Obama’s Eligibility: The Big Con
- Lawrence Sellin Monday, April 11, 2011
Ordinary Americans could be forgiven for believing that the Democrat political effete elite and the main stream media (MSM) have been working in parallel to dismantle the Constitution and create a permanent left-wing, multicultural majority in the United States.
Their apparent goal is to transform our republic into a collection of simultaneous arguments, where the only thing we have in common is our differences.
If you’ve been wondering how things got so bad, then you haven’t been paying careful attention to their shenanigans, which is exactly what they hope, would happen.
A major part of that ongoing effort by the left-wing and the MSM involved a political deception to sidestep the Constitution and permit Barack Hussein Obama to run for President.
According to Article II, Section I of the Constitution, Obama has never been eligible for the Presidency because he is not a natural born citizen i.e. someone born in the US of citizen parents at the time of birth.
Over the last thirty years, there have been numerous attempts by Congress to change the Article II natural born requirement to “native born”, which is, born in the US regardless of parentage or just “citizen”, whether native or naturalized (good news for Arnold).
By electing Obama without an Amendment, the Constitution has been undermined and a precedent has been established to eliminate the term “natural born” from Article II, Section I.
One could claim that the “set-up” of the con began with the fabricated controversy, bolstered by the MSM, questioning the eligibility of Senator John McCain for President under the same Constitutional provision. McCain was born while his Navy officer father was serving at a US military base in the Panama Canal Zone.
It is interesting to note that those who questioned McCain’s eligibility were not called derogatory names like “birther”. They were deemed serious people asking valid questions related to the Constitution.
The details of the McCain controversy are less important than the means it created to hoodwink voters into thinking that Obama was also eligible for the Presidency. It all was conveniently written into the Congressional Record.
On April 30, 2008 Senate Resolution 511 resolved that John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘‘natural born Citizen’’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.
SR 511 had no recorded vote, is not legal or binding
The core argument of SR 511 was the legal analysis co-written by Laurence H. Tribe and rumored conservative Theodore B. Olson.
Tribe is a professor at Harvard Law School and a leading liberal scholar of constitutional law. He was an active supporter of and a legal adviser to Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign.
(I am grateful to Linda A. Melin for her thorough and thought-provoking research on the subject of natural born citizenship from which I liberally pilfer.)
SR 511 had no recorded vote, is not legal or binding, but cleverly expresses the opinions of those who stand to benefit from them, that is, to sanitize Obama’s ineligibility to be President.
In his memorandum to the Senate, Tribe makes selective arguments, which seem more to serve the interests of Obama than McCain, particularly in the statement:
“These sources all confirm that the phrase ‘natural born’ includes both birth abroad to parents who were citizens, and birth within the nation’s territory and allegiance.”
The citation Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 790-91 (1983), which Tribe uses, actually comes from the dissenting opinion of Justice Brennan, who argued that “the Constitution is not a static document”
The reference Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 655 (1898) is cited without Minor v. Happersett 21 Wall. 162, 166-168 (1874), which was the guiding case for the Wong Kim Ark decision. In Minor, the Court cited the “Law of Nations” and clearly established who was a “natural born citizen” beyond any doubt, a definition that does not include Barack Hussein Obama.
Not surprisingly, Tribe, being an expert on the subject, claims that the Framers of the Constitution relied on British common law. To a casual observer, it would seem odd that the Founders would choose a legal model from which they were trying to free themselves.
Tribe is, quite simply, wrong. The 1st commentaries on the Constitution and a plethora of other historical references all point to the Law of Nations as a guiding force, not British common law.
The McCain eligibility controversy and SR 511 were the Congressional equivalent of “I’m ok, you’re ok”, both seemingly meant to divert attention away from Obama’s Constitutional ineligibility.
The “hook” of the con was the June 2008 release of Obama’s “birth certificate”, more aptly described as the “Certification of Live Birth” (COLB). It was accompanied by the circulation of many carefully-worded, official statements of verification, all of which sounded more like legal escape hatches.
Dr. Ron Pollard aka Polarik has produced informative and entertaining videos arguing that the various versions of the COLB, which appeared on pro-Obama websites, are all forgeries.
Sometimes the facts make it difficult not to believe in conspiracies.
 Lawrence Sellin Most recent columns © Canada Free Press 2011 Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a recently retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve. He is a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. |