Comments on The American Thinker,"Obama's birth certificate ..."

While I agree that Obama is a phony I do not think that the Indonesian citizenship argument is important as given in this article. Many American women marry foreign men and then after having a child or more get divorced. There have been cases of men from Saudi Arabia or some other moslem country kidnapping a child and taking it the father's homeland. If one of those children ever escapes and gets back to America the Customs and Border Protection Officer will say "Welcome home." No foreign man or court has the power to remove US citizenship from a minor.

Of more concern to me would be if Obama choose as an adult to claim Indonesian citizenship so that he could travel to Pakistan on an Indonesian passport or claim a student loan or scholarship by claiming to be a foreign student. If either of those cases are true then that should eliminate his claim that he is a "Natural Born" citizen eligible for the office he occupies. Even in that case however he would remain a simple US citizen, eligible to serve in the Senate.

It is very hard to actually lose your US citizenship. Formally renouncing it before Federal magistrate or at an American Embassy is a deliberately cumbersome process. As a legal punishment it would only happen if you take up foreign citizenship and move overseas to avoid paying US taxes. In that case the former citizen is barred from ever reentering the United States. A treason conviction could include a loss of citizenship but rarely does even when that law is prosecuted, which is in itself infrequent.

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If Obama failed to register for Selective Service then that should be an indictable act but given his present position there is no way to charge him. If there was a Republican Governor and Republican Attorney General in Illinois then it might be possible for them to charge him with violating a state statute by failing to register for the Militia while a citizen of Illinois.

People are persistently mischaracterizing the meaning of "Natural Born." If born on US soil, under the Sun in jus soli, then the parents do not have to be citizens. President Chester Alan Arthur had a father who was not a US citizen.

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This manufactured controversy is caused by Obama's refusal to release documents that are in his power to provide. He does so to enable his supporters to ridicule those demanding them. The documents themselves could be completely innocuous. This is the Democratic Patry's revenge for the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry who refused to authorize the release of his military records.

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This was actually from a series of exchanges on the Belmont Club thread linked to above but given the topic I decided to place it here. The poster bob followed up by stating that he had read other information elsewhere on the web so I must be wrong. Such logic ends the argument.

bob,
(who asked for my definition of "Natural Born" and how I came by it)
I was trained in Immigration Law at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. US citizenship for persons born outside the territory of the United States is based on jus sanguinis, that is by the blood. Citizenship for persons born on US soil is based on jus soli, that is under the Sun. The only place today where someone can be born a US national and not be a US citizen is American Samoa. The definitions of who is a citizen under what circumstances has changed many times but most of those changes deal with people born outside the United States. At one time it was possible to be born a US national within the US and not be a Natural Born Citizen. Ever since the adoption of the 14th Amendment all persons born in the United States "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" have been citizens and are considered "Natural Born." All Native American Indians are now considered US citizens if born in the United States. Indians from Canada have freedom to enter the US but are not citizens.

It may be possible to argue that the child of an illegal immigrant, the so called "anchor babies" are in fact not entitled to citizenship. If there was such an argument it would be interesting to see if it would apply only to the children of illegal immigrant mothers or also to the children of a US citizen mother who conceived with an illegal immigrant father. The question of the citizenship of a child conceived through rape would also have to be considered. All of those arguments would not apply to Barack Obama. His father had a valid student visa when he entered the United States. However as I have noted at this time a man like Mr Obama Sr. would be ineligible for an immigrant visa that confers permanent resident status and leads to naturalization. That is because he was a polygamist. I do not know if that was a legal bar 47 years ago.

If you are concerned that everything that we know about this man, his secrecy and dishonesty, his putative father Obama Sr, his friends and associates, Frank Davis, Ayers etc. are a reason to work to spare our country further damage then I am with you. My argument is just don't waste your time going down blind alleys.