Gaffney Ups the Wingnut Quotient
Frank Gaffney’s long been something of a lunatic, but he’s usually stuck to holding lunatic views about public policy (ask him sometime about the risk of Iran mounting an EMP attack against the US homeland). Now, though, he’s decided to go the full wingnut and start embracing crazy conspiracy theories about Obama having been secretly born in Indonesia or some such.
The theory behind the theory is that, decades ago, Obama’s mother (or someone) forged documents to make it appear that he was born in Hawaii rather than Indonesia. This was done on the theory that decades hence he might run for President and thus they needed to do this to prevent him from being declared ineligible under the “natural born citizen” clause even though even if he’d been born in Indonesia he’d still count as a natural born citizen! This isn’t an obscure point. John McCain was born in Panama, but he’s perfectly eligible.
59 Responses to “Gaffney Ups the Wingnut Quotient”
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October 15th, 2008 at 9:56 am
And yet, none of these nutjobs seem to question whether John McCain, who most assuredly was born outside the United States, qualifies for the office.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:56 am
1. As usual, Mr. Yglesias is full of crap. Senator McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone which, at the time, was under US sovereignty.
2. Contrary to Mr. Yglesias’ assertion, if Senator Osama have been born in Canada or Indonesia or Kenya, he would not have been a natural born American and would not be eligible for the US Presidency.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Frank Gaffney’s long been something of a lunatic The word “somewhat” is surplusage.
October 15th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Sorry. I plead Yglesias disease. “something” is surplusage.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:01 am
BTW, I’m not suggesting that Senator McCain’s being born in the Panama Canal Zone disqualifies him — of course it doesn’t. (There are plenty of other, actual substantive things that disqualify him in my view, but that’s another story.) I’m just pointing out the fundamental hypocrisy at work here.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:04 am
This isn’t an obscure point. John McCain was born in Panama, but he’s perfectly eligible.
Uh, not so fast, Matt. There’s a reason why McCain got Ted Olsen to prepare a brief just in case; the definition ‘natural-born citizen’ for Article II has never been tested. All signs point to a) it being pretty tricky to get standing for a challenge; b) it being likely that SCOTUS would rule in a non-stupid way. At least, if a Republican stands to suffer otherwise. If the US had a constitutional court that could make general rulings absent particular cases/controversies, we’d know what ‘natural-born citizen’ in its specific Art. II stipulation means in current jurisprudence. But that’s not the case.
If anything, the ‘Obama born in Foreign’ idiocy seems to have been spread to inoculate McCain, where there’s frankly good reason to find someone with standing to challenge, should he somehow win the election, just to get a legal precedent on paper.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:06 am
The New York Times on the question last February, which was 8 million years ago.
By the standards of actual legal experts, not Mr. Idiot SLC, President Barack Born In America Ha Ha Ha With A Muslim Name Eat It You Pinhead Obama is absolutely 100% a natural-born U.S. citizen, whereas John McCain’s case is ‘up in the air’ albeit in Mr. Panama John’s favor.
I’m sure we can spend more time talking about it though as President Super Ultra 100% American Obama and Prime Minister Livni discuss the Israeli pullout of the vast majority of the West Bank occupation forces and we celebrate the new Palestine’s statehood.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:06 am
SLC is, of course, a deluded wannabe Kahanist shit who is about as Jewish as one of Matt’s market-bought pork sausages.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:09 am
SLC wrote:
> if Senator Osama have been born in Canada or Indonesia
> or Kenya, he would not have been a natural born
> American and would not be eligible for the US Presidency.
“Senator Osama?” SLC, you’re such a clever wit!
But I think you may be wrong on the merits of this, as well. My wife was born in a civilian hospital overseas to American parents, and her birth certificate explicitly identifies her as a U.S. citizen.
And it’s and entirely moot argument anyway, given that he was born in Hawai’i — the birth notice even appeared in the local paper.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:18 am
My son was born in Japan. Rather than a birth certificate, he has a ‘certificate of a citizen born abroad” or some such. It is unclear to me still whether he is legally considered a naturally born citizen or a citizen born abroad and it is equally unclear what this distinction implies.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Why would one interpret “natural-born” as meaning “born on U.S. territory”? The straightforward interpretation would seem to mean being a citizen from birth, which both McCain and parallel-universe Obama would be. This would seem to be the interpretation of the generation that wrote the Constitution as well; the New York Times article cited above notes:
This seems like a silly argument for either side to make.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:21 am
The best part of that article was definitely the “Obama is associated with ACORN and ACORN registers homeless people and homeless people MIGHT BE JIHADISTS! WHO KNOWS?! THEY’RE HOMELESS!”
