Obama eligibility issue growing, Charles Rice, Law School Professor, Notre Dame, US Constitution, Natural born citizen
“Why has Obama, for over 2 years, employed numerous private and government attorneys to avoid presenting a legitimate birth certificate and college records?”…Citizen Wells and millions of concerned Americans
From Zach Jones, patriot, writer, veteran, legal mind and friend.
“Dear Rush, Glenn and Hannity:
I hope you will consider the following article written by Prof. Rice of Notre Dame Law School.
This issue is not going away. As a Veteran (Navy 75-80), I feel that anyone serving under Obama today is having his or her service tarnished and they don’t deserve this.
Hope you will do what you can to help.
Respectfully, Zach Jones”
Charles E. Rice is professor emeritus at the Law School of Notre Dame University in South Bend IN. He is the author of What Happened to Notre Dame?
“Barack Obama: Is he or Isn’t he an American citizen?
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
By Charles E. Rice
The speculation about President Obama”s eligibility goes on and on, with no reliable access to the truth and with no end in sight. It is time for a new approach.
The Constitution provides: “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.” Art II, Sec. 1. Neither the Constitution nor any federal law defines the term “natural born citizen.” Nor has the Supreme Court provided a definition that covers the questions presented in the Obama case.
In Minor v. Happersett, in 1875, the Supreme Court, made an incidental reference to the issue: “[N]ew citizens may be born or they may be created by naturalization. The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.” 88 U.S. 162, 167-68 (1875).”
“I suggest no conclusion as to whether Obama is eligible or not. But the citizens whom the media and political pundits dismiss as “birthers” have raised legitimate questions. That legitimacy is fueled by Obama”s curious, even bizarre, refusal to consent to the release of the relevant records. Perhaps there is nothing to the issues raised. Or perhaps there is. This is potentially serious business. If it turns out that Obama knew he was ineligible when he campaigned and when he took the oath as President, it could be the biggest political fraud in the history of the world. As long as Obama refuses to disclose the records, speculation will grow and grow without any necessary relation to the truth. The first step toward resolving the issue is full discovery and disclosure of the facts.
The courts are not the only entities empowered to deal with such a question. A committee of the House of Representatives could be authorized to conduct an investigation into the eligibility issue. The classic formulation of the Congressional role is Woodrow Wilson”s, in his 1884 book Congressional Government:
It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served; and unless Congress both scrutinize these things and sift them by every form of discussion, the country must remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct. The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function…[T]he only really self-governing people is that people which discusses and interrogates its administration. (p. 198)”
“The American people do not know whether the current president achieved election by misrepresenting, innocently or by fraud, his eligibility for that office. I neither know nor suggest the answer to that question. But it would be a public service for the House of Representatives to employ its authority to determine those facts and to recommend any indicated changes in the law or the Constitution.”
Read more:
Why did Professor Rice title his article:
“Barack Obama: Is he or Isn’t he an American citizen?”
Once again, and I am not a law professor, the constitutional issue is whether or not Obama is a Natural Born Citizen.
Citizen WElls 