The idea that I would care what a bunch of elected people think on any matter on earth is not quite sane.
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Not that the Convention to change the rules and establish parliamentary supremacy was a parliament — it was a selected body drawn for that purpose; but had it been, it would have merely been the perpetuation of previous parliaments’ determination to destroy royal power and make the country an oligarchy.
And see also the article on the “Non-Juring Schism” - relating to the English Anglicans who did not feel that they could conscientiously swear allegiance to William III and Mary II, so long as James II/VII and his male issue were alive.
What a silly question - it implies the people of a given country aren’t allowed to set their own standards as to who is eligible to govern. The very reason there are residency laws is not just to ensure one is a citizen, but that one is familiar enough with his country to know what sociological ties bind his countrymen, and that he share them. ALL COUNTRIES have laws limiting who may or may not become the chief executive of their country; and monarchies almost by definition do so. Few countries seek a successor monarch from outside their borders, unless the immediate family line has ended. That’s how my Stewart ancestors from Scotland ended up ruling England in 1603.
That is why Obama is so polarizing. Even if he is natural-born, which I doubt because his father wasn’t an American citizen, he is hardly enured enough as an American having spent his formative years in Suharto’s Indonesia…a Third-World country, Muslim by state law, and Communist by popular leaning at the time. Obama would not have known a baseball from a coconut until his mom brought him back to Hawaii in his teens. German POWs in WWII knew more about baseball than Obama did. For him to claim to be for the “little guy” is patronizing, and makes me wonder what on earth he thinks he knows about Americans to make the claim. He is a child of privilege, raised overseas, never having worked a real job in his life, married to a manhunter. He’s clueless - and so are those who voted for him, unless they wanted a candidate from the Internationale.
IIUC, his opting for Japanese citizenship didn’t actually comply with Japan’s citizenship law. He was well past the age when such a decision is met. Japan went political with that decision, just like they went political with the decison to let that American solider who deserted to North Korea immigrate to Japan.
Sorry, not quite on the same level as the question you yourself asked. The American-Canadian border was ill-defined at the time Arthur was born. No one really knew where Fairfield ended, and Quebec started. What everyone at the time in Fairfield knew and accepted was that Arthur’s parents were American, and they lived in Fairfield which was part of Vermont, which was part of the USA. It’s known as common law. His birth was registered in an American county record book, and he was commonly acknowledged as a Vermonter.
Not quite the same thing as Obama growing up in Indonesia.
You must’ve missed some of the more “out there” folks whining about Mitt Romney’s qualification to run for president last year. Those morons were insisting that Romney isn’t eligible because his grandparents weren’t born in the US. Oh, and what about some of the anti-Obama birthers? Those morons were bent out of shape about (choose one) Obama’s father not being born in the US or about his step-father being a foreign national.
Personally, I think it’s asinine to prohibit dual nationals (I’m not saying either Obama or Romney is a dual national) or naturalized citizens from running for office. To me, that makes for different grades of citizenship which is not “equal before the law.” I mentioned above one situation that a prospective candidate has no control over: the other country of citizenship may not permit loss of citizenship. So, you’re going to punish someone for the actions of another government? That’s ridiciulous.
They had it sort of the other way around in North Korea. See, in the United States you’ve got a bunch of loons claiming that Obama can’t be the head of state because he was born in a foreign country, and not on a domestic volcano as amply documented. But in the DPRK you had a different bunch of loons claiming that Kim Jong Il must be the head of state because he was born on a domestic volcano, and not in a foreign country as amply documented. The US loons are considered to be an oddball political fringe, but the North Korean loons are toeing the official party line.
:dubious: some didn’t read the forum rules
Capt
It doesn’t matter what his father’s nationality was; he was born in American territory (the State of Hawaii) therefore he’s a natural-born citizen, end-of-story. The sole exception to this rule is children born of foreign diplomats or occupaying forces, of which his parents were neither.
The only hysterical pitch of irrational hatred and wilful blind ignorance of proof is that of people who refuse to acknowledge the definition of “natural-born.” Whether one likes it or not, until the Constitution of the United States is amended, natural-born means born in this country OR born to parents both of whom were born in this country and were American citizens at the time of the child’s birth. Mr. Obama’s circumstances of birth are controversial, not because of peoples’ asking about them so much as because of his extraordinary efforts to hide them. Forensic evidence seems to point to fabrication and forgery regarding the certification of life birth his handlers released when pressured to do so; it still wasn’t legally the same as a birth certificate as I have read (Important Difference Between a Certificate - vs. Certification - of Live Birth - American Thinker) and I’m not sure it matters all that much; I do however find it amusing his handlers find it so urgent to argue the distinction.
