Worldnutdaily: Open Mouth, Insert Foot : Dispatches from the Culture Wars

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Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of Michigan Citizens for Science and co-founder of The Panda's Thumb. He has written for such publications as The Bard, Skeptic and Reports of the National Center for Science Education, spoken in front of many organizations and conferences, and appeared on nationally syndicated radio shows and on C-SPAN. Ed is also a Fellow with the Center for Independent Media and the host of Declaring Independence, a one hour weekly political talk show on WPRR in Grand Rapids, Michigan.(static)

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Worldnutdaily: Open Mouth, Insert Foot

Posted on: June 18, 2008 9:02 AM, by Ed Brayton

The Worldnutdaily a couple days ago breathlessly asked, "Is Obama's candidacy constitutional?" They cited speculation that maybe Obama isn't really an American citizen because the campaign had never released his birth certificate (since when do campaigns release birth certificates?). Turns out to be total bullshit, predictably.

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As is usual with such wingnut malarkey, it mutates. The meme now is that somehow Obama is/was a Kenyan citizen and therefore his US citizenship magically evaporated.

See an example here. This also needs a comprehensive debunking.

Posted by: meatbrain | June 18, 2008 11:11 AM

Hey Ed -

This is a bit 'ot' for this thread (but the title suits...), on the morning TV shows here in Sydney has been news of an Australian gal who travelled recently through the US and got sprung being a few days over her 6-month tourist visa. She was detained for some three weeks without even being allowed to contact her folks in Australia, in the serious "you are a criminal" level type detention.

It seems what happened to her was that her travel to Canada at the start of her trip involved a stop in Hawaii that set her visa clock running but when she entered the states again that was unknown to her. As an expat yank who has lived half my life in Sydney, this is *not* how I like to see the land of my birth behave.

Posted by: marc buhler | June 18, 2008 11:13 AM

John McCain wasn't even born in the United States. Does the GOP want to restart the discussion concerning whether he is entitled to run for president?

[Link]

Posted by: Zeno | June 18, 2008 11:40 AM

Huh. How the heck did kos get a copy of Obama's birth certificate? He doesn't say in the post - did the campaign finally decide to release it just to get it out there and found a non-neutral third party to release it to?

Regardless - I didn't know that Obama's father was ALSO named "Barack Hussein Obama" - knowing that would have made the whole "his middle name is really Muhammed/his first name is really Barry" even easier to dismiss as silliness.

Posted by: NonyNony | June 18, 2008 12:37 PM

The Obama campaign has posted his birth certificate for all to see on the Fight the Smears website.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/birthcert

Posted by: Paul Hutch | June 18, 2008 1:48 PM

As someone who is a natural-born USA citizen, but who has a non-USA (i.e., foreign) birth certificate, I can assert that what matters in such cases is a State Department certificate of "US Citizen Born Aboard" (or something like that: It's in a safe place and hence is not in front of me--I have to use it once every c.10 years or so when I renew my USAian passport, but otherwise it's never "used" or seen). This, plus my first passport (as a baby!) was (in my case) issued by the USA consulate after my parents presented appropriate evidence. So whilst my birth certificate is very obviously non-USAian, that doesn't prove a thing about my USAian citizenship.

Posted by: blf | June 18, 2008 1:52 PM

But the argument on WND is even weirder than that:

...U.S. law at the time of his birth required his natural-born parent (his mother) to have resided in the United States for '10 years, at least [f]ive of which had to be after the age of 16.'"
He then points out Ann Dunham, Obama's mother, was 18 when Obama was born "so she wouldn't have met the requirement of five years after the age of 16."

So, if you were born between 1952 and 1986 to a foreign father and an American mother, if your mother was less than 21 years old at the time, then by dint of her youth you cannot be a natural US citizen. However, this does not apply in the case of young fathers.

Of course, Geraghty doesn't spell it out like that as it would be too stupid for words. Perhaps some weird quirk of the law has thrown up such a bizarre anomaly, but I can't see how it could pass muster as constitutional. Or even halfway sane, for that matter.

Posted by: Bartholomew | June 18, 2008 2:39 PM

This is to counter the premise that McCain is not eligible, which, technically, he is not.

Posted by: wheyghey | June 18, 2008 4:19 PM

Where were these guys to question the Constitutionality of a couple of guys from the same state running for president and vice president?

Posted by: Ferrous Patella | June 18, 2008 6:09 PM

Where were these guys to question the Constitutionality of a couple of guys from the same state running for president and vice president?

There's no constitutional problem; the 12th Amendment bars the electors of a state from casting both of their votes for residents of their own state. It would obviously be risky for a party to have both of its candidates from the same large state if the election was going to be close, but it's still perfectly legal.

Posted by: eric | June 19, 2008 11:53 PM