Is Obama a Natural Born Citizen?

Colonel Bob Pappas, USMC, Ret., Gulf1.com

 

Article II, U.S. Constitution states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”

 

The issue is so fundamental that it defies reason that any patriotic American would not want to clarify a candidate’s status before an election. If there were no problems in Obama’s case it would not rise to significance, but he and his attorney’s have maneuvered the Court to rule in their favor, albeit as a legal maneuver not as a matter of substance. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick ruled that a suit brought by Phillip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania attorney, was, “too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters,” and dismissed the case for lack of “Standing.” But it will only delay, not stop the inevitable. Read article.

D.D. Guttenplan, FinancialTimes.com

 

It happened circuitously. In 1990, Obama was already enough of a celebrity – the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review – for the New York publishers Simon & Schuster to offer a “six-figure contract” for a proposed autobiography. The only problem was that Obama was too busy finishing law school to write the book, and the contract was eventually cancelled.

 

By the time Obama finished Dreams From My Father – published by Times Books in 1995 – his advance was only $40,000. In 2004, Obama – now a state senator in Illinois and a candidate for the US senate – was chosen to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, but his book was long out of print. Yet when he arrived in Washington, the $169,300 senator’s salary was not going to be his mainstay: two weeks before he was sworn in, Crown Books announced a $1.9m three-book contract with the senator-elect.

 

As The Audacity of Hope shot up the bestseller lists, taking a reprint of Dreams From My Father along with it, Obama became a rich man. But like McCain, he had help: before that deal with Crown, he left his longtime book agent for Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer also responsible for negotiating Tony Blair’s £4.5m contract with Random House a year ago today. It was a move that revealed a streak of ruthless calculation that may help land Obama in the White House. Read article.

IBD Editorials.com

 

As vast crowds cheer Sarah Palin, the odd specter of conservative elites hissing at Alaska's governor lingers, with some plugging for Barack Obama. It's a bad case of style over substance, and feeling over fact.

 

As if the mainstream media's dumpster-diving campaign against Palin isn't galling enough, the conservative elite's casually dismissive attitude toward the brightest GOP star from Alaska may be even worse.

 

Kathleen Parker called her "clearly out of her league."

 

Has Parker called Alaska to find out what Palin's really like? Has Brooks? It's not obvious from their columns. Instead, both seem to make Olympian judgments based solely on a single poorly done TV interview. It's hardly the job they ought to be doing.

 

Their dismissiveness sharply contrasts to others who've tried to find out who Sarah Palin is. They find it impossible to dismiss her.

 

Among them is the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol, who didn't judge Palin on her unfamiliar accent or lack of knowledge about Russia, but on her efforts to open Alaska to energy development before becoming the GOP nominee. He flew to Alaska and wrote about it.

 

Columnist Victor Davis Hanson made it clear his experience in the private sector and among people who do hard work informed his understanding of Palin's strengths. National Review's Jonah Goldberg, who also thinks well of Palin, has visited Alaska repeatedly and understands why the locals elected her. Columnist Mark Steyn — another Washington outsider — likewise finds Palin impressive. Read article.

 

Heather R. Higgins, NewsMax.com

 

The Sarah Palin-bashing chattering classes are at it again, and to the delight of their openly liberal colleagues.

 

A series of officially conservative commentators have disparaged Gov. Sarah Palin: She is a “mark against John McCain” (Peggy Noonan); she is “an embarrassment and a dangerous one at that” (Christopher Buckley); and she is incapable of “the constructive act of governance” (David Brooks).

 

Each of these writers is an admired friend, so I write this with some trepidation. I am not angry, but rather deeply sad that these otherwise keen observers of the unattractive prejudices of others don’t hear how they themselves sound.

 

Unfortunately, perhaps without knowing it, they’ve bought into both a flawed Progressive Era idea: that you need experts to run things — and a stifling European one — that we all have our proper place, and rather than average Americans having “ownership” of the government, as Tocqueville noted, we ought to defer to our betters to run it.

 

That’s not the American idea.

 

Here good people accomplish great things (think of the Wright brothers — bicycle mechanics — astonishing the incredulous French that they of all people had figured out how to fly, or Edison relying on trial and error — he had only three years of formal schooling — to make his inventions).

 

Like Truman, we do not need to come from “educated” backgrounds to make wise leaders.

 

The criteria for leadership more than anything else is good judgment, self-determination, and initiative; not vocabulary, diction, geography, or a particular degree. Sarah Palin seems to have the attributes that matter for those sufficiently unblinkered to see. Read article.

Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media.com

 

Questions Still Not Answered

 

Why didn’t Colin Powell and Co. jump ship in, say, June or July, and endorse Obama after many months of campaigning when his positions were already well known? That is, why wait until late October when, after the financial meltdown, Obama surged in the polls? Had Powell come out even in the first week of September, he could have demonstrated that although Obama was down by three points, he was willing to stick his neck out with a principled endorsement that may well have made him persona non grata in a McCain-administration Washington.

 

Why didn’t the media or McCain just ask Obama a few of the following questions: Why did you keep emailing and phoning Bill Ayers for three years after 9/11, when the country was gripped by fear of terror, and Ayers, like bin Laden, said that he had not done enough bombing, and had no regrets about the terrorism he had committed?

 

Why did Obama say in 2004 to the Chicago Sun-Times that he went to Trinity Church every Sunday at 11AM, and then later claim he had not been there that regularly once Rev. Wright’s venom was disseminated to the general public? Is Obama for, or not for, a simple yes or no, missile defense, nuclear power, off-shore drilling, and coal-powered electrical generation? There might be legitimate answers, but surely the public could profit by them. Read article.

