MCQ,
Obama is the first president in anyone’s current memory whose family did travel and live outside of the US near the time of his birth. Also, the most reliable eyewitnesses (his mother and father) are deceased.
The Hawaii officials’ reactions (including several Republicans) seem to indicate that he was born there. The equivocation about producing the vault copy leads me to believe that there is something wrong with it (it is missing, it has been defaced by a political opponent, who knows what else?), but that there is nearly absolute proof of his birth.
I do not see racism, but I do see political opportunism based upon weak facts.

Bravo bbell, my heart is warmed whenever a conservative discounts this nonsense. I love it when people claim to believe birthers, because I can immediately discount everything else they say. MCQ is absolutely correct.

The fact that the latest birther law in Arizona won’t accept Obama’s proof but will accept something called a Certificate of Circumcision says it all.

I think Obama has been a horrible disaster for the country and will probably do more damage in the coming months/years. But I agree with you bbell, the birther thing is pointless, self-defeating, distracting from the real issues.

Obama being born in Hawaii, Kenya or Antarctica is of little importance when compared to the real impact of his driving the country, Thelma-and-Louis style, off the cliff of economic reality and into the canyon of fiscal insanity.

Of course Obama’s gaffs don’t help, “clinging to god and guns” or “the price of arugala” or his membership in the “G*d damn America” church have certainly contributed to the sentiment, amongst broad swaths of the population, that he simply isn’t a regular American.

So the issue is not really where he was born, but the nagging feeling that if he was plopped down in Cheyenne, WY or Lafayette, LA or Concord, NH or any other non-academic/liberal enclave, that his total lack of cultural affinity makes it so he could have come fresh-off-the-boat from Nairobi and not be any less alien than he already is.

The comparable argument on the other side is that the “who is this guy and a college freshman with their first credit card is more fiscal responsible” reaction of Joe Nobody from Charleston, WV must be racism. I am sure that there is a small percentage of people who have racist sentiments, but for the most part the headlines/banners wouldn’t change if the policies were President Pelosi’s.

So I’ll make you a deal, I won’t say anything about where he was born if you don’t call me a racist for pointing out that the current fiscal policy is a disaster, the promises made over the stimulus have not come to fruition, and the White House is actively obstructing any attempts to mitigate our national fiscal suicide.

Zen, you are living in a fantasy world, not reality. He has done nothing to protect it. If Obama were not born in this country he could not have qualified to be on the ballot. The issue was raised and put to bed by the proper authorities at the proper time and it’s over. He was born in Hawaii. Period. His Birth Cerificate is available online and has been printed in every major paper in the country.

+10 I am not so sure that the original reason for that rule applies anymore. I don’t think we care that those loyal to the British crown might get the job and return us back as colonies.

Peter,

Origins of his worldview/politics? Absolutely. But *national* origin? I could personally care less. Where he was born has little real effect on anything important at this point.

I’m not a racist and I wonder why he doesn’t just show his birth certificate. I didn’t wonder until people started talking about it and I thought “how hard is it to put your birth certificate out there?” Left Field, sorry, I typed that before seeing your post. Didn’t see his whatever that was.

Donald Trump stirred this up again. He’s hilarious. He actually thinks he could be a good president. He would suck, but he sure can get publicity for an issue. Plus, didn’t he file for bankruptcy? I don’t think he’d manage the economy very well.

I wonder, why does it even matter? Is this a good policy–law, whatever it is? Don’t other countries have leaders who weren’t actually born in the country? His mom was American, thus he’s an American. Why does it matter where he was born; what is the efficacy of this policy?

The president’s birth certificate:

http://msgboard.snopes.com/politics/graphics/birth.jpg
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html

It looks just like anyone else’s certificate. All duly certified by the State Registrar. The birthers say it’s a fraud and insufficient, for one reason: It doesn’t say what they really, really wish it said. They say they want to see the original record. Too bad. An official certification is valid for all purposes (article IV, section 1 of the Constitution). It’s valid for all purposes for you and me, and it’s valid for all purposes for the president. The birthers don’t get to make up new requirements just because they don’t like who’s president. And even if Obama were to authorize people to go to the filing cabinet and inspect the original record, they’d dismiss it as a fake just as quickly as they dismissed his official birth certificate. Whatever evidence he might produce, the birthers would just move the goalposts and insist he produce something else. No way in the world he should even begin playing that game.

