In desperation to deligitmize the presidency of Barack Obama, America’s first African-American president, a birther in Pennsylvania named Thomas Barchfield is trying to establish a new standard of eligibility for the presidency, based on a ruling by the Supreme Court in 1875:
While Barchfeld does not directly question Obama’s birthplace—the president was born in Hawaii in 1961—he instead focuses on Obama’s parents. That’s parents with an “s,” and according to Barchfeld, that’s extremely important.
Barchfeld points out that the U.S. Constitution requires the country’s presidents to be “natural born citizens” (or citizens at the time of the adoption of the constitution) but that the document does not detail exactly what that means. While common understanding has held that those born in the United States qualify to be president, Barchfeld objects, pointing to an 1875 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Minor v. Happersett that has never been overturned in which the court ruled that a natural-born citizen can only be someone born in the United States to citizen parents.
As text from the Minor v. Happersett decision reads, “The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas, but his father, Barack Obama Sr., who was born in Kenya, was not a U.S. citizen at the time of his son’s birth and never became one.
“The founding fathers never defined the term ‘natural born citizen,’” Barchfeld argues, which he then says allows only for court precedent—such as the Minor v. Happersett case—to be used when determining the lawfulness of Obama’s presidency.
“The Supreme Court defines it as both parents being U.S. citizens,” Barchfeld says.
But by this standard, Mitt Romney would also be ineligible because his father was born in Mexico — as would Rick Santorum, whose father was born in Italy.
Not only are Santorum & Romney most likely not eligible neither are Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio. This is why the GOP remained silent on Obama’s lack of eligibility when Obama ran.
Here’s a good question, why can’t the GOP or the Dems put up an eligible candidate to run for POTUS? After all we only 300 million people in this country!
No, no, no…you have it all wrong, Ponder.
What matters is the parents’ citizenship at the TIME OF BIRTH of the child…
And, yes, Santorum and Romney need to be VETTED. NOW.
Neither Jindal nor Rubio are qualified under the Constitution. And, NO, you cannot go back and change the Constitution or the law to make Obama eligible. He is a Usurper and fraudulently sits in our White House.
Wrongo – Minor vs. Happerett has not been overturned because it hasn’t needed to to be. It was rendered null 45 years after it was decided.
Minor was a women’s suffrage case in 1875 that contested the language of a Missouri law that read, “every male citizen of the U.S. shall be entitled to vote.” SCOTUS ruled against Minor on grounds that the Constitution restricted women from voting, which was true at the time. Their ruling was nullified in 1920 when the Constitution was amended to give women the vote.
The nullification of Minor is likely one of many factors underlying the dismissal of the three birther lawsuits that have made it up to the Republican-controlled Supreme Court since Pres. Obama was elected.
My vote goes to Paul or Gingrich……….Romney and Santorum are not eligible and it has nothing to do with “birther” standards! IT’S THE CONSTITUTION specifications in Article 2 Section 1……….Obama must be removed before the end of his term to avoid setting precedent in law, which is exactly why the powers that be are once again offering INELIGIBLES to the list of candidates!!
If Romney or Santorum were true conservatives, they would not be running!
msbetz – Obama was sworn in as president, so the precedent has been set. The good news is he meets all the requirements of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 5:
History and logic establish a clear definition of “natural born citizen” even without resort to Court decisions:
1) On June 19, 1787 Alexander Hamilton proposed to the Constitutional Convention that the President be “born a citizen of the United States”: “No person shall be eligible to the office of President of the United States unless he be now a Citizen of one of the States, or hereafter be born a Citizen of the United States.” Works of Alexander Hamilton (page 407);
2) On July 25, 1787 John Jay wrote to George Washington, presiding over the Convention, proposing that the President be a “natural born citizen” (NBC): “Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.”
3) The Convention rejected Hamilton’s “born a citizen” proposal, adopting the more stringent NBC requirement for Article II, Section 1 presidential eligibility, thereby distinguishing NBC from “born a citizen”, and also from mere “citizen” in its text:
“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 President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.”
4) NBC was a legal phrase with which the founders were familiar from the works of Emmerich de Vattel’s “The Law of Nations” and from other authors and works which they used to accomplish their goal of insuring that future Presidents would have undivided loyalty and allegiance to America;
5) Americans had recently won their independence from the British in a bloody 8-year long war and were justifiably concerned about the loyalty and allegiance of future Presidents and the risk of foreign influence on their new nation and its chief executive and commander-in-chief;
6) It is inconceivable that the founders would have chosen NBC if it meant that anyone could be President merely by US birth, regardless of the citizenship of his parents, since such a definition would allow a child born to ONE or TWO foreign (including BRITISH) parents to be eligible for the US Presidency, a result that was totally unacceptable and unthinkable to the founders and could not have been accepted or overlooked by them.
THEREFORE: the only logical and intelligent conclusion is that NBC requires:
1) Child’s birth on US soil;
2) US citizenship of both parents at child’s birth.
As it so happens, that is the exact definition of NBC that the US Supreme Court has ruled in Minor v. Happersett (1875) and in several other cases, both before and since that decision. Despite the foregoing, many people continue to confuse, misunderstand or equate “natural born citizen” (NBC) with “citizen”, “born citizen” or “citizen at birth”, when is clear that NBC is a more stringent subset of citizenship, the type of citizenship that most of us acquired “naturally” upon birth in this country to American citizen parents.
So Romney is not a natural born citizen. Got it.
I researched this issue thoroughly and Mr. Ponder is wrong about Romney. Both of Romney’s parents were American Citizens at the time of his birth. Rubio and Jindal will be natural born citizens IF both their parents had been U.S. Citizens when they were born. They were NOT. End of discussion.
End of discussion? Are you just tuning in? These discussions don’t end. Ever. George Romney was born in Mexico to American ex-pats. He never applied for or was given U.S. citizenship.
YOU LOST. Get over it already. This is a moot point. The guy was born in America, he’s a citizen and allowed to be president. There have been at least 5 presidents who had parents born in other countries. The black guy one, get over it. And by some of your standards McCain couldn’t be president either because he was bron in the Panama Zone, so if you voted for him you’re a huge hypocrit.