Suppose, hypothetically, that Obama had been borne in Kenya, and somehow some papers were doctored. He breathed his first breaths of air in Kenya for maybe a week or even a few months, then spent the rest of his life in places we know he was in the United States - from 5th grade through high school in Hawaii, then college in LA, Columbia, and Harvard Law.
Why does it substantively matter? I’m aware the Constitution would make him ineligible to be president if this were both true and proof of it being true could be dug up. Nevertheless, what pertinent reason is there to complain? He’s not a socialist because his father was black and from Kenya, it was all that time he spent smoking pot with his friends in Hawaii, time in that city of liberals, LA, time in Chicago on the black side, and time at Harvard Law. Huge concentration of liberals/socialists/whatever pejorative term you want to use.
So it seems to me that all the Birthers are just people who fantasize that Obama could be removed from office on a technicality. Tommorow, if an old videotape of him in Kenya being born could be dug up, all the birthers would cheer because he might be removed from office (I’ve read arguments that he can’t be), and all the Obama supporters would boo because what difference does it make?
Actually not so much the Constitution as the Nationality Act, which as was in effect in 1961 may have made his mother too young to transmit citizenship-by-descent on her own right at birth.
Maybe part of Birther fantasies is the idea that they may not only remove Barack Obama on a technicality but also sonehow render his presidency and the actions taken under its authority null and void ab initio – or at least require those that had congressional approval to be re-voted and possibly mooted.
In practice, if this came out, there would be impeachment hearings, and a bill of impeachment, leading to a trial in the Senate.
It is a fascinating question whether the necessary two-thirds of the Senate would vote to remove him from office. At this point in time, it might be rejected by enough Democrats as a useless waste of time – and also because it might raise the question JRDelirious alludes to, of vacating all of his official actions – that he would be acquitted. The grounds might be, “You should have thought of that when he was running for office; it’s much too late now.”
It would be magnificent theater, but would only have the end result of lowering America’s (and the world’s) opinion of Congress more than it lowers opinions of Obama himself. The Clinton show-trial was equally absurd, and wholly pointless, since a 2/3 vote was absolutely impossible to obtain.
It would lead to incredible scrutiny of all future candidates. Unless they’re white Republicans, in which case no one would raise so much as a doubt.
Assuming the hypothetical, then someone somewhere would challenge a law that Obama signed into office by arguing he was never really president as he was not qualified to be so. The Supreme Court would have to decide what to do about it in the end.
The court would have to recognize that some actions are just not subject to revocation. We might stop the effects of a law going forward but may not be able to undo everything.
I’d like to think that every candidate with the remotest chance would be subject to sufficient scrutiny by the media on such basic qualifications that no one could ever slip through the cracks.
I think the Supremes would say that it was for Congress to apply the “natural born” rule, and they applied it when they confirmed his election.
If they subsequently change their mind, they can impeach him (if they decide that not being a natural born citizen is a high crime or misdemeanour, obviously).
If, having impeached and removed him, they want to nullify his actions, they can pass legislation to nullify his actions and, if that legislation is challenged, the Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of that legislation.
It places a great basis in reality (meaning of substantive) a contradiction to American law and would mean that a non-american citizen was elected president of a country REQUIRING that he be an american citizen. Also this means he had lied multiple times and would led back to your question - if he indeed was born in Kenya why would he need to lie about it. Do you think its substantive to have a “ruler” that would lie that easily to his people and how is he capable of bettering this country being that he has no sincerity or true knowledge about it.
Also, if he was born in Kenya, moved to the US (somewhere until 5th grade), then graduated High School in Hawaii where the people also hate Whites, and then graduated College in LA before pursuing presidency that would seem like a socialist family to me. Plus where are his credentials?.. There is nothing sufficient about his educational career other than receiving a law degree he later looses for malpractice. He has not exuded any value he has professed to have during his presidency nor has he successfully solved any problem he promised to solve. Every act he has implemented has been carried out in discretion and has reversibly effected our economy (meaning he has done nothing but betray the people, stolen their money, and lied about it). He has archaic values and has put the country in danger. We are blinded by liberal blending and cyber-charm, but we are not moving into a century of harmony or order. We are approaching the dawn of an era that will introduce a generation capable of world destruction. The question you should have asked is if he were really born in Kenya, why the hell did he come here? He may be polite and charming, but so was Hitler; Nixon; Charles Manson; David Karesh; Caesar; and many other rulers who bought about great scandal, warfare and mass murder.
Its substantive because in reality we have laws, regulations and ethical structures that require honesty and progression as well as heart. No one has room for a power hungry, immoral, descendent of terrorist leaders. He is smoke and mirrors. Nothing about he himself is substantive other than his effect on one of the best countries in the world. MILEY CIRUS could do a better job than he has.
Please. Don’t. bosbfdsfd and tafowler87, this is great Debates, not The BBQ Pit. Do not attempt to hijack this thread with silly attacks on the president.
If you have a substantive debate regarding the quality of his presidency, you may open a new thread to discuss it. (Please bring facts and logic.) Do not derail this thread with personal diatribes.
She’s probably Swedish or Canadian which would explain the fixation on healthcare and gun grabbing.
Birthers seem to be enamoured of the idea that the man is important in this context and not the office. The whole point of institutions, however, is to make the execution and creation of laws and government impartial and legitimate. If the Office of the President flawlessly executed it’s duties does it matter that the person holding the office at the time, was actually ineligible to hold it? Personally I think it wouldn’t but I would expect the office holder to be subject to whatever punishment was appropriate.
