OK a Rude and childish disruption, but well executed as such a simple plan can be.
Look I’m not a Birther, I’m not an expert on the definition of “Natural Born Citizen”, but as far as I can tell the fact that Stanley Anne Dunham is the President’s late Mother, and the Late Ms. Dunham was a Natural Born US Citizen. Doesn’t that make the President a “Natural Born Citizen” if he was born in DC, Hawaii, Kenya, Rammstein Air Base, Kabul, or Mars?
Still I will say when I got my Passport, and when I got my Carry Permits, and countless other official requests and documents I had to present a notarized copy of my US Birth Certificate. Seems pretty ironic that the US President has such a stringent restriction, but doesn’t require such a mundane proof.
**Update** Birth Certificate released
Mister Gavel there sure as heck looked like he was reading from a prepared statement.
The only freedoms you can exercise without a government issued ID or the mother documents for that ID appears to be to vote, or to become President.
Not driving on the highway, not fishing for dinner, not flying to grandma’s, not saving your pennies in a bank account.
I suspect they do have a prepared statement for any sort of outburst just so the chair doesn’t appear to react in any political way to an outburst.
True statement about Voting and Presidentin’. I don’t see why those things need to be excepted?
Rules of the House !!!
I don’t care about the rules of the HOUSE — It’s called the 1st Amendment Buddy!!
Well they DO have a job to do, so they can’t have everybody interrupting what they do. I gotta say, this does fall down on the “Your right to swing your arms ends at the tip of my nose” rule.
Surprisingly, it’s not that simple. That was the whole issue they tried to raise with McCain. IIRC, both his parents were citizens, and he was a citizen, but because he was born outside the US there was a question about whether he was a “natural born citizen”. According to the way the laws were written at the time, and several Supreme Court precedents that were in effect, he may not have even been a citizen at the time of his birth – a law passed later retroactively conferred citizenship “on individuals born within the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and on individuals born in the Republic of Panama on or after that date who had at least one U.S. citizen parent employed by the U.S. government or the Panama Railway Company” (8 U.S.C. § 1403). OTOH, since his father was a serving officer stationed in the Panama Canal Zone at the time, he might have been a citizen, but that may or may not have meant he was a “natural born” citizen.
Apparently, the laws and case law surrounding citizenship for people born outside the US has gone back and forth since the founding. Wikipedia has a decent page about it. Basically, it’s a confusing mess.
Oh, and supposedly Obama’s status is complicated by the fact that British citizenship laws may also be involved, since Kenya was a British colony when he was born.
Interesting. I honestly think the whole McCain thing was just a wild stab to invalidate his candidacy or simply disarm the birther questions. But McCain was born to two US Citizens in US territory, and on a US Military base. I can’t think of anything that could be any less ambiguous than simply being born in one of the 50 states.
And McCain happened to have his birth certificate on hand…