October 15th, 2008 at 10:23 am
SLC: This is a matter of settled law. If you’re born to American parents you’re a natural-born citizen regardless of the location of your birth, unless of course you’ve renounced that citizenship–which condition applies equally to someone who was born in the US. Discussions about the location of Obama’s birth, or about the status of the Canal Zone, are completely irrelevant, as are discussions about the circumstances of the parents’ residence abroad.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:28 am
“I want the Thieves’ Forest emptied and every inhabitant arrested!”
That goes double for the Hobo Jungle.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:41 am
Re Andy
I am entirely in agreement with Mr. Andy that if, indeed, Senator Osama was born in Hawaii to an American mother, he is a natural born American citizen and thus eligible to be POTUS. I would also agree that if Senator Osama had been born on a US military installation in a foreign country to an American mother, he would be eligible.
Re pseudonymous in nc
Mr. pseudonymous in nc is white trash.
Re El Cid
This issue came up previously in 1968 relative to the eligibility of George Romney who was born in Mexico to US citizen parents who were there on a Mormon missionary assignment. At that time, the consensus was that he was probably eligible, based on the fact that both of his parents were US citizens, although there was some dissent. The issue never rose to any great public awareness because Governor Romney self destructed by declaring that he had been brain washed over the issue of the Vietnam war long before the Rethuglican convention. However, if Romney had won the Rethuglican nomination that year and thence the election, there certainly would have been a substantial debate in the media and quite possibly a court case. My feeling is that, had he been elected, the Supreme Court probably would have found an excuse to duck the issue.
However, if, indeed, persuasive evidence was produced indicating that Senator Osama was born in, say, Canada, it is not at all clear, given the result of Bush vs Gore in 2000, and the presence of fascist cocksuckers Roberts and Alito since then, that the Supreme Court would duck the case this time. In fact, they might well rule the senator ineligible which would set off a Constitutional squabble of monumental proportions. Should this occur, I suspect that the most likely outcome would be the election of Senator Biden to the office, either by the consensus of the Osama electors or, failing that, by his election to the VP post by the Senate.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:43 am
SLC,
I don’t believe there is a definitive case deciding what a “natural born citizen” is, but my understanding is that the dominate view is that “natural born” is simply “citizen at birth,” and is the opposite of “naturalized.” Obama, having been born to a US citizen mother, would be a citizen at birth, and therefore a “natural born citizen.”
October 15th, 2008 at 10:46 am
whops, sorry, didn’t see your new post above. I didn’t know about the Romney situation, but as you said it was never litigated, so the question is somewhat open.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Wait – what? Indonesia? Isn’t the correct wingnut conspiracy that Obama was born in Kenya, where his father is from? Indonesia is where Obama’s step father is from, and where the family moved when Obama was 5 or something.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I doubt the “natural born” clause will be challenged until we have our first clone candidate.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:11 am
I agree with Andy and some of the others. “Natural born” should, if it doesn’t already, mean “citizen at birth,” regardless of where one was actually born. It doesn’t make sense to deny this standard, especially since location of birth often has no relation to citizenship. If you’re born to foreign parents here in Morocco, for instance, you don’t get to be a Moroccan citizen. Your citizenship follows your parents status.
Should someone be forever disqualified from the presidency just because their mother went into premature labor on a weekend trip to Canada? It’s absurd.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Wait – what? Indonesia? Isn’t the correct wingnut conspiracy that Obama was born in Kenya, where his father is from? Indonesia is where Obama’s step father is from, and where the family moved when Obama was 5 or something.
Asking for logical consistency at this point is a fruitless task.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:14 am
SLC, you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. I don’t know how to break this to you but IsraelInsider.com isn’t a font of wisdom or truth. I don’t know what you have your doctrate in but it’s obviously not law, and the whole thing is a risible fantasy anyway.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Rich: the question isn’t really about citizenship status per se, but as it applies to Article II. The common-sense presumption is that if you’ve never been naturalized, you’re ‘natural-born’. However, the jurisprudence and legislation around citizenship has evolved without reference to the Art. II provision, because there are basically no other circumstances where the distinction between citizenship-from-birth and naturalized-citizenship is legally relevant. (There are other distinctions that can become relevant, such as citizenship-by-descent, which can’t be passed on if you’ve never resided in the US, but that’s different.)
re: SLC. Not just a wannabe Kahanist, but also hilariously wrong about everything. Go and spend the rest of the day wanking off to IsraelInsider.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I doubt the “natural born” clause will be challenged until we have our first clone candidate.
