The Supreme Court has Already Ruled on Birther Idiocy [View All]

[demwing]

Forget about Obama's father, or how long his mother lived in the country. The arguments regarding citizenship, and the meaning of the term "natural born citizen", have long been settled by the Supreme Court.

In the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), the Supreme Court ruled that a person who

• is born in the United States
  
• of parents who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of a foreign power
  
• whose parents have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States
  
• whose parents are there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity of the foreign power to which they are subject

becomes, at the time of his birth, a citizen of the United States by virtue of the first clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

Regarding the term "Natural Born Citizen," the Court stated:

The constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words , either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except in so far as this is done by the affirmative declaration that 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.'

Since there was no definition of "natural born citizen" found in the constitution, the majority adopted the common law of England that was a carry over from feudal times.

The court ruled:

It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born. III. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterward, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen_of_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States_of_America

In a nutshell, the Court has ruled that any child born in the United States, regardless of the nationality of his/her parents (except when conflicting allegiances exist and that being limited to diplomats and foreign officials), and whose parents maintained a permanent residence in the US, was a natural born citizen.

Therefore, according to the US Supreme Court, even if BOTH of Barack Obama's parents were foreigners, Obama himself is a natural born citizen of the United States of America, and constitutionally qualified to serve as the country's President. The tiny fact that Obama's mother was also a citizen simply underlines the obvious.

OBAMA IS PRESIDENT, AND WILL REMAIN SO. END OF DISCUSSION.

Birthers? Get the hell over yourself. Your understanding of the law is faulty, your interpretations are grasping, and your protestations are lame attempts at disguising your racism. You are transparent fools, and even the most extreme members of the conservative movement have abandoned you as feverish nut jobs. You will not prevail on a legal basis, and your only hope seems to be to incite hatred for long enough to become a burden to the democratic process which has defeated your minority, however rabid and loud, opinion.