By Sharon Rondeau | The Post & Email (Jan. 28, 2014) —
REPEATING A LIE “DOESN’T MAKE IT TRUTHFUL”
A petition for certiorari regarding Barack Hussein Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president and commander-in-chief arrived at the U.S. Supreme Court and was docketed as of January 23, 2014 after a long and circuitous routing through the New York State courts.
Obama’s eligibility has been questioned since late 2007, when commentator Chris Matthews stated on air that Obama was “born in Indonesia,” followed by a similar report in a Hawaii newspaper. Various reports in African newspapers dating back to before Obama’s first presidential election in 2008 stated that Obama was born in Kenya. His own biographer concurred until April 2007, when the official narrative changed to say that Obama was born in Hawaii.
Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires the president and commander-in-chief to be a “natural born Citizen.”
Compounding doubt as to whether or not Obama meets the constitutional criteria, he claims that his father was a citizen of Kenya and later, Great Britain, following Kenyan independence in 1963. Research into the intent of the “natural born Citizen” clause has shown that the citizenship of the parents, and not the birthplace, was actually paramount in determining a child’s citizenship and allegiance. In the modern era, however, the term has been eviscerated such that most Americans interpret it to mean a simple birth on U.S. soil without regard to the parents’ citizenship.