Obama Citizenship

Eligibility Update: Ankeny v. Daniels and Citizenship; Sen. Frist on ?Birthers;? Kerchner Ad

By Phil

Recently, Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Elaine Brown affirmed the lower Court’s decision regarding Ankeny v. Daniels and set off some interesting dissent regarding the natural born citizenship issue.

Attorney Leo Donofrio posted the following in response to the Judge’s opinion:

Also, the Chester Arthur analysis in Footnote 16 reeks.  This Indiana decision is pure evil.  They have rewritten history to make it appear as if the whole world knew Chester Arthur was a British citizen at birth while history records this blog discovered that fact and first published it to the world in December 2008.  Before that time, it was not known.   The propaganda has spread from the press to the courts.]

The Indiana Court of Appeals in the Arkeny and Kruse case has just issued a lame judicial attempt at defining the ?natural born citizen? clause.  The errors of fact and law incorporated into the decision serve as a beacon outlining the desperation certain government factions now face.  Obviously, the British birth issue is getting on their nerves and this was clearly an attempt to derail further national discussion on this issue. …

Their main argument is to state that citizens are only born or naturalized.  That fails to take into account the framers (and other original citizens) who themselves were neither born citizens nor were they naturalized.  So the Court proves itself a bit wonky on that point.  Still, I certainly do not dispute that today all US citizens are either born or naturalized.  But that?s not the point.  The necessary evaluation requires consideration of the various types of born citizenship.  And on this important issue, the Indiana Court of Appeals has failed.

Born citizens can be broken up into three groups:

1.  natural born

2. citizens by statute

3. 14th amendment citizens

- All three classes were born as US citizens, but not all three are the same.  Persons born abroad are citizens by federal statute.

- A person born on US soil to alien parents who were domiciled here, according to Wong Kim Ark, is a 14th Amendment citizen.

- Natural born citizens are born on US soil to parents who are citizens.

All of the above are citizens, but each reaches their citizenship through different circumstances.

To be ?natural born? is a circumstance of citizenship.   It is not a separate level of citizenship. All citizens have equal rights.  But naturalized citizens aren?t eligible for the office of President.  This is because the natural born citizen clause is a national security measure, not a right of citizenship.  The Indiana Court conveniently ignores this point.

Born citizens are  not necessarily bestowed with citizenship in the same way.  Some require a statute.  Some require the 14th Amendment.  Some were natural born and their citizenship was self-evident. …

Blogger and attorney Larry Welch goes on to show some of the other oddities of the order:

…Something I uncovered a few months ago that has been overlooked by all of the parties is that the certification filed with Indiana’s Election Division by the DNC and Indiana’s Democratic Party omitted language certifying that Barack Obama was a natural born citizen. That’s not a problem though for Judge Brown, who then went on to offer her constitutional interpretation of what “natural born citizen” means, something our U.S. Supreme Court has never done and something she had no obligation to do since there were already sufficient grounds to affirm Judge Dreyer’s dismissal of the badly flawed lawsuit.

The only thing I believe the plaintiffs got right in their lawsuit was their contention that a “natural born citizen” is a person born within the U.S. to two U.S. citizen parents. Obama’s father was at all times during his life a citizen of Kenya, which at the time of Obama’s birth was a British commonwealth. By virtue of his father’s citizenship, Obama was indisputably a dual citizen at birth. A person owing allegiance to two countries cannot be described as a natural born citizen in my opinion. The fact that Obama says he never affirmed his British citizenship before the age he was legally required to do so is irrelevant. A fact conveniently overlooked in Judge Brown’s decision is that Obama immigrated to Indonesia at age 6 with his mother and became a citizen in that country as well after his step-father adopted him. Sen. John McCain also arguably was not a natural born citizen because he was born in a Panamanian hospital while his father was stationed at a Navy base in the Panama Canal Zone. Both Obama and McCain are U.S. citizens for different reasons, but the term “natural born citizen” is a unique term used in the U.S. Constitution only to define a person’s eligibility to serve as president. …

