrefutable proof of his citizenship. Those with nothing to hide, hide nothing. For reasons that defy logic, we lack the collective courage as a Supreme Court to require this of him, out of fear of minority uprising should the election be overturned.
Obama stands for everything I’m against. We need to deport all illegals and end third world immigration. We need elites, not lower class masses, as our society is becoming bottom-heavy. We need to mandate full time work for welfare recipients. If I can work 40 hours a week, so can any other able-bodied, able-minded individual. Keep welfare for those truly unable to be self-sufficient. We need to encourage capitalism and provide incentives to stimulate the economy, not outsource and attempt to jam Socialist principles down the throat of a collective Democracy.
We need a return to the American culture of a white, Anglo-Saxon, judeo-Christian nation that welcomes sub-cultures, but will never be absorbed by one. Zimbawe is a black nation and America is a white one. No need to project prejudice onto statements of fact. It is what it is. The white guilt needs to stop, and white Americans need to stop feeling the need to "apologize" for the fact that America is our country.
We’re in for our darkest days, until we finally get this man out of office. The sooner, the better, but it may take a little while into his first term for the "sheeple" to wake up!