Obama’s “Natural Born” Problem

By now you are probably aware that there have been a multitude of lawsuits filed in regards to the question of whether or not President-elect Barack Obama is in fact eligible under the “natural born” provision of the Constitution of the United States of America to be the President of the United States.

The Constitutional provisions are very specific when it comes to the minimal qualifications for President. One is to be over thirty-five. He is. Two, is being in the country fourteen years. He has been. Three, is to be a natural-born citizen. The latter remains unproven, a matter of contention, and appears to be increasingly unlikely to be true.

There are several variations on this theme, but the general and most often made argument is relatively simple and straightforward.

The Plaintiff in one of the filed suits put it this way.

“If in fact Obama was born in Kenya, the laws on the books in the United States at the time of his birth stated if a child is born abroad and one parent was a U.S. Citizen, which would have been his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother would have had to live ten (10) years in the United States, five (5) of which were after the age of fourteen (14). At the time of Obama’s birth, his mother was only eighteen (18) and therefore did not meet the residency requirements under the law to give her son (Obama) U.S. Citizenship much less the status of ‘natural born.’ ”

It also was a complication that Obama’s mother divorced his father, married and moved to Indonesia for several years and Obama attended school there at a time when only Indonesian citizens were allowed in schools. Records that are available from Indonesia revealed Obama was registered in school as Barry Soetoro, and his religion was listed as Islam.

When Obama later returned to Hawaii, within the United States, there should have been a government document affirming his citizenship, but that also cannot be found.”

The Obama campaign had insisted from the very beginning that Barack Obama was in fact born in the state of Hawaii which would automatically make him eligible for the highest office of the land. All US citizens are issued a birth certificate within a short time after birth. It would be very simple, and take about five minutes, for the Obama organization to put this rumor to rest and prove once and for all that this is just some wild conspiracy from the Internet rumor mill that should be mocked and ignored as simply “sour grapes” by a die hard few.

Except that Obama has steadfastly refused to release his birth certificate and has shown the willingness to spend a large amount of money on legal fees while  enduring increasingly bad publicity by refusing to release it or any hospital records associated with a birth in the state of Hawaii.

One of the cases filed with the Supreme Court also raised the circumstances of Obama’s time during his youth in Indonesia, where he was listed as having Indonesian citizenship. Indonesia did not allow dual citizenship at that time, raising the possibility of Obama’s mother having given up his U.S. citizenship. Any subsequent U.S. citizenship then, the case claims, would be “naturalized,” not “natural-born”.

There have also been suspicions that Obama’s college records may indicate he received aid as a foreigner, and that could be the reason why those records were never released.

The questions of his birth certificate and constitutional eligibility for President of the United States have been ongoing for months. Unlike the convoluted conspiracies and “innovative” conjectures that have been leveled against various presidents including Bill Clinton and the current holder of the office, this particular allegation of constitutional ineligibility would be extremely easy to refute and the entire mess could be over in just a matter of minutes. The logical conclusion is that there has to be some sort of reason that this document (if it exists) has not been released. There is obviously something to hide here and I am not alone in my interest in what that may be.

Months ago the Obama campaign, in an attempt to “answer” this question, posted a copy of what was said to Obama’s “Certification of Live Birth” on the official Obama website. The Main Stream Media and the Progressive blogosphere quickly and proudly pointed to it and proclaimed the case closed.  Unfortunately, the posting of that document actually raised as many or more questions than it had supposedly answered. The computer-generated “Certification of Live Birth” is used by the state of Hawaii in lieu of the “Certificate of Live Birth,” or if originally filed, a “Delayed Certificate of Birth,” or even a “Certificate of Hawaiian Birth.” For verification purposes, however, the “Certification of Live Birth” does not indicate which birth record “root document(s)” that the Certification is based upon.

Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence. Obama’s certification of live birth doesn’t list a hospital, attending physician, or any witnesses of the birth that could be tracked down and investigated. The posted document is essentially worthless as any sort of proof that Obama was born in the United States and simply put does not prove natural-born status. Yet that document is the only evidence that Barack Obama has so far produced that he is in fact eligible to be the President of the United States.

My initial hunch was that Obama was in fact not born in Kenya, but that the name on the birth certificate was not “Barack Obama” but some other, possibly “Barry” with perhaps even a different last name (his mother’s?). It is also perhaps an amended birth certificate (not uncommon in cases of adoption by a step parent) listing his now legal name as “Barry Sotoero” and thus somehow a cause of embarrassment or a potential political liability. Obama’s adoption in Indonesia by his stepfather Lolo Sotoero would make that a very plausible scenario.

Such speculation is obviously conjectural. But much of Obama’s youth is shrouded in mystery especially in regards to his Islamic schooling, upbringing in Indonesia, drug use, and later ties to a variety of radical and questionable characters and mentors. With that in mind, perhaps an actual birth in Kenya wouldn’t be all that surprising but merely the icing on the cake when it comes to the strange, twisted and contradictory tale of Barack Obama’s life.