Heh. The question could actually become relevant with adopted children, because the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 bestowed automatic non-naturalized citizenship but not citizenship-from-birth.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:23 am
According to the constitutional law experts at “Balkinization” the original intent of the phrase “natural born citizen” probably did mean “born on American soil” because that was what it meant in British law at the time. (Link: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-john-mccain-needs-living.html).
Given the possibility of a “Bush v. Gore” type intervention by a politicized Supreme Court, I think we need a constitutional amendment to clarify this.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Re Ed Marshall
Mr. Marshall apparently has a reading comprehension problem. My post distinctly said that it would require persuasive evidence that Senator Obama was born elsewhere then in Hawaii. Just for the record, I post the articles from the Israelinsider for the purpose of puling the chains of Israel bashers like Mr. Marshall. I suspect that arguments over the issue of Senator Obamas’ birth certificate probably would not amount to persuasive evidence. There would have to be strong evidence of his actually being born elsewhere (e.g. hospital records from a Canadian hospital indicating a birth there) to support a court case. However, I stand by my assertion that in the event of such a case going to the Supreme Court, Mr. Marshall cannot be at all certain of the outcome, in which I agree with Ms. Anne E.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Re: Contrary to Mr. Yglesias’ assertion, if Senator Osama have been born in Canada or Indonesia or Kenya, he would not have been a natural born American and would not be eligible for the US Presidency.
I believe that past precedent (and I think legal statutes) have held that a birth abroad to a US mother counts as “natural born”. Also, if anyone did challenge Obama on these grounds, Joe Biden would become president instead so the Right would nort gain much by making that challenge after the election.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:45 am
As long as the half-breed Alexander Hamilton never becomes president, I’m OK.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:48 am
The Supreme Court doesn’t operate in a vacuum. I’d love to see the Supreme Court dare to throw out the clear winner of a presidential election. Or, for that matter, reject the candidacy of major party primary winner.
Of course, they can simply refuse to hear the case.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Re JonF
Also, if anyone did challenge Obama on these grounds, Joe Biden would become president instead so the Right would nort gain much by making that challenge after the election.
What makes Mr. JonF think that this would stop the wingnuts on the right? They might well prefer a 67 year old Joe Biden to a 47 year old Barack Osama on the grounds of being easier to beat in 2012.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:50 am
And, no, Bush v Gore don’t count. In that case, the other side, however reluctantly, was prepared to accept the Supreme Court decision.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Frank Gaffney, tool… something we’ve all known for quite some time.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
The wingnut theory is factually preposterous–it’s not apparent how the pregnant Mrs. Obama could be smuuggled out of Hawaii and into Kenya, and then back again after childbirth, without leaving any paper trail, and there was no discernable motive for doing that. The alternative version of the story–that Obama’s mother and stepfather renounced his US citizenship on his bahalf while living in Indonesia–would be flat out illegal–parents don’t have the legal authority to make that kind of decision for a minor.
However, the law the wingnuts cite is not wholly unfavorable to their position, if Obama was somehow born in Kenya. The issue would be not whether Obama is a “natural born” citizen, but whether he is a citizen at all.
At the time, there was a since-corrected loophole in a statute designed to prevent “legacy” citizenship–US citizenship passed down for generations in families with no real contact with the country. At the time, the law specified that a child born abroad to one US citizen and a foriegner acquired US citizenship only if the US citizen parent had lived in the US for 5 years after age 14. The point, of course, is that Obama was born before his mother’s 19th birthday, even though she’d lived in the US all her life.
I have some doubts whether the statute would be enforced to bar citizenship for a person in Obama’s alleged position, both because of Congressional intent and for equal protection/rational basis reasons. Because, however, there is not the slightest reason to suppose that Obama was born anywhere other than Hawaii, I doubt we’ll ever see the issue litigated.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
For those that are interested in an actual case being brought by a self-described “Democratic American” against Obama, the DNC and the FEC check out the docket here:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/pennsylvania/paedce/2:2008cv04083/281573/16/
It’s interesting to say the least.
For an order dismissing for lack of standing a similar claim in a case brought against McCain and the RNC based on McCain’s birth in the Panama Canal Zone go here:
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Hollander-Order-7-24-08.pdf
October 15th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
I think I see the misunderstanding here. Senator Barack Obama was, of course, born in Hawaii and is in every way eligible for the Presidency as a natural-born citizen.
