Ann Barnhardt: Obama Is A Non-State, Non-Uniformed Enemy Belligerent

Ann Barnhardt, for all her charm, was wrong about Obama’s Constitutional eligibility to run for President.

There’s broad agreement among legal scholars that a natural-born citizen is simply someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth, by virtue of the circumstances of his birth. Obama is qualified on that basis.

But it’s more complicated than you might think. Obama’s mother was an American citizen, but his father was not, and having one citizen parent isn’t always sufficient to confer citizenship on the child.

Under U.S. law in 1961, if President Obama’s parents were legally married, and if he were also born overseas, then he’d not have been entitled to U.S. citizenship.

The requirements have changed over the years, but in 1961 the requirement was that, for legitimate children of married parents, the citizen parent had to have resided within the USA for five years after her 14th birthday to qualify her child for American citizenship. (Note that this is not in question w/r/t Ted Cruz.)

President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born November 29, 1942, and Obama was born August 4, 1961, so Dunham was only 18 years, 8 months & 5 days old when her baby (the future President Obama) was born. That means only 4 years, 8 months & 5 days had elapsed since her 14th birthday, which is less than the 5 year minimum needed to qualify her baby for citizenship on that basis.

If Obama’s parents were legally married, then he would not have qualified for citizenship if born overseas, because his mother hadn’t resided in the USA for a full five years since her 14th birthday, per this chart:

http://www.ilrc.org/files/documents/natz_chart-a-2014-05_01_final.pdf
(Chart A)

However, that didn’t apply to Obama, because his parents were not legally married. His father was a bigamist. When Obama’s father married 18yo Stanley Ann Dunham in Hawaii, who was already pregnant, he already had another wife back in Kenya. That means his marriage to Dunham was illegal and invalid, so Obama is a bastard.

Because of that, he would have been entitled to U.S. citizenship solely by virtue of his mother’s citizenship, even if born overseas. That means he would have been a “natural-born” citizen, qualified to run for President, even if he had been born overseas.

This is the chart that actually applies to Obama:

http://www.ilrc.org/files/documents/natz_chart-b-2014-05_1_final.pdf
(Chart B: Acquisition of Citizenship – Determining If Children Born Outside The U.S. and Born Out of Wedlock Acquired U.S. Citizenship at Birth)

You might suppose that would eliminate any incentive that Obama’s parents might have had to ensure that his birth was recorded as having occurred in the United States, and perhaps to lie for that purpose. However, Obama’s mother apparently didn’t know about Obama Sr’s other wife. She thought she was legally married. Thinking that, she’d have also believed that her baby would only have U.S. citizenship if born in the USA. That would have given her a strong motive to make sure that she was in Hawaii when her baby was due — or, failing that, to lie about his birthplace — so that he could have U.S. citizenship.

Since we finally (as of 2011) have a birth certificate for Obama showing a hospital birth (albeit not in the hospital which he used to claim as his birthplace), it seems very unlikely that he was actually born overseas and then brought to Hawaii as an infant. If that had happened, his mother would almost certainly have claimed that he was born at home, and that’s what his birth certificate would show as his birthplace. But it doesn’t. Since the birth certificate records a hospital birth, that scenario doesn’t seem plausible.

So I don’t think he was actually born overseas. That means he lied to his book publicists (and probably to others, perhaps including one or more of his three colleges), when he claimed that he was born in Kenya. (Obama’s publicists claimed, from 1991 until April, 2007, on his behalf, in various documents, web pages, etc., that he “was born in Kenya.”)

I don’t fault Obama for his father’s crimes of adultery and bigamy, but it is relevant to this conversation because it is only due to his father’s bigamy that Obama’s parents’ marriage was invalid, and it was only that lack of a legal marriage that makes the issue of Obama’s actual birthplace moot w/r/t the question of whether Obama is really entitled to be considered a natural-born U.S. citizen, constitutionally qualified to serve as President.

If his parents had been legally married, then his citizenship would have depended on his birthplace. Since his parents were not legally married, his birthplace does not matter: he would have been a natural-born U.S. citizen regardless of where he was born.