Your birther insanity for the day

Posted By Joshua Keating Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - 11:22 AM Share

I recently came across this ingeniously crackpot post on Alex Jones's popular conspiracy site, Infowars:

A major Ghanaian news outlet has been caught in a revealing slip-up after it reported that President Barack Obama’s recent visit to the African country was a return to his birthplace. [...]
Contained in an otherwise relatively mundane account of Obama’s recent visit to Ghana in the Daily Graphic news outlet is a sentence sure to raise eyebrows amongst people like journalist Jerome Corsi, who has been at the forefront of the Obama birth certificate scandal since well before the election.
The full paragraph reads, “For Ghana, Obama’s visit will be a celebration of another milestone in African history as it hosts the first-ever African-American President on this presidential visit to the continent of his birth.”
Why the Ghanaian news outlet would report that Obama was born on the continent of Africa, when this would instantly invalidate his entire presidency, is unclear.

I really love the idea that The Daily Graphic somehow got the scoop of the century and decided it belonged in paragraph four of their "otherwise mundane account." This would probably qualify as the most egregious instance of "burying the lede" in the history of newspaper journalism.

The paper seems to have corrected the error, but not before the claim made the rounds on message boards acress the interwebs, including the comment thread of this unrelated FP article.

In any event, I'm curious how people in Kenya (or is it Indonesia? I can't keep up.) are reacting to the birther phenomenon. Are they completely dismissive of the idea, or somewhat intrigued by the possibility of being Obama's birthplace? Any Passport readers abroad hearing anything interesting?

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HARDRADA

8:17 PM ET

July 28, 2009

Of course

Well duh, of course the paper "corrected" the "error," because they were infiltrated by ACORN.

Just like that Hawaiian newspaper that was held hostage by Saul Alinsky in 1961 and forced to publish a bogus birth notice.

His overlords cover all the bases, you should know this by now. ;-)

MENTALACROBATICS

9:01 AM ET

July 29, 2009

Isn't he Kenyan? just kidding!

Hi Joshua, from my conversations with other Kenyans I can confirm that we find the birther campaign as amusing as you do. It is just so ridiculous you don't even know where to begin with these crazies!

But Kenyans tend not to find the attacks on Obama as surprising, in fact it is more or less expected. The more desperate Obama's opponents get, the more desperate the attacks on his policies, his character and now even his birth.

Many Kenyans also see these attacks as part of a much bigger strategy to bring down the Obama presidency by any means necessary. As well all know big strategies need big money hence the question we want answered is where is the birthers' financial muscle coming from? Who is the money behind the attacks? Maybe you'll find out and let us know!

Personally I am always amused at how closely related the GOP and African Dictators seem to be.

They will both say anything to attack their political enemies.
They both demand absolute and completely loyalty.
Anyone who disagrees with them is obviously an enemy of the state.
They never stand by their words.
They display amazing double standards.

RKERG

11:03 AM ET

July 29, 2009

Obama was a change up and the GOP whiffed

The rather lame and desperate attacks by the
the repubs on Obama were a result of
the certainty that its leaders had that
Hillary would be the dems candidate.
The repubs used all of their vast
resources to have books published and
even a movie made to overwhelm the voters
with attacks on Hillary and when the nominee
turned out to be Obama, they had
nothing to use, no books, no movies,
nothing but the old repub boilerplate
that he was...a liberal. They hurriedly
just started throwing everything that
they could think of at the wall to see
what might stick, and the Obama is a secret
muslim not born in America somehow struck
a chord with the republocult. Go figure
LOL. I am reminded of that nasty scene
at a McCain/Palin rally when so many
of the crowd were chanting "kill Obama"
that McCain had to break character and
try to calm them down. It is, I suspect
nothing more than closet racism. Many
out there hate the idea of a non white
person as President but feel constrained
from saying so. The contrived myth that
Obama was really born in Africa and is really
a Muslim is just a more socially
acceptable way of these closet racists
to attack him.

ANAT

6:52 PM ET

July 29, 2009

These people need to read

I only want to state that even if the President had been born in Kenya or Indonesia or any other country, it WOULD NOT INVALIDATE his presidency, since he would still be a US citizen BY BIRTH.
There is two ways you can be a US citizen by birth:
jus soil- this means to be born in US soil, any of the states or territories
jus sanguinis- this means to be born to at least one US citizen parent.
Thus, Obamas mother was American, and even when I don't believe he was born out of the country, I don't like ignorant people like them trashing him

And, unlike you, I got this from the USCIS page
Citizenship of Children
They should read it

You can find this at www.uscis.gov

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizenship at birth to almost all individuals born in the United States or in U.S. jurisdictions, according to the principle of jus soli. Certain individuals born in the United States, such as children of foreign heads of state or children of foreign diplomats, do not obtain U.S. citizenship under jus soli.

Certain individuals born outside of the United States are born citizens because of their parents, according to the principle of jus sanguinis (which holds that the country of citizenship of a child is the same as that of his / her parents). The U.S. Congress is responsible for enacting laws that determine how citizenship is conveyed by a U.S. citizen parent or parents according to the principle of jus sanguinis. These laws are contained in the Immigration and Nationality Act.

In addition, Each year, many people adopt children from outside the U.S. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 (CCA) grants those children the ability to automatically become U.S. citizens when they immigrate to the United States.

RIKTOV

10:48 PM ET

July 29, 2009

"Natural born citizen"

anat,

You are missing the one essential element to this whole silly controversy. The president is required not only to be a U.S. citizen by birth, he/she is further required by the Constitution to be "a natural born citizen of the United States", and that is what birthers are contesting, not his citizenship by birth, which nobody contests. Just what this phrase means is open to interpretation, and a naive but reasonable interpretation would be "born on U.S. soil." IF Obama were born outside of the U.S. AND "natural born citizen" means "born on U.S. soil", then yes, he would have been ineligible.

I myself am a U.S. citizen by birth, born outside of the United States. And for most of my life, having been told the "common knowledge" that only a person who is "born in the United States" can become U.S. President, assumed that I was ineligible to be President on those grounds.

BITERATMONK

3:46 AM ET

July 30, 2009

But there's no real reason to

But there's no real reason to assume "natural born US citizen" means "born on US soil. The correct interpretation is that "natural born citizen" is a person who is a citizen from birth - ie, they were born a citizen and didn't become a citizen at some later point in life.

If Obama's mother was a US citizen, she could have given birth to him in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and he would still be a "natural born citizen" - born with citizenship.

PFWILLARD

1:56 PM ET

July 30, 2009

Show me where the

Show me where the Constitution defines what "natural born" means. Hint: NO WHERE.

Jus solis is inherited from British common law and was useful in providing a way out from Dred Scott--see Amendment 14..

John McCain was born in Panama--a foreign country----would we be having this discussion if he had won? If the answer is "no" then the issue is phony. That is the essential element.

My naive position is that someone is...natural born... if they did not have to go through the...naturalization...process to become a citizen.

PFWILLARD

1:22 PM ET

July 30, 2009

Birther comments

U. S. citizenship law is a mess! If the birthers had a single spare neuron among them they could have created a real crisis last fall. Timing and standing are everything (and the birthers blew the first and don't have the second) so the circus will have to wait for a GOP majority in one of the houses.

I note that it is known for certain that John McCain was not born on U. S. soil but transformed from a resident to a natural citizen by legislation enacted after his birth.

One general comment: If you are a U. S. citizen and you procreate abroad, do NOT take it for granted that your children are a U. S. citizens, get their passports before they are 18! Jus sanguinis does apply to them but the law is biased to jus solis.

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