But SLC keeps referring to a Senator “Osama,” with whom I am not familiar. I did not even know such a person existed. And indeed this mysterious “Senator Osama” may have been born in Indonesia, or Kenya, or perhaps on the far planet of Teegeeack as the clone of William Ayers. In an infinite universe, all things are possible.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
It’s interesting to say the least.
“Interesting” my ass. It’s a frivolous lawsuit. Among the claims:
- Obama’s Indonesia-born sister Maya “allegedly” has a US birth certificate. No proof, no source cited.
- Obama “lost any US citizenship he may have had” when his mother married an Indonesian. Not true by any reading of citizenship law. Or have you never heard of “anchor babies”?
- Obama was born in “Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya Africa,” it is “alleged.” Again: No source cited anywhere in the lawsuit.
It’s a frivolous lawsuit submitted by a man who thinks Bush plotted 9/11, and sued him on those grounds. That was laughed out of court, as this will be.
October 15th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
To echo David Cross: Was Obama’s mother’s vagina American?
October 15th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Rea has it right. If Obama had been born outside the United States, he would not have been a United States citizen at all. His mother’s citizenship would be unavailing–the statutory text at that time is clear that he would not have qualified for citizenship.
However, since he was born in Hawaii, there’s really no issue.
October 15th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Rea has it right. If Obama had been born outside the United States, he would not have been a United States citizen at all.
Well, I have some doubt that such a result would be reached in a non-poltical context–faced with declaring that Mr. Amabo, born in ‘61 in Kenya to a Kenyan father and an 18-year-old mother who had lived her whole life in the US, had never really been a US citizen, I suspect that a court would find some way to avoid that result.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
SLC,
What purpose is served by calling the man Senator ‘Osama’? I don’t much like the man, and I think he would be a mediocre president at best. But there’s plenty to go after him on policy grounds without making fun of his name. Obama isn’t a Muslim, he has shown no sympathy for jihadist pretensions, and there is little reason to believe he would be substantively different on Israeli-Palestinian issues. What, then, is the point?
October 15th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Dave Weigel kindly doesn’t mention that Philip J. Berg’s incredibly poorly crafted complaint suggests that Berg has suffered serious brain damage at some point. No competent writer of English would have submitted that monstrosity to a court.
October 15th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I agree that a Constitutional Amendment to clarify things would be appropriate. And of course the clarification should not be that natural born means citizen from birth but should get rid of this whole bizarre notion and declare any citizen eligible to be elected President (I’m agnostic on keeping the 35 year old requirement).
October 15th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Re Hector
I do it to irritate the israel bashers on this blog and generally to cause trouble.
I would have to disagree with Mr. Hector as to what kind a president Senator Osama might make. As even his worst detractors, like Charles Krauthammer, admit, the senator has a first class intellect and a first class temperament. That would certainly give him a leg up in the presidency but I would agree that those two attributes alone do not guarantee a successful presidency. Herbert Hoover and James Earl Carter both had first class intellects but were failures as president.
I am extremely impressed with his organizational abilities. I would not have thought it possible that any Democrat could raise more money then Hillary Clinton; that’s one of the reasons that Mark Warner bowed out of the race even before he got in. Further, he ran rings around her and is currently running rings around Senator McCain in terms of organization, strategic planning and tactical strategies.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Re: I would not have thought it possible that any Democrat could raise more money then Hillary Clinton;
Is that a good thing? The fact that Obama has raised so much money means only that he will be all the more beholden to his moneyed backers, and will do precisely nothing against the wishes of big business.
October 15th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Re Hector
Unfortunately, campaigns in this country are expensive. It takes big money to run a successful campaign. I don’t know any way around it, except to make government funded campaigns mandatory which, the Supreme Court has ruled would violate 1st amendment rights. Fortunately, Senator Osama appears to have a large donor base so that there may be enough conflicts such that he won’t be able to satisfy everybody.
October 16th, 2008 at 2:34 am
I do it to irritate the israel bashers on this blog and generally to cause trouble.
Which is kind of ironic, for so many reasons: a) your general dislike of Israelis for not being genocidal Kahanist shits; b) the fact that Israel dislikes genocidal Kahanist shits. With friends like you, Israel doesn’t need ‘bashers’. Tzipi Livni would dive into a pile of dogshit to avoid bumping into you.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
There’s been a lot of talk about the housing market here on the Seacoast, but the demand for office space is another indicator of the relative health of the local economy. According to consultant Steven Berg, of Sargent Consulting
December 2nd, 2008 at 5:46 am
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