It is worth noting that of the dozens of cases that have been brought forth over the past year challenging whether Obama is a natural born citizen, this is the only opinion that has been decided on the merits of the claim that he is not a natural born citizen. Every other decision refrained from making any determination on the actual merit; instead, the courts dismissed the complaints for lack of standing on the part of the plaintiffs to bring the constitutional eligibility challenge. There’s a reason other courts failed to reach a conclusion Judge Brown reached in this opinion. It is based upon the long-held rule of constitutional interpretation that a court should refrain from deciding a case on constitutional grounds when the case can be disposed of on other non-constitutional grounds. Procedurally, this case had to be dismissed because the plaintiffs sued the wrong defendant and lacked standing to sue. There was no reason for the court to decide a constitutional question as it did in this case, and that’s what makes it so disturbing. Judge Terry Crone and Melissa May signed on to Judge Brown’s decision. Gov. Mitch Daniels appointed Judge Brown to the Court of Appeals last year. I bet we won’t hear Gov. Daniels complaining about the judicial activism of his own appointees like he did the judges who ruled Indiana’s voter I.D. law unconstitutional.

The truth of all the above can be summed up in the following two points:

• The Judiciary has never made a ruling on the definition of natural born citizenship eligibility with respect to the presidency. For any Judge to attempt to opine on the subject, as has been done before when there is no legitimate reason to do so, shows further anecdotal evidence that the Judiciary needs to be restrained;
• Since even this Judge won’t touch the fact that Mr. Obama was a British citizen at birth, this bigger issue of his background will continue until the evidence is shown that otherwise contradicts what is already admitted about this man.

Via commenter “Black Lion,” the HuffingtonPost asked former Sen. Bill Frist about “birthers:”

Is the birther movement bad for the Republican Party?

I don’t think its a reflection of the Republican Party. I think that people trying to connect the two are exaggerating and trying to make a point.

Do you think President Obama was born in this country?

Absolutely. I have no question about Obama’s citizenship. [emphases original]

In response, commenter “MGB” pretty much sums up my response to this questioning:

Better questions would be: Do you KNOW that Obama was born in this country? If so, HOW do you know?

No, “because I saw an image of a document on the Internet” doesn’t cut it, because nobody’s been able to authenticate the document to which the image points. To date, any such official relationship is purely — how did Judge Brown put it? — ah, yes: conclusory.

Plaintiff Charles Kerchner of the case currently in appeal, Kerchner v. Obama, has submitted the following ad to The Washington Times Weekly:

Citizen vs Natural Born Citizen Advertorial in 20091116 Issue of Wash Times National Weekly – pg 5

And John Charlton at The Post & Email posts that the Director of Hawaii’s Office of Information Practices has resigned:

(Nov. 16, 2009: 7:30 PM ET) ? The Director of the Office of Information Practices (OIP) in Hawaii resigned quietly from his position on Nov. 6th and where he went is unclear, according to Hawaii government personnel. …

This story was previously covered by The Post & Email in a series of reports and editorials beginning on September 23rd. …

Don Shimabukuro of that office, in passing, mentioned to me that the director, Mr. Paul Tsukiyama took another position with the state, and had resigned from his position of Director of the Office of Information Practices on Nov. 6th.  Since Nov. 9th the acting director is Cathy Takase.  When asked what position Mr. Tsukiyama had taken, Mrs. Shimabukuro was unclear where he had gone.

I contacted the Office of Governor Lingle, on the hunch that it was the governor who nominated or promoted the former Director.  That office too was unclear what position he had taken, saying that they had never heard of Paul Tsukiyama.  Mrs. Queenie, at the Office of Constituent Affairs, expressed surprise at Shimabukuro?s lack of awareness of her former Director?s new position, saying, ?And that office wouldn?t tell you where he went?? [emphases original]

See the following links regarding the eligibility saga:

• The background:
  • Obama?s Presidential Eligibility: What You Need to Know
  • Obama’s Sealed Background Documentation
  • Obama Citizenship Facts
  • What’s the Difference Between a Birth Certification Versus a Birth Certificate
• The questions:
  • Leo Donofrio Affirms FightTheSmears.com?s Obama Citizenship Admission
  • Fallible FactCheck.org: TheBirthers, Donofrio Cause Change on Obama Citizenship
  • Newsmax.com: Obama Birth Certificate Not Released
  • Keyes v. Lingle: Forensic Examiner and IT Expert Disprove Certification of Live Birth
  • The State Department and Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Natural Born Citizen Resolution (April 10, 2008)
  • Citizen Grand Jury Updates and Eligibility Lawsuit Listing

-Phil

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Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on November 16, 2009 (boomark / email).