buggyone, you are correct, Rubio is not eligible for either the office of President or VP. Now if his parents were citizens before his birth in 1971, then he would qualify.

Sometime or another we have to start following the constitution and the law.

As for the court case, the state can keep a candidates name off the ballot if the candidate does not show proof of citizenship and eligblity to hold the office of President. Each states elections laws are different and the states control the ballot not the federal government.

Actually, Obama did have 1 parent who was a citizen at the time of his birth.

It takes both parents to be citizens at the time of the child birth for the child to be considered "natural born citizen." Read the articles listed, guess that this will have to go to the SCOTUS for final determination. Either the United States starts following the Constitution or we just tear it up and do whatever.

Let me see if I understand the crux of the matter.

The thought is that "natural born" means both parents have to be citizens?

I apologize in advance, but you (Fogmo) had those links in another thread. Can you point me to which thread it was or repost the links? I admit I didn't read them when I saw them fly by.

I looked at the National Patriot - several of the entries and they keep referencing this alternative definition of "Natural Born" yet I can't yet find ANY links supporting that. The people that they mention in some of their posts have already had cases thrown out for being frivolous.

This is a blog - nothing more (so far).

Wikipedia has the following about the term "natural born":

So far, I'll take the Congressional Research Service over a self-admitted right-wing blog.

DPlong and others - This tripe about both parents having to be citizens of the USA before a child born to them on US soil being a natural born citizen is nothing more than tripe derived from "birthers" who are racists. Yes, I said racists.

Two candidates, Obama and Rubio, both good men who were born in the USA both have the right to be President. Just because they do not fit the lilly white of Presidents in the past, don't try to exclude them based upon some crackpot's definition of what "natural born" means.

Remember what the witches told Macbeth. He could not be killed by a person born of a woman. He felt invincible but found out that Macduff was not born of a woman but rather taken by C-Section. Macbeth found out at that moment he was not invincible. Can this same arguement be used by "birthers" as someone not being a "natural born citizen?"

:bigbow:

If you can't make an argument on the substance of the issue, it doesn't help you to call the other a derogatory name like you did with your cavalier use of the word racist. It demeans your argument.

Macbeth?....you're going to argue the Constitution with Macbeth?

There are plenty of scholarly arguments to be made to support your viewpoint without resorting to the playground mentality of accusing your opponent of an unsupportable and unprovable claim of racism.

At the very least, it doesn't bolster your view. It actually has the opposite effect.

You know it's not the fact of natural born or not it's just that obama has this country so messed up or should i say hasnt done anything in 3 years to improve it that people just want him out before he can really screw it up and are grabing at anything to try and eliminate him from any more harm to this country.

Richie, I know you are not one of those who believes that Obama is not a natural born citizen of the USA.

To the others - he is President until at least January 20, 2013 - and most likely until January 20, 2017. Live with it. The majority of American voters put him into office (somewhere around 55%) and they will most likely keep him there.

It may sound simplistic, but my understanding of "natural-born" citizen is that a natural-born one is one who was born on U.S. soil--NOT a naturalized citizen who came to the U.S. as an immigrant and became a citizen through the legal immigration process.

Under that understanding, Rubio would be natural-born because he was born here. If Obama was really born in Hawaii and not Kenya, he would be natural-born.......unless he truly had become a citizen of Indonesia as a child named Barry Soetero as school records show. Even then, it would be a question of whether U.S. citizenship had to be given up if he'd become an Indonesian citizen.
Was young Obama Indonesian citizen?

Also, parental citizenship really has nothing to do with a child born here being an automatic citizen. For example, Mexican illegal alien parent(s)'s children born here in the USA are "natural-born" citizens.

ilovtv: That was my point. I interpreted "natural born" as to mean "born in the U.S." and I'm curious as to what sort of legal interpretation these other people are trying to use.

Some may be quick to haul out a charge of 'racism' - but when you start running out of other reasons regarding people's motivations, I can see where one MIGHT start thinking that.

Even "born in the U.S." might not be a sufficient enough definition. If you are born to U.S. citizens abroad you are considered by some interpreters of the term a "natural born American". So, some believe since his mother was indeed an American born citizen, Obama should be seen as a "natural born American" even if the reality really was that he was born in a foreign land and not Hawaii.

The original reason for this restriction was to prevent learned foreign diplomats from seeking leadership of our then fledgling nation.

It would be nice if the Supreme Court would take up this question and rule on what the Constitutional phrase is actually saying in a strictly legal way.

Of course, then we would just be endlessly arguing whether the ruling was correct or flawed.

buggyone: It is possible that people do not believe Obama was born in this country because of all the blocking he has done on securing his records and the millions he has paid in legal fees blocking lawsuits requesting said information.. And it is possible that people don't like him only because he is a terrible president. For instance, his political/economic strategy called for stimulus that ran up spending that exploded the deficit to 3.6 trillion from 2.98 trillion or 20%. The government spending burden is now 24% of GDP further on Obama watch the national debt, debt the public has to payback climbed to 702.5% from40.3%. He is now calling for higer taxes and has declared class warfare to detract fro his economic record. Obama is decimating our military, our foreign policy and our energy policy becaue he is an idealogue. Quite frankly I could go on but then I would only depress myself more. but i can say one good thing about him that you would be especially proude. He is a good human resources guy because he is locating engineering jobs for voters so that are not replaced by foreigners with fast track visa's

What is really interesting, and believeable, but most people won't admit it, is that the liberal press and many Americans are giving him a pass because he is black....and that's just plain wrong for all of us because its just not objective and this sort of thinking just doesn't belong in our world today. I opine you decide.

Huh? The *deficit* peaked at $1.6T last year and is projected to finish out this fiscal year at $1.1T. You can't be confusing that with the *debt* because that's over $14T.

So what are you talking about? (FYI - I got the numbers from the Office of management and Budget)