General Question

JackAdams's avatar

Have you seen the e-mail questioning Obama's "eligibility" to be President?

Asked by JackAdams (6574points) August 21st, 2008

I have no idea if any of this is true or not, but this arrived in my e-mail today:

The following is an article from the July 7, 2008 , issue #27 from ‘The American Free Press’ Newspaper, an article by Assistant editor, Pat Shannon:

‘It now appears that Barack Obama is constitutionally ineligible for the office of president. John McCain’s eligibility was established in 1964, when courts ruled Sen. Barry Goldwater was eligible although he was born in Arizona when it was a territory, not a state. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone when it was a U.S. territory.

And, even as the controlled media continues to ignore the ineligibility of Obama, it will not go away. While few doubt that the Democrats will manage to pull off his nomination, all remain poised to view the legal performance.

The first hurdle will be having Obama produce his birth certificate, which so far he has refused to do, and prove that he was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, as he has always claimed. There is speculation that his American mother may have brought him to Honolulu shortly after his birth in Kenya, but no proof of that has been shown.

According to the law on the books at the time of Obama’s birth, the office of president requires that a candidate be a natural citizen if the child was not born to two U.S. citizen parents. Since he was not, should it be proven that Obama was not born in Hawaii, as claimed, he is ineligible without further debate. But assuring that he was born there, he has another problem.

According to a legal researcher who has contacted the AFP, U.S. law very clearly states: ‘If only one parent is a U.S. citizen at the time of one’s birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for a minimum of 10 years, five of which must be after the age of 16.’ And therein lies Obama’s new problem.

Barack Obama’s father was never a U.S. citizen.

Interestingly, there isn’t much paperwork on the marriage of Obama’s parents, and this has a few researchers speculating that it never took place at all. On page 27 of ‘Obama: From Promise to Power’, David Mendell writes: ‘Obama later confessed that he never searched for the government documents on the marriage, although Madelyn (Obama’s maternal grandmother) insisted they were legally married.’ He also notes that Obama’s father apparently was not legally divorced from his first wife back in Kenya at the time, a point of contention that ultimately led to their separation. This also would suggest that there may never have been any legal marriage by Obama’s parents at all, but the Constitution does not ban an illegitimate child from the White House, as long as he was born inside the U.S.

Obama’s mother was born in Kansas and was only 18 when Obama was born. This means even though she satisfied the citizen requirement for 10 years, she was not a citizen for at least five years prior to Obama’s birth. In essence, the mother alone is not old enough to qualify her son for automatic U.S. citizenship. At most, two years elapsed from his mother turning 16 to the time of Barack Obama’s birth when she was 18. His mother would have needed to have been 16 + 5 = 21 years old at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to be a natural-born citizen. Barack Obama was already three years old at the time his mother turned 21.

Technically, Obama should have been naturalized as a citizen, but that, of course, would disqualify him from holding the office of president. If the allegations are accurate, America could install in January of 2009 a new president who is not even a U.S. citizen, neither born nor naturalized.

It should be demanded that Obama produce his 1961 Hawaiian birth certificate.

If he cannot satisfactorily do so, he should be deemed immediately ineligible to hold the office of president.

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20 Answers

lefteh's avatar

Oh, you mean this?

marinelife's avatar

Choose you sources more wisely, JackAdams.

JackAdams's avatar

Thanks for the enlightenment.

I asked because I really did not know, and now I do.

lefteh's avatar

Yeah, I didn’t get the impression that you were personally accusing him of being ineligible.

My smartassness was directed toward the tragically misinformed author of the email.

JackAdams's avatar

No offense was taken by your remark, and I really am grateful for you educating me.

I do wonder why his birth certificate number was obliterated, however…

That document is a matter of public record, you know.

lefteh's avatar

No it’s not.

It absolutely is not.

lefteh's avatar

Here is the Hawaii statute explaining that it is not a public record.

emilyrose's avatar

lefteh—you rule and remind me of myself as a younger activist! you go man! stick with it!

JackAdams's avatar

@lefteh: No disrespect, of course, but what you brought to my attention reads, in part, “it shall be unlawful for any person to permit inspection of, or to disclose information contained in vital statistics records…”

Didn’t you do just that, when you posted a link which revealed his birth certificate to everyone?

I mean, didn’t you violate that law, by mentioning the link?

I’m not judging, just asking.

breedmitch's avatar

The American Free Press
Now I know where one of our Ron Paul-loving jellyfish gets all his information.

crunchaweezy's avatar

@JackAdams

It’s not his link, it’ from Barack’s website to prove it to the non believers.

JackAdams's avatar

Didja notice that the birth certificate notes that his mother’s first name is “Stanley?”

That seems to be an unusual first name for a female, doesn’t it?

August 22, 2008, 6:20 AM EDT

BarbieM's avatar

@JackAdams: It is unusual, but it is her legal first name.

crunchaweezy's avatar

How do you know she wasn’t a man? ;p

lefteh's avatar

@JackAdams: That statute is referring to public health officials, and forbidding them to release information to anyone but the people in the list. You can do whatever the hell you want with your own birth certificate, and Barack decided to post it everywhere he could to combat the rumors.

@crunchaweezy: Because little Barack shot out of her vagina.

JackAdams's avatar

Thanks for the clarification.

I’m in your debt.

August 22, 2008, 11:55 AM EDT

lefteh's avatar

So what’s with the timestamps?

sferik's avatar

@lefteh there appears to be some demand for timestamps. I guess the feeling is that if Fluther won’t provide them for users, users can provide their own.

lefteh's avatar

Ahh, I see. I knew about the want for timestamps, but didn’t know people were taking matters into their own hands.

Interesting.

JackAdams's avatar

But hopefully, not illegal.

August 22, 2008, 1:29 PM EDT

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