In an hour-long radio interview on presidential eligibility, an award-winning journalist and author declared Barack Obama could be at the center of the “biggest potential crime in all of American history.”
Diana West, a columnist known for her boldness and penchant for eliciting dropped jaws, was interviewed Saturday by Frank Gaffney, founder of the Center for Security Policy, on his Secure Freedom Radio.
Her column appears Fridays on WND’s commentary page.
According to the show’s promotion, “Despite the results of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Unit, which found that both Obama’s birth certificate and Selective Service Registration card had been forged, Obama’s behavior in the ’08 elections and the very words of the Constitution itself, the government has not allowed for a thorough and fair investigation into the issue of Obama’s eligibility.”
West contends Americans should be investigating exactly what is going on.
The nation is “looking at a great unsolved mystery, the greatest potential crime of all of American history,” she told Gaffney. “What we’re looking at is a president of the United States whose documentation has not been presented, vetted, corroborated,” she said.
Gaffney noted that the subject has become “irradiated.”
The issue has been raised in dozens of lawsuits and other legal challenges. Yet the courts and media have combined to make sure “this is a subject that does not make it into America’s living rooms and parlors,” West said.
“It’s not considered polite conversation.”
But according to documentation in some of the legal challenges, the potentially damaging consequences are unquantifiable. The issues that would arise should Obama be declared ineligible include the status of laws he has signed and the international agreements he has made.
West said determining Obama’s eligibility isn’t complicated; it’s a matter of the definition of “natural born citizen,” which is what the Constitution requires for presidents.
“This was a specific designation that was much discussed among the Founders in order to eliminate any possibility of divided loyalties in the commander of the American armed forces,” she said.
She cited a 19th century U.S. Supreme Court case that determined a “natural born citizen” is the offspring of two citizen parents. Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr., was in the United States only as a student and never was a citizen.
West discussed a pending court case in Florida that raises the issue of the parentage of natural born citizens.
She explained that the judge in that case already has noted that while critics of Obama have cited a legal definition for natural born citizen, supporters of the president have failed to cite a single instance to back their position.
“The mystery must be solved,” she said.
Listen to the interview:
[jwplayer YYOgzcKl]
While serving as an editorial writer for the Washington Times, West began writing a regular column in 1999. It went to syndication shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.
West won second place for editorial writing in the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association Contest in 2001. She left the Times in 2002 to write her first book, “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization,” by St. Martin’s Press.
Not one to shy away from controversial commentary, along with Obama’s eligibility, West explores such topics as Islam’s claim to be “a religion of peace,” society’s efforts to “protect” children from Mother’s Day.