Topic: WorldNetