Tuesday, December 28, 2010

"Natural Born Citizen" Brouhaha: It's Not The Question. It's The Fact It Was Asked

The image below was found at The Captain's Quarters website.

By Teri O'Brien
Illinois Review
December 27, 2010

Granted, the 12/19/10 edition of the Teri O’Brien Show was unusual. We had not one, but two, special guests, and we usually have none. Still, I was unprepared for the firestorm precipitated by the routine posting I hoped would entice listeners to check out the show, a firestorm that shows no end of dying down. It all started with the mention of the phrase “natural born citizen” and whether it can be accurately applied to Barack Obama.

I invited Floyd Brown, President of the Western Journalism Center, on the show to address the question “Why didn’t Justices Kagan and Sotomayor recuse themselves from the recent decision to deny certiorari in the case Kerchner v. Obama (the natural born citizen case)?” After all, one of the named parties appointed them, which appears to me to be an obvious conflict of interest. In my opinion, their failure to sit out on this one is the most unreported significant story of 2010. A question for two of the passionate participants in the debate here on IR: Ohioborn1, Bob Ross--would you like to take a crack at answering that one? Bueller? Bueller?

The nearly immediate posting of an affirmative response to the question I mentioned in the post about the 12/19/10 show, “Just exactly what is a “natural born citizen” under our Constitution, and does Obama qualify?” got me thinking. I know why many Obama opponents are passionate about this issue, but why would the other side be so quick to reply? Let me submit that as interesting as the extremely verbose debate here has become, it’s somewhat collateral to the actual issue.The actual issue, at least for Obama’s permanent campaign, is make sure the question is never asked.

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