StormWarning’s Counterterrorism

Question of Sovereignty - Question of Citizenship

Just a short post on a new election issue. Article II specifies that a person must be at least 35 years old, and says that ”No person except a natural born Citizen” can be president. John McCain was born of two American citizens, but in the Panama Canal zone. Never actually a territory of the U.S. Under U.S. control from 1903 to 1979. The question raised is whether, despite his obvious citizenship, Senator McCain is a natural born citizen as provided in Article II.

● a law passed in 1790 by the first Congress. It provided that the children of US citizens born outside the US “shall be considered as natural born citizens.” The law is no longer in effect, but it provides some guidance on what the founders had in mind at the time of the Constitution.

● some legal experts find it hard to believe the founders would have considered their own children, if born overseas, to be ineligible for the presidency.

● The plain meaning of ‘natural born citizen’ includes persons who become citizens of this nation ‘naturally,’ that is, by virtue of their birth to parents who are citizens, particularly when the birth takes place on territory occupied and controlled by the United States

Note also, the following:

An interesting sidelight to the story. The late Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1964, was born in the Old Arizona Territory before Arizona became a state. McCain says the question of eligibility was settled then when the issue went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Tis quite an interesting issue, and one that is bound to raise the attention of anti-McCain Republicans as well as the usually liberal Democratic extreme.

Gotta hand it to ANewtOne on this one, see here…they tried, but as pointed out in the next link, this particular act was repealed (The Act of 1790 was superseded by the Naturalization Act of 1795). So, the question does remain, not as clear as ANewtOne makes it out to be. Why? See this from a column from George Washington University, Does the Constitution Ban a McCain Presidency?

For his part, McCain has given only the dodgiest of answers to this question. According to the Senator, he is a natural born citizen due to the Naturalization Act of 1790. This is quite pathetic. First, as the name itself implies, the legislation in question grants naturalization. Second, the act no longer merits legal weight because it was repealed in 1802. So, no matter how you cut it, that answer makes no sense, which is a shame because I could hardly think of a more important issue for a man running for president than whether or not he is even eligible to run in the first place.

So, what are we McCain supporters to believe? Another ploy by which partisan group to supercede the primary process?