If it’s no big deal, why do you make such a big deal of it?
I should have clarified my position better. The controversy, such as it is, isn’t dependent so much upon the circumstances of his birth as it is upon the extraordinary amount of effort the Obama people have expended to prevent their being brought to public scrutiny.
What’s he hiding? If nothing, why go to all that effort?
I think the point is that individuals or groups of individuals aren’t allowed to set those standards extra-legally and retroactively.
In other words, it’s just fine for the people who founded the United States to have specified as the law of the land that the Chief Exec has to be a natural-born citizen over 35 years old (under which specification Obama is indeed eligible to be President, as you know).
It would also be fine for the present-day people of the US to change those constitutional specifications in accordance with the prescribed procedure for amending the constitution, if they choose to. If there are enough Americans who really want to add some Presidential eligibility requirements about, say, minimum duration of US residency during childhood or familiarity with the rules of baseball, they’re entitled to make that change.
What’s not fine, of course, is people claiming that Obama is somehow officially ineligible to be President, because they make shit up about his background or simply don’t understand the official eligibility requirements as they currently stand in law.
And that’s what the OP is asking about: namely, where else, if anywhere, is there a group of citizens as batshit insane and/or knuckle-dragging stupid as American “birthers”, to the extent that they have somehow deluded themselves into sincerely believing and openly maintaining that their political chief executive managed to get into the highest office in the land while all the while being formally disqualified from holding it?
AFAIK, there aren’t any. The possibly parallel cases suggested in this thread so far all seem to me to be either disputes about genuinely questionable formal qualifications of some head of state or other, or else merely arguments that the specified formal qualifications are unsatisfactory and should be changed.
Nothing. That’s why he hasn’t gone to an “extraordinary amount of effort” to hide anything. :rolleyes:
Irrelevant. His father’s nationality has nothing to do with the simple fact, President Obama was born in Hawaii.
You happen to have a cite for this assertion that Indonesia has a law declaring what the religion of a foreign national is?
Irrelevant.
This post of yours makes me wonder if you have ny idea what you’re talking about. You’re mistaken in every statement in it.
Nothing. The man provided his birth certificate–twice!–as proof of his US birth. But that’s apparently not good enough for you birthers.
AFAICT, the Indonesian constitution (at least during the time Obama lived there) didn’t even decree that Indonesia is a “Muslim country” with respect to its own citizens. It does specify belief in God as one of its governing principles, but it officially mandates freedom of religion, at least with regard to the six religions Indonesia officially recognizes (Islam, Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholic Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism).
Moderator Note
Lgbpop, political jabs are not permitted in General Questions. And your opinions related to Obama are completely irrelevant to the question asked in the OP. Drop the hijack now. If you want to debate this issue, open a new thread in Great Debates. Further posts on this subject may result in a warning.
To others, please do not encourage this hijack by engaging with Lgbpop on this issue.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Nothing says born into incredible power and the upper echelons and privileged beyond belief in 1962 America like being an interracial child whose father is from Kenya. I mean talk about having everything handed to you in life!
Well, yeah: questioning someone’s eligibility by reason of birth happens. People who insist in saying that there is some sort of conspiracy to deny the ineligibility of someone whose eligibility has been contested and deemed correct, and who manage to keep hammering on it in public… that requires very specific circumstances:
Many countries, if there is someone who manages to believe something that stupid, lack the soapboxes. And if professional politicians managed to believe something that stupid, their colleagues would correct them yesterday.
People that stupid do exist everywhere, what doesn’t normally exist is the rest: a coworker once got handed homework to “watch Capricorn One” after silencing the room with his remark that “the lunar landing was faked”.
The only semi-parallel I can think of is in the loonier fringes of traditionalist Catholicism, where you find people insisting that certain recent putative popes were not in fact popes, because (a) they were freemasons, therefore automatically excommunicated, therefore ineligible for election, or (b) they were elected by putative cardinals, who had been appointed by a pope who was a freemason, therefore etc etc.