There's a brand-new "birther" in town, the media would like you to know.
It's Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who suggested in an interview he's not sure if he has seen Barack Obama's real birth certificate – yet, he adds, has no reason to doubt his birth story.
Why are the media so determined to smoke out high-profile skeptics on the issue of Obama's truthfulness about his birth narrative?
Very simple.
Because the Big Media are engaged in a classic disinformation campaign to intimidate anyone who is serious about the Constitution and its requirements for the office of the presidency – or, for that matter, what the Constitution says about anything.
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Any serious debate about Obama's eligibility should have ended a long time ago. He's not eligible. It matters not where he was born – which, ironically, is still very much in doubt. What matters is that he was not born of parents who were American citizens at the time. That's what "natural born citizen" means. It does not mean "born in the USA," much as Obama and his protectors in the media would like you to think.
Not only do the media activists attempt to obscure the clear meaning of the Constitution in their breathless assertion that anyone born in the USA is "natural born," they also, I believe, seek to attack at its root the reliance on "original intent," which couldn't be clearer.
Keep in mind, the American colonies were just that – colonies of the British crown. Prior to the Magna Carta, natural born subjects were those born under the jurisdiction of the king. But that definition changed with the Magna Carta and the British Nationality Act of 1772, which declared that children born of British subjects outside the jurisdiction of the crown be natural born subjects. That would thus be the undeniable interpretation of the framers of the Constitution – substituting only the word "citizen" for "subject."
To underscore this point, the 1790 Uniform Naturalization Act, passed just one year after the Constitution was ratified, defined minor children of aliens as U.S. citizens only upon naturalization of the father.
"Natural Born Citizen" was defined by an 1875 Supreme Court ruling (Minor v. Happersett) as children born of two U.S. citizens – regardless of the location of the birth. It found: "The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners."
This legal principle was restated, ironically, in 2008 by the U.S. Senate in confronting concerns over the eligibility of presidential candidate John McCain. The U.S. Senate resolved by a 99-0 vote, which included one cast by Obama himself, that McCain was indeed eligible because both his parents were U.S. citizens. It mattered not that he was born in Panama. It wasn't even an issue.
Neither does it need to be an issue of where Obama was born.
We need only ask ourselves one question: "Were both his parents U.S. citizens when he was born?" By Obama's own admission, and also by the questionable documents he has provided the public, the answer is "no." And that settles it. Obama is not eligible to be the president.
This is an issue few want to confront head-on. So the media have refused to ask the right question. Instead, they insist on making it a matter of faith as to whether we accept that Obama was born in the USA.
I don't care anymore. I suspect he's lying about his birthplace. He may not even know himself. But it's irrelevant as to the question of eligibility.
Now the only question is: "Do we still care about what the Constitution says?"