{"id":862,"date":"2010-09-06T23:56:35","date_gmt":"2010-09-07T05:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=862"},"modified":"2010-09-07T16:34:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-07T22:34:10","slug":"the-eligibility-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=862","title":{"rendered":"The Eligibility Question"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dear readers, the day has come to discuss a rather hairy issue. For some time, I\u2019ve been pondering the major questions surrounding our current President\u2019s eligibility to hold the office. It\u2019s a touchy subject, I know, but let me warn you in advance: I\u2019m not going to be drawn into any discussions of racism, so don\u2019t even go there. As with everything else we\u2019ve seen so far, let\u2019s look at the topic objectively and from the point of view of <em>Constitutional law<\/em>, which regardless of anyone\u2019s personal feelings, has the final say.<\/p>\n<p>So, before we can begin to discuss the question of eligibility, we need to actually establish just what Constitutional law says about a citizen\u2019s qualifications to be President of the United States, so we\u2019re all on the same page. There are three requirements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, the person must be a natural citizen of the United States. (More on this in a minute.)<\/li>\n<li>Second, the person must be at least 35 years old.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, the person must reside in the United States for a minimum of 14 years at the time of his election.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We all know that President Obama meets requirements 2 and 3, so let me expand on the first requirement for just a minute. What makes a person a natural citizen? Well, he could be born in the United States, regardless of who his parents are. That automatically makes him a natural citizen. Also, he could be born abroad to two citizens of the United States. That also makes him a natural citizen, as in the case of Mr. Obama\u2019s opponent in the 2008 elections, John McCain, who was born in Panama to two American parents. Finally, if only one of the parents is an American citizen and the child is born abroad, then that parent must have had citizenship for at least 5 years after the age of 14. In other words, if the parent was a citizen at age 14, then the parent must be at least 19 for the child to be born a natural citizen. Pretty convoluted, huh? Anyway, those are the rules.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, one more thing. If a natural citizen at any point in time renounces his citizenship, he automatically loses his eligibility to be president, even if he later regains his citizenship through re-naturalization. This makes him a <em>naturalized<\/em> citizen, just like any foreign immigrant who comes into the country and gets citizenship. Got it? Good.<\/p>\n<p>Now I\u2019m not even going to <em>touch<\/em> the birth question. If you want to read a really good analysis of the birth dilemma, go <a href=\"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=656\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. The author, Mr. Paul Hollrah, is a recent member of the Electoral College and much more qualified than me to address that part of it (best and brightest,<a href=\"http:\/\/rosasrealitycheck.com\/?p=4\" target=\"_blank\"> remember<\/a>?)<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, a loyal reader and cherished friend asked me a while back, after I wrote that very first post about the Electoral College, whether the College hadn\u2019t in fact verified President Obama\u2019s eligibility before voting him into office. That was part of their job, yes. In fact, a candidate is supposed to be vetted on three different occasions: first, by their party at the time of their nomination, then by the Electoral College during the election process, and finally by Congress before the inauguration. <em>That\u2019s<\/em> how important it is to our nation that our President be properly qualified! BUT, in terms of the Electoral College, it\u2019s not like they get together and discuss the eligibility of each candidate over coffee or drinks. It\u2019s a secret ballot. Each member of the College has the <em>individual responsibility<\/em> of deciding for himself whether the candidates are qualified, and they vote based on their <em>personal findings<\/em>. No member of the Electoral College knows for sure who any other member voted for, though they can probably take a good guess based on their party!<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, for purposes of today\u2019s discussion, I\u2019m going to simply assume that Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii. Why? Because he said so, and I\u2019m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. In fact, I\u2019m going to take everything he\u2019s said at face value and assume he\u2019s telling the truth: that he was, in fact, born a natural citizen.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also going to assume he\u2019s telling the truth when he states in his autobiography that he traveled to Indonesia (to visit his mother, who had renounced her American citizenship) and Pakistan in 1981. And THAT\u2019s what causes a major problem in my mind. You see, no American citizen could have traveled legally to either of those countries on an American passport in 1981. They were considered nations that harbored terrorists and therefore enemies of the United States. So\u2026how did he get there?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve heard some say that Mr. Obama was born with dual citizenship, American and British, because his father was Kenyan and a British subject, and that he could have traveled on a British passport. While it is true that he could have been born with dual citizenship, by 1981 Kenyans were no longer British subjects and he would have had to exchange his British passport for a Kenyan passport, and there\u2019s the catch: Kenya does not allow dual citizenship with the USA for adults. Mr. Obama would have had to choose between his U.S. citizenship and Kenyan citizenship! I\u2019ve also heard the argument that since his mother had obtained Indonesian citizenship, maybe he had dual citizenship with Indonesia. The same rule applies: dual citizenship between the United States and Indonesia is not allowed. The only way Mr. Obama could have traveled to Indonesia and Pakistan <em>legally<\/em> would have been to renounce his American citizenship!<\/p>\n<p>Which then makes you (or should make you) wonder\u2026how did he get back into the United States? Well, he could have gotten re-naturalized, in which case he is an American citizen, but no longer a <em>natural<\/em> citizen, and is therefore not eligible for the Presidency. But\u2026why isn\u2019t there a record of that? Even worse scenarios, which I don\u2019t even want to think about, are that we elected a <em>resident alien<\/em>, or WORSE, an <em>illegal alien<\/em>! (Maybe that\u2019s why he\u2019s in such a snit over Arizona\u2019s immigration law?)<\/p>\n<p>There is, of course, the best case scenario: that he never gave up his citizenship but simply traveled illegally on his American passport, in which case we simply have a criminal in the Oval Office. Seeing as how this particular crime doesn\u2019t involve smoking marijuana (and not inhaling) but illegally traveling to countries that are Enemies of the State, while his eligibility would then not be in question, in my mind (and hopefully in yours) his <em>loyalty<\/em> to the United States would be. Still not a good scene.<\/p>\n<p>Even in the best case scenario above, Mr. Obama slipped past his own party, the (mostly Democrat in 2008) Electoral College, and (again, Democrat-controlled) Congress. In their zeal to get him elected, all these people were willing to overlook real (and obvious) issues with Mr. Obama\u2019s eligibility and\/or questionable loyalty to the country he is supposed to protect, \u00a0for our nation\u2019s highest and most powerful office. And they didn\u2019t even need to look further than what he himself admitted to! Why??<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know about you, but to me, Obamacare is the least of our worries\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear readers, the day has come to discuss a rather hairy issue. For some time, I\u2019ve been pondering the major questions surrounding our current President\u2019s eligibility to hold the office. It\u2019s a touchy subject, I know, but let me warn &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=862\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}