From Left Fields link “We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as “supporting documents” to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.
“

Wouldn’t the air force base be considered America? Nobody’s said why it’s so important that the president actually be born in America.

Well, it’s kind a dumb requirement. Neither here nor there to anything, really. I say a citizen’s a citizen.

The Constitutional requirement is being “a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States” which simply means that it is someone who has the right to citizenship since birth. By US law, that means anyone who is born within our borders or who has a citizen parent. Like McCain, who really and totally without controversy was born in a different country, if Obama had been born anywhere in the world he was a “natural born” citizen by virtue of his mother’s citizenship. Right? Lawyers, help me out. That is what I get as a reader and English speaker, but I wouldn’t put it past you lawyers to try to confuse us.

FWIW, I have a few siblings who were born outside of the US and I would NEVER vote for any of them for President for totally different reasons.

Kramer, there’s nothing about your post that makes any sense to me.

If his mother is a U.S. Citizen then his birth certificate doesn’t matter right? [begin snark] Maybe we should insist he produce hers?

Unless maybe his real birth certificate says she wasn’t really his mother? [end snark]

“The Constitutional requirement is being “a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States” ”

What it says is that you have to be *either* a natural born citizen, *or* have been a citizen when the constitution was adopted. The first few presidents were born British subjects, but were eligible to be president because they were citizens at the time the constitution was ratified. However, since all such people are now dead [insert your own McCain joke here], the provision is now moot.

“By US law, that means anyone who is born within our borders or who has a citizen parent.”

No, there’s no requirement to have a citizen parent. The 14th amendment says that you are a citizen if born or naturalized here and subject to US jurisdiction. “Natural born citizen” is generally understood to mean that you were a citizen at birth.

“Without this requirement, Adolf Hitler himself could have been elected President.”

Nonsense. “Could have been elected” and “eligible to serve” are two different things. Nevertheless, even without the “natural born” requirement, he would’ve fallen short on both counts, since Hitler wasn’t a citizen at all and didn’t meet the 14-year residency requirement.

“McCain’s citizenship was questioned by the left”

Nobody questioned his citizenship. And his natural-born status was never seriously questioned either–not by anyone who mattered anyway. He case was mentioned occasionally in the context of being the only candidate whose eligibility *conceivably* might be questioned. And McCain wasn’t born in the Republic of Panama; he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was US territory. And in any case, children born to US military personnel abroad are considered natural-born citizens, since they have citizenship at the moment of birth.

“And technically, a certificate of live birth is not a birth certificate”

Technically, there’s no difference at all. Whether it’s labeled a “birth certificate,” certificate of birth,” “certification of birth,” “certification of live birth,” “certificate of live birth,” “certification of vital record” [as my son's is called], certificate of vital record, or any other variation, is simply the whim of whatever person designed the form, and varies wildly from time to time and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There is absolutely no consistent difference in how the terminology is applied. The State Department makes no distinction. My “short form” “Certification of Birth” has been adequate for all my passport renewals, driver’s license, travel in Mexico, and everything else I’ve ever needed a birth certificate for. If anybody ever insisted on a “long form” or a paper with some other title, I’d be out of luck, since what I have is the certificate that is issued by the Department of Health when you request a birth certificate. The “long form” might have value for genealogical research, but it’s never required for a passport or any other purpose. A requirement that a presidential candidate present a “long form” would clearly be unconstitutional, since it would eliminate a substantial segment of the population for whom a “short form” is the only certificate available. And besides, it adds a requirement not in the constitution. I’d daresay those state legislators trying to push through “long form” requirements will sing a different tune when someone they want elected doesn’t have a long form.

Left Field–I am not suggesting that you must also have a citizen parent, I am saying that the two ways to be considered a citizen at the time of birth is either 1) to be born within US jurisdiction (territories included) OR 2) to have a parent who is a citizen. Many of us fit in under both circumstances, sure, but I am not suggesting that one needs both.

For example, my siblings who were born in foreign hospitals have birth certificates establishing the circumstances of their birth, and they also have a document the US embassy issued (not sure how long that has been the practice), I am not sure what it is called, but something testifying that they are Americans born abroad–they are Americans from birth, non-naturalized, as they have American parents.

Anyhoo…the birther bit is ca-razy and if it weren’t so troubling how many people take it seriously, it might be funny.

My understanding of the origins of the requirement that a president be a natural born citizen was to prevent a member of a European royal house from becoming president. This was a real concern in the late 1700′s based on the previous 500 years of royal house craziness in Europe.