Impeach Obama? Presidency Likely Illegal
Central Point Missing from National Conversation
By Aaron Klein
WND.com
One central point seems to be missing from the national conversation about impeaching President Obama for alleged violations of the Constitution.
When Obama was first proposed as a presidential
candidate in 2007, the nation failed to have a
meaningful debate concerning the serious
constitutional issue of electing someone whose
father was not a U.S. citizen.
According to correspondence from the original
framers of the Constitution as well as Supreme Court
rulings, the legal writings that helped establish
the principles of the Constitution and even a Senate
resolution affirmed by Obama himself, Obama likely
does not qualify for the constitutional requirement
that stipulates only a “natural born” citizen can
serve as U.S. president.
In other words, Obama’s very presidency could itself
be unconstitutional. And the matter has nothing to
do with where the president was born.
The nation’s failure to explore the
constitutional problems inherent in Obama’s
candidacy coupled with the failure of the
legislative and judicial branches to conduct an
investigation into the matter may have set the stage
for the president’s future disregard for the supreme
law of the United States.
Obama, according to the official narrative, was born
Aug. 4, 1961, to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama
Sr.
Dunham was an American citizen of predominantly
English descent from Wichita, Kansas, and was 18
years old at the time of Obama’s birth.
Obama Sr. was a member of the Luo tribe from
Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, which at
the time was still a British colony.
Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S.
Constitution spells out presidential eligibility,
requiring the nation’s elected chief to be a
“natural born citizen.”
The clause states: “No person except a natural born
citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the
time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be
eligible to the Office of President; neither shall
any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not
have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and
been fourteen Years a Resident within the United
States.”
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
specifically defines “citizen” but not “natural-born
citizen.”
A citizen is defined as: “All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are Citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside.”
However, no definition of “natural born citizen” –
terminology only used in the presidential
requirement clause – was provided anywhere in the
Constitution. To this day, the precise meaning of
the term is still being debated.
There are no records of any definitive discussion on
the matter during the Constitutional Convention.
That – coupled with the absence of definitive
Supreme Court rulings and a wide array of opinions
throughout the centuries – has only further confused
the question of what “natural born” actually means.
Still, according to some of the most authoritative
sources, including the framers of the Constitution
as well as Supreme Court rulings, Obama does not
meet the eligibility requirements.
‘Natural born’ defined
On July 25, 1787, John Jay, one of the three authors
of the Federalist Papers, wrote to George
Washington, who was at the time presiding over the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Jay discussed the concern of dual-loyalty of the
president, writing: “Permit me to hint, whether it
would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong
check to the admission of Foreigners into the
administration of our national Government; and to
declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the
American army shall not be given to nor devolve on,
any but a natural born Citizen.”
Jay, however, also did not define “natural born.”
Rep. John Bingham, R-Ohio, a principal framer of the
14th Amendment, offered some definition for
presidential qualifications in a discussion in the
House on March 9, 1866: “[I] find no fault with the
introductory clause [S. 61 Bill], which is simply
declaratory of what is written in the Constitution,
that every human being born within the jurisdiction
of the United States of parents not owing allegiance
to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of
your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.”
In other words, according to Bingham, Obama would
not be eligible to serve as president, since his
father owed allegiance to a foreign sovereignty and
even worked for the government of Kenya.
The first U.S. Congress passed a law that began to
define “natural born.” The Naturalization Act of
1790 rejected the condition of being born on U.S.
soil and referred only to parentage: “The children
of citizens of the United States, that may be born
beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United
States,” the Act states, “shall be considered as
natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of
citizenship shall not descend to persons whose
fathers have never been resident in the United
States.”
Five years later, however, Congress repealed the
act.
Still, it was clear that the intent of the
Constitution’s “natural born citizen” qualification
was to ensure the country would not be led by an
individual with dual loyalties owing to parentage.
To try to understand what the Founding Fathers meant
by “natural born,” some have turned to prominent
legal tomes of the day.
The Law of Nations, a 1758 work by Swiss legal
philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, was read by many of
the American founders and informed their
understanding of the principles of law, which became
established in the Constitution of 1787.
De Vattel writes in Book 1, Chapter 19, of his
treatise: “The natives, or natural-born citizens,
are those born in the country, of parents who are
citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate
itself otherwise than by the children of the
citizens, those children naturally follow the
condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their
rights. … In order to be of the country, it is
necessary that a person be born of a father who is a
citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it
will be only the place of his birth, and not his
country.”
So by Vattel’s standards, Obama arguably would not
be eligible to serve as president.
Supreme Court casts doubt
Numerous Supreme Court decisions have yielded
conflicting views of citizenship and what it means
to be a “natural born citizen.” In Dred Scott v.
Sandford, in 1857, for example, the court ruled that
citizenship is acquired by place of birth, not
through blood or lineage.
But much of that decision – which had notoriously
excluded slaves and their descendants from
possessing constitutional rights – was overturned in
1868.
Another case, Minor v. Happersett, in 1874, mentions
the “natural born” issue.
“At common law, with the nomenclature of which the
framers of the constitution were familiar,” the
decision states, “it was never doubted that all
children born in a country, of parents [plural] who
were its citizens [plural], became themselves, upon
their birth, citizens also. These were natives or
natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens
or foreigners. Some authorities go further, and
include as citizens children born within the
jurisdiction, without reference to the citizenship
of their parents. As to this class there have been
doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes
of this case, it is not necessary to solve these
doubts. It is sufficient, for everything we have now
to consider, that all children, born of citizen
parents within the jurisdiction, are themselves
citizens.”
According to this definition, and scores of other
Supreme Court rulings, Obama may not be eligible to
serve as president.
Obama affirms disqualifying definition
While Congress did not formally address Obama’s
eligible issued, it did question the “natural born”
qualifications of Obama’s 2008 presidential
opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain. The Senate,
which included Obama, ultimately passed a resolution
that seems to define the term as one who is born to
two U.S. citizens.
The scion of distinguished U.S. naval officers,
McCain was born to two American parents in the
Panama Canal Zone.
On April 30, 2008, the U.S. Senate sought to answer
the question by passing a nonbinding resolution that
states, “Whereas John Sidney McCain, III, was born
to American citizens on an American military base in
the Panama Canal Zone in 1936: Now, therefore, be it
resolved, that John Sidney McCain, III, is a
‘natural born citizen’ under Article II, Section 1,
of the Constitution of the United States.”