There was some whispering about Senator John McCain’s own natural-born citizenship status and POTUS eligibility early on and to his credit he produced his long form birth certificate in record time putting such questions to rest very quickly. Meanwhile, many months later, we are still sifting through rumors, Supreme Court petitions, multiple lawsuits from all over the country, and articles like this one while the Obama camp continues playing “whack a mole” in regards to questions about Obama’s natural-born status.

Three things have made me take an interest in this sideshow saga and made me at least somewhat increasingly open to the idea that Barack Obama may in fact have been born in Kenya. The first is that the Kenyan ambassador to the United States has openly admitted that Obama was born in Kenya.

Mike In The Morning Calls The Kenyan Embassy (101 WRIF Radio, Detroit, Michigan)

Radio Host:
One more quick question, president elect Obama’s birthplace over in Kenya is that going to be a national spot to go visit where he was born?

Kenyan Ambassador:
It is already an attraction. His paternal grandmother is still alive.

Radio Host:
But his birth place, they will put up a marker there?

Kenyan Ambassador:
It will depend on the government. It is already well known.

The sound clip can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zH4GX3Otf14. 

The second is that soon to be Secretary of Commerce and current New Mexico governor Bill Richardson is on record as stating that Obama is “an immigrant”. An odd thing to say if it were not true, and an outright lie otherwise. You can view the video clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5OUdj_YIpo&eurl=http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=83114&feature=player_embedded.

Perhaps the strongest anecdotal evidence is that Obama’s own paternal grandmother has said on multiple occasions that she was there when Barack was born in Kenya. Obama’s Kenyan half brother and half sister have also stated that Obama was born in Kenya. None of this anecdotal evidence is conclusive but combined with Obama’s steadfast refusal to release his long form birth certificate it plants the seeds of suspicion and makes you really want to ask a simple question. What is he hiding? And why?

The real fun to be had with this story is not that Obama for any reason would be somehow decreed ineligible as the next President of the United States (it won’t happen) but that there apparently is no oversight at all to the election process and a candidates eligibility for that office. Wouldn’t it, and shouldn’t it, be common sense and standard practice that some official or semi-official body like the Federal Election Commission or the respective major political parties require that all candidates for President of the United States provide proof that they meet the requirements for the office as stated in the Constitution? Is that really too much to ask?

Barack Obama has held elected office on the federal level, won his parties nomination for President, and then was elected President of the United States, all without providing proof that he is in compliance with the provisions laid down very plainly in the Constitution. One should be able to declare such a scenario as inconceivable, yet it appears to be all too true.

And for those of you who have studied history in any detail, the truth is far more often stranger than fiction. Obama may fall, and in many ways he already does, into that category. Who would have thought that an “I vote present” product of the incredibly corrupt Chicago political machine with a Leftist ideology, a Muslim stepfather, a socialistic economic policy, a radical spiritual mentor, and who is beholden to a domestic terrorist for the launching of his political career could so easily be elected to the Presidency of the United States of America? If I had pitched that scenario to you two years ago you would have called me crazy yet that is exactly the situation we find ourselves in.

I do believe this will probably not be little more than an interesting political sideshow that will end up as just another bizarre footnote in annals of history. It is somewhat disturbing though that we are apparently willing to just wave  constitutional requirements for the highest office of the land whenever we see fit. One has to believe that altering and tampering with basic constitutional provisions is probably not very wise and not healthy for our form of government.

The glaring disgrace here is that Obama should have been forced to prove his eligibility for office (they all should) before the first primary election or caucus was held and that the Democratic Party failed miserably in its duty to make sure that they were offering up a legitimate and eligible candidate as their presidential nominee.

If indeed Barack Obama is constitutionally ineligible for the highest office in the land, and could theoretically be an unconstitutional president, it is not the child who dared mention that “The Emperor has no clothes!” who is being “embarrassing and destructive” by bringing this up, but the Democratic party and the electoral system as a whole which allowed an unqualified candidate with unproven, dubious credentials to be allowed to appear on the ballot in a national election.

In the worse case scenario we will have taken just another baby step towards losing our Republic and the rule of law when that dusty and irritating Constitution becomes something to just be ignored or set aside whenever it might be inconvenient, or upset some people, or just be impractical for this particular “situation”.

Maybe we have reached the point where we just set aside parts of the Constitution if they are inconvenient and that might potentially be a problem for He Who Will Slow the Rising of the Seas and the fainting, ecstatic, potentially angry mob who propelled him to power. We have already journeyed a ways down the road once traveled by ancient Rome where the elites began to worry about the mood and reactions of the masses who openly threatened disorder and mayhem if they were unhappy, while those who held the reigns of power increasingly ignored the once revered rules that had held their political system together.

At the time of the publication of this article, Barack Obama still had not proved his eligibility to serve as President of the United States as defined by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America. And he probably remains unable to do so.

Tags: barack obama, constitution, Natural Born, North America, POTUS

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 11:15 am and is filed under Law, Politics, Society, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 1,987 views | Trackback | Print this page |

David Huntwork is a conservative activist and freelance columnist in Northern Colorado where he lives with his wife and three young daughters. He believes in the importance of Faith, Family, and Freedom as the formula of success for a good life and a healthy nation. You can reach him at DaveHuntwork@uno.com. | More from David Huntwork