The Great Wall of Silence
Since Obama’s election the question of his eligibility to the office is rarely raised by members of the media: print, radio or television and then only momentarily in passing. It is never pursued. Nonetheless it remains, always, just below the surface.
On December 2, 2012, I wrote to Congressman Doug Lamborn and asked him to document the means by which Obama had established his eligibility to the office of President of the United States. My motive is obvious. I hoped to compel him, by his own analysis, to acknowledge that Obama is not eligible to the office.
There was no answer until January 4th and that only after repeated inquiries. His response included the following and I quote:
Article Two of the Constitution 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 the President.” Furthermore, natural-born citizen is defined in the Constitution under the first section of the 14th Amendment.
My following letter to Mr. Lamborn on January 21 has been met with silence. In that letter I challenged his assertion that the 14th Amendment defines natural-born citizen.
The first sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads: 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. There is no definition of natural born citizen in that sentence.
There are essentially four sources of United States Citizenship:
Birth in the United States (Native Born or At Birth).
Birth of United States Citizen Parents irrespective of place of birth (Natural Born or By Birth).
Naturalization according to law.
By Special Act of Congress.
Mr. Lamborn’s erroneous assertion is probably based on research of the issue by the Congressional Research Office (CRS) of the US Congress. Even a brief review of the product of that research creates a cloud of ambiguity that is not reflective of the Constitution itself.
There is no dispute that the authors of the Constitution sought to impose a more stringent standard on the citizenship requirement for presidential eligibility than that for congressional eligibility. They did so by modifying that citizenship requirement by the term natural born. That modifier demands that citizenship be derived from the parents. That meaning, at the time the Constitution was written, is derived from “The Law of Nations”. Subsequently, the devolution of citizenship from parents to child was defined by statute in the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795.
The child of Canadian citizens born in the United States is a native born citizen of the United States and a natural born citizen of Canada. The force, clarity, and brevity of the expression: No person except a natural born citizen, is such that it is impossible to imagine a more effective grammatical structure that would express the founders resolve to preclude a division of loyalties or hostility in the presidency.
The failure of the congress to adhere to the principles expounded in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution has resulted in an administration whose overt hostility is demonstrative of precisely that which the founders sought to prevent.
Members of Congress willful misunderstanding of the 14th Amendment seeks to avoid the responsibility of correcting the present situation, but the Constitution remains as always, unrelenting in its demand for acquiescence.
The issue is not going to go away. We cannot deviate from truth in selected instances and demand adherence in others. As this is written, it must be admitted that there are two very promising and outstanding young republicans whose cause is being advanced but to whom this same disability applies.
By reason of Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution and that alone, Obama is ineligible to the office he occupies. All the other charges against him are icing on the cake. The House of Representatives, though forewarned, permitted this condition to evolve. It is their responsibility for resolution.
