Thoughts On the Looming Citizenship Scandal

Mountain Sage and America's Right have been following a lawsuit against Senator Obama and the DNC to force them to prove Obama is a "natural-born citizen" as required to be eligible for the office of President.

The lawsuit seems frivolous at first blush, although my perception did a 180 after reading that Obama filed a motion to stay discovery pending the outcome of the already-filed motion to dismiss. Staying discovery is somewhat extraordinary and is done to prevent undue expense; here, the most crucial discovery issue is simply turning over a birth certificate, which should be dispositive of one issue in the case, if not the whole thing. It's not about cost--they're acting like they have something to hide.

The suit is two-pronged. The first prong alleges the Senator is not a natural born citizen because he was born in Kenya, not Hawaii. The second prong alleges that the Senator was adopted by an Indonesian stepfather and therefore lost his US citizenship; and, that he is currently either a naturalized citizen (not "natural born") or not a US citizen at all.

In a telephone interview that is about to be released to major media outlet, Michelle Obama allegedly admits that Obama was adopted, making the factual case for the 2nd prong.

My take on this is that only the first prong is constitutionally meritorious. The Constitution does not define terms like "natural born citizen" or "naturalized citizen," so the argument that if he was naturalized he cannot be natural born is illogical. As far as I'm aware, this has never been litigated (and I don't have Westlaw or convenient access to a law library, so I'm not looking it up!) so the courts will get to interpret the meaning of natural born citizen as they see fit. I see no reason to define it in such a way that a person loses his/her status as natural born if his/her citizenship changes, at especially if that change was due to the decision of parents and not the individual in question. I must admit, however, that I have not fully researched this, so if there are source materials explaining the rationale for the citizenship requirement, written contemporaneously with the founding, that preclude my interpretation, then I would probably change my position.

Of course, the first prong is cut-and-dry, and I'm rather afraid that Obama isn't turning over the "vault" birth certificate to resolve this issue one way or another BEFORE the election. I do NOT want to find out he's ineligible after he's already been elected, as that would be a Constitutional crisis of the highest order.

As an aside, from the reports I've seen about this Michelle Obama interview, there is more to it than the admission of the adoption. Mrs. Obama apparently goes on a rant about the citizenship allegations being a plot by white racists and about questioning his patriotism. It's hard to judge tone on the printed page, but I get the impression that the remarks were paranoid and inflammatory, and may prove to be more politically significant than the admission.

Related posts: McCain's Citizenship and Eligibility