Eleven Months and a Hundred Yards Short of Citizenship
Because Senator John McCain was not a citizen at birth, he is not a "natural born Citizen" and thus is not "eligible to the Office of President" under the Constitution. Senator McCain was born in 1936 in the Canal Zone to U.S. citizen parents. As requested by Senator McCain's campaign, distinguished constitutional lawyers Laurence Tribe and Theodore Olson examined the law and issued a detailed opinion offering two reasons that Senator McCain was a natural born citizen. Neither is sound under current law.
Posted 50 days ago
Jim Cowie
Responses to this thread:
Jim Cowie:
If you're into constitutional theory, this paper and the recent supreme court decision about habeas corpus rights at gitmo make good reading. Sovereignty is a slippery thing. Good thing we're not about building global empires any more!
todd:
i thought this was going to be left-wing anti-mccain kookiness. instead i get a well-reasoned, sensible, intelligible legal argument why mccain just was not a natural born citizen and cannot be president legally. they even acknowledge that due to politics that an inelibible candidate might become president anyway, but that does not change the law. it's interesting to see the contradiction with lawrence tribe's opinion.