I would tend to think this would be the answer. Otherwise, we might have a Constitutional crisis on our hands. We’ve more or less come to a good understanding of what the Constitutional requirements are for President and the 14th Amendment, but it wouldn’t make sense for anyone other than Congress to decide what sufficient proof of one’s citizenship is, particularly as technology and records changes over time. If the evidence in favor was enough, or against was insufficient to raise doubt, at the confirmation of his election, I think it’s a dangerous precedent to set without very damning evidence.
That said, I also have a hard time seeing not being a citizen being convincingly a high crime or misdemeanor. Perhaps one could make the argument that it’s fraud if he knew he wasn’t a legitimate citizen and ran anyway. But it seems to me that even if he were born in Kenya, it’s not necessarily a given that he absolutely wouldn’t be a US citizen, and they’d have to make an argument that he necessarily was fully aware of his legal status. So it seems far fetched.
Really, I think it’s mostly just show to illegitimatize his presidency, but not anyone in a position to actually pursue any of it would really want it. The idea of removing a president in such a manner would be incredibly embarrassing to the US on the international stage.
And another reason is, I don’t think they could reasonably get anything substantive nullified. Presumably the vast majority of the things Obama signed, Biden would sign, and he would obviously be the one stepping in if Obama were removed from office. Couldn’t he just essentially go back and sign anything that didn’t have some kind of a clause stating it must be signed by a certain date to be effective into law?
It would seem to me that the most reasonable course of action would be, rather than just toss everything out from the last 7 years, that SCOTUS would let things stand since he would have been legitimate up to that point that Congress changed its mind on his legal status and that Biden would sign it all anyway, and then just let Congress draft and pass any legislation they deem appropriate to overturn things they didn’t like that Obama did… in short, basically nothing changes.
The one major consequence I would see in this case is that that Republicans would probably make a huge deal about how illegitimate Obamacare is because he wasn’t really president and they’d renew their effort to overturn it. They might get slightly more traction with that, but as Biden would certainly veto such a bill, I still wouldn’t see it as much more than political posturing.
I could potentially also see a potential campaign point of the Democrats failing to effectively vet their candidates, as they’d put up an ineligible candidate, but I doubt that would have much traction either, as there’s absolutely zero doubts about the citizenship of Clinton or Sanders or any other reasonable candidate they might put forth. Though, I do think the long term consequences might be anyone that might have any doubt would become a massive distraction in future races.
Which was one of the things that made birtherism an obvious low-politics position. No other prior candidate ever had been demanded to show proof of citizenship beyond the kind of documents every citizen uses to get an official ID any day of the year. The special scrutiny of Obama was specifically targeted at this one person because his name was not something like Bart Hiram Olson.
Maybe, just maybe, some future Congress can add language to the current or a future Nationality Act matching the phrases “citizen at birth” and “Natural Born citizen”, while we are at it. The only relatively recent clarification about this was done with John McCain in mind, to reiterate what was *already *true under the law, that as the son of a US military family deployed abroad he was a citizen by birth and a Natural Born citizen. It is unnecessary and should be done with.
I think this discussion would be better served if we all went back and read the Constitution. Specifically:
There is no provision for retroactive signing of bills. If a bill is not signed by the President within 10 days (Sundays excepted) it becomes law anyway, unless Congress was not in session, in which case it doesn’t become law. So most bills do not need the signature of a President in order to become Law.
If you want to argue about something, you can argue about vetoes. If a vetoed bill was not returned to Congress by a legitimate President is the veto still effective? Did the bills that were vetoed by the pretender-to-the-presidency automatically become law under the 10 day rule?
Those phrases are in the Constitution. Can Congress pass a law saying the the word “Arms” in the Second Amendment does not include pistols, rifles, semi-automatic, and automatic weapons? Or that “speech” in the First Amendment does not include electronic communications? I don’t think that is within the power of the Congress.
NOBODY born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 was a US Citizen and there was no exception for military families. John McCain became a citizen because a law passed later retroactively made children of US citizens born in Panama US citizens.
I’m not sure what clarification you are talking about. In 2012, the Senate passed a resolution declaring that John McCain was a natural born US citizen, but that was not a law and had no binding legal effect. Was there some other law that they passed?
. “Natural Born citizen” is in the Constitution, and not defined; the 14th Amendment says “persons born in the US” are citizens but the definition of where someone is a “citizen at/by birth” is in the Nationality Act. Congress has specified when “born in the United States” for purposes of birthright citizenship includes some, but not all, the territories (e.g. that PCZ law itself) so yes IMO it could also specify the definition of a NBC as long as it does so without prejudice to the rights of extant citizens. I happen to agree that citizen-by-birth and Natural-Born citizen are logically one and the same but I’d like for it to be set forth explicitly rather than leave it as an ad-hoc political judgment.
Exactly: At the time (2008, his campaign year) that the Senate (good catch, I had believed it was a J.R.) asserted that McCain was a NBC all along, the law that makes him a birth citizen had already been passed long before, rendering that superfluous. (And if not a clarification, then why? What next, a Congressional resolution that the Earth is round because some crank says otherwise?)
He’s a lawyer who had an army of other lawyers at his disposal. I think the Birther claims are about the most ridiculous objections ever leveled at a presidential candidate, but there’s really very little doubt that they would have created a huge problem if accurate. Obama would have been required to identify (among much else) his birthplace on supporting materials for candidate petitions (the form a local voter fills out to put you on the primary ballot) in most states and would have been committing electoral fraud under the laws of a number of states if he falsified that information. In Florida, for example, that would be a third degree felony.