 

IBD Editorials.com

 

Democratic nominee Barack Obama touts his tax plan as just a way to "spread the wealth." But to us it looks like something quite different: a declaration of war on capital.

 

Obama has described his plan to hike taxes as "neighborliness," "patriotism" and "justice." In fact, it's the widest-ranging assault on capital — and those who create it — in at least a generation, possibly longer.

 

Look at just a few of the things he and congressional Democrats have in mind: Higher taxes on successful entrepreneurs (anyone earning over $250,000), higher taxes on capital gains, higher taxes on dividends, a possible raid on Americans' 401(k)s, a takeover of America's private health care industry, strict new limits on what CEOs can make, and the re-imposition of the death tax.

 

Add it up, and Obama will usher in a new era in America — one where capital, the engine of our economic growth and success, is punished severely through the tax code. If Democrats win a filibuster-proof majority in Congress, it'll be the only form of capital punishment their party will support. Read article.

 

William Kristol, Weekly Standard.com

 

It's always darkest before it goes totally black. This is one of John McCain's favorite remarks, ascribed (apocryphally, it seems) to Chairman Mao. Well, with 10 days to go before the election, it's getting pretty dark out there.

 

Still, we hope for a McCain-Palin victory, for the sake of the country. And also for the pleasure of seeing the dejection of the mainstream media, the incredulity of the leftwing triumphalists, and the humiliation of the pathetically opportunistic "conservatives" who've been desperately clambering on board the Obama juggernaut. We're proud to stay off that juggernaut. We're proud, in our modest way, to stand with John McCain and Sarah Palin against it.

 

An Obama-Biden administration--working with a Democratic Congress--would mean a more debilitating nanny state at home and a weaker nation facing our enemies abroad. We, of course, have confidence that the nation would survive such an interlude, and we would even hope that a President Obama might adjust course from the path he's advertised, especially in foreign policy. But the risk of real damage is great, especially when compared with the prospect of a tough-minded center-right McCain-Palin administration that could lead the country sensibly through these difficult times. Read article.

Michael Reagan, Frontpagemag.com

 

If you believe Newsweek magazine -- something that usually requires a serious suspension of disbelief -- the Reagan Era is dead. Politico also chimed in, proclaiming the death of the Reagan revolution.

 

Newsweek doesn’t go on to tell you who killed the Reagan Era, so I will. It was the Republican Party that demolished the shining city on the hill my father built. It was the Republican Party that was 100 percent responsible for the end of the Reagan Revolution.

 

They forgot who he was; and having forgotten who he was, they stopped following in his footsteps that should have led to smaller, less-intrusive government, and restrained government spending. They are the ones who began to undermine the sturdy foundation my father built.

 

The end of the Reagan Era was brought to us by the Republican Party, which had thrived under his leadership and is now in danger of becoming a minor player in the nation's politics and a spectator at the birth of a socialist America doomed to follow the path to ruin of every failed state has embraced the Marxist creed.

 

Can the Reagan Era be resurrected? It can, but only by the party that was responsible for its death. Republicans killed it and it's up to Republicans to revive it. And if America is to survive the coming debacle looming ahead under an ultra-left-wing Obama government drenched in the welfare-state philosophies of Karl Marx, only a reborn Republican Party will be capable of bringing America back from the brink of destruction.

 

Unless John McCain understands what is at stake here, Nov. 5 is going to resemble the smoking rubble of Dresden in the wake of the Allied firebombing of that city. The Republican Party is going to be in shambles. Read article.

 

Jacob Sullum, NY Post.com

 

Despite all the facile comparisons between the current economic situation and the conditions that preceded the Great Depression, the most recent figures show GDP continuing to grow, with unemployment at a historically modest 6.1 percent. But if, as widely expected, Barack Obama faces a recession when he takes office in January, many Americans will expect him to deliver on his promise to "create jobs."

 

They probably will be disappointed, because Obama seems to view job creation not only as something the government does with taxpayers' money but as an end in itself. That's a recipe for wasteful spending that will divert resources from more productive uses and ultimately result in lower employment.

 

Obama says he will "transform the challenge of global climate change into an opportunity to create 5 million new green jobs," which he likens to the economic activity triggered by the personal computer.

 

This way of looking at climate change is a variation on the broken-window fallacy, according to which the loss caused by a smashed window is offset by the employment it gives the glazier.

 

By the same logic, Obama should view war, crime and hurricanes as opportunities to create jobs. Read article.

 

Dr. M. Sidney Wallace, Gulf1.com

 

If you are reading this it is because you want to know how you can get on board with Obama's Socialist programs and still give a little something to others.

 

First, if you want to give anyone a gift, you will first deposit the value of the gift with the IRS. It does not matter who the recipient is, the procedure is the same for all equally. Son, daughter, grandson, girl friend, new born, waiters, bell hops, valet attendants, baggage handlers, hair stylist, barber, waitress; it makes no difference because all are to be treated equally. 

 

Next a government bureaucrat will be assigned to determine the appropriateness of your gift for the recipient. This government employee will be fully trained to determine if the gift you want the recipient to have is safe, ecological friendly, and appropriate for the age, sex, race, religion, and national origin of the recipient. Treating each equally will be of utmost importance in this process. Read article.

 

Kevin McCullough, Townhall.com

 

The election of 2008 is tightening. Those who have followed it since it began over two years ago knew this was coming. Neither candidate will win by a Reagan-esque landslide, regardless of how much the nation's media has rooted for one side.

 

America remains strongly divided over two different philosophical centers, and while neither is perfect--not even ideal, one will have a dramatically worse effect on black homes, black families, black churches, and black communities. And it is you--America's most historically ill-treated--who will suffer most.

 

Under the Obama administration there will be a calculated effort to reduce the already low number of jobs in most urban centers. Read article.

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