Cathy spent the day in the car with her father yesterday having him regurgitate the misinformation that is the hallmark of the Republican Party. I received text messages asking me to find Barack Obama’s real name. To believe the hearsay, Obama’s real name is Barry Soetoro. I took a few moments to look into it and found Snopes, Fact Check, bloggers galore, The LA Times, and many other sites which confirmed Obama’s eligibility as president and showed his genuine birth certificate as Barack Hussein Obama II born in Oahu Honolulu Hawii at 7:24pm August 4, 1961. In the process, I discovered that John McCain’s citizenship eligibility was in question until corrected by an act of Congress. Here’s my comment from Domestic Psychology:
What’s funnier is that we had to pass legislation to make McCain eligible.
McCain was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was stationed there as a naval officer. In 1787, however, the framers insisted that any president be natural born — that is, born within the United States. … absent a constitutional amendment, the question remains whether McCain can claim natural-born status. [Source, JONATHAN TURLEY, Legislation Introduced to Remove McCain’s Panama Problem in Seeking Presidency]
See also The New York Times. It took an act of Congress to make John McCain a natural born citizen. See 110th CONGRESS 2d Session S. RES. 511 agreed on April 10, 2008.
To make it funnier, I told Cathy that if McCain/Petraeus take the White House, I’d move to Panama. Now I have to reconsider that!
I thought that people born in military hospitals and the like still counted. That’s why we have diplomats and soldiers overseas with their families. Why doesn’t/didn’t that apply in this case?
And if it took an act of congress to make him eligible, why didn’t the Dems just block it? Seems like the sort of thing that no one would even care enough to report. But maybe I’m just too cynical?
Agreed re: military hospitals but to avoid confusion there was a resolution passed on April 10, 2008. I’ve learned a lot of resolutions get passed as a matter of formality. None-the-less, in light of the number of people that tried to make Obama out to be from another country, it makes good/humorous reading.