Citizen Obama? Legit, or Looney?

Citizen Barack Obama? Maybe not. The Supreme Court is deciding whether arguments will be held in the case of Donofrio v. Wells, which is challenging Obama's qualifications to be President of the United States. This issue has invited little press coverage, particularly on the conservative side, which is not known for being silent on controversial topics.

The conservative intelligentsia (of which I am a very small part, I have written op-eds for my college paper since 2003) is not made up of stupid or cowardly people. They have not hesitated to thrash out an issue even when it didn't seem popular to do so. That's why their silence or hesitancy on this issue is puzzling, but somewhat illuminating.

I surfed by Michelle Malkin's blog three days ago. Now, Michelle is no shill or flake. She's unloaded on the Bush administration on amnesty, on spending, on the bailouts. When it comes to this citizenship issue though, she's not buying it. In her piece, she consigns it to the same wastepaper basket as the idea that 9/11 was an inside job.

Alas, Trutherism thrives on both the left and right. Which brings us to the spate of lawsuits challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court considers one of those suits filed by New Jersey citizen Leo Donofrio, who maintains that Obama is not a “natural born citizen” because his father held British citizenship.

There may be a seed of a legitimate constitutional issue to explore here (how is the citizenship requirement enforced for presidential candidates, anyway?) And at least Donofrio concedes that Obama was born in Hawaii. But a dangerously large segment of the birth certificate hunters have lurched into rabid Truther territory. The most prominent crusader against Obama’s American citizenship claim, lawyer Philip Berg (who, not coincidentally, is also a prominent 9/11 Truther), disputes that Obama was born in Hawaii and claims that Obama’s paternal grandmother told him she saw Obama born in Kenya.

Michelle is not alone. Several conservative blogs have picked up her piece and given an amen to it.

In one respect, Michelle has a point. The fact that some who dispute Obama's citizenship are also 9/11 truthers is a cause for concern. (Leo Donofrio, the retired attorney who's bringing up one of the cases, also questioned McCain's natural-born status, which may not help, no one on the Right thought that had any credibility). When a cause is disproportionally joined by people with dubious views, it inevitably taints that cause. I suspect that's why much of the right is not joining the fight on this issue.

The Right has had a history of trying to ensure that it doesn't start chasing rabbits down rabbit holes and end up lost in Wonderland. The North American Union conspiracy is one example. We were told that Bush had a secret plan to merge the U.S. with Canada and Mexico. Needless to say, it didn't happen and it's not happening. But it made conservatives who supported it look foolish in the process. And of course we have the 9/11 Truthers, who aren't confined to the right, but still exist among the right. That conspiracy is as out there as you can get. Needless to say, when it turned out that some of them were publicly supporting Ron Paul in the GOP presidential primary, it proved to be very embarrassing to his campaign, and probably doomed any chance he had of gaining traction.

Now, is this issue only worthy of people donning tin-foil hats? No. It is a legitimate Constitutional question, and it is troubling that we do not seem to have an active process for verifying candidates' natural-born status. Obama himself has invited suspicion by sealing up his credentials, including his birth certificate. To this date, he won't release it for public view. If nothing else, it's a disservice to the people he wishes to lead.

Whether Obama truly isn't a natural-born citizen is another matter. Donofrio's point is that Obama's father was a British citizen and thus under the authority of the British government, which would have conferred citizenship to Obama Sr.'s children. If so, Barack Obama would have had a dual citizenship at birth and could not have been considered "natural born." But that's only if the Constitution prohibits natural-born status on account of foreign parentage. American citizenship has been defined as being conveyed by "jus soli," meaning born on American soil. Is natural-born status solely conveyed by this as well? We currently have controversies over what are called "anchor babies," children born on American soil by illegal immigrants. If these children are citizens, are they natural-born citizens?

It may be these questions that ultimately doom any challenge to Obama's citizenship. The courts, by nature, do not require the defendents to prove their innocence, it is the plaintiffs who must prove the guilt of the other party. Similarly, they may not require that Obama prove he is natural-born, but for the plaintiff to demonstrate conclusively that he is not. But Donofrio will not even get that far. His case was denied today. I figured his case may be dismissed on basis of "standing," that he does not have the right to sue because he cannot demonstrate damage or possibility of damage to his person from his complaint. A similar argument was used to dismiss the many lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the 2003 Iraq War and the Vietnam War.

The end result will be that Obama will be President. But those who are convinced of his ineligibility will not accept it. They will argue that because Obama did not prove his legitimacy, he is not a legal POTUS. And where that line of thought will take them, I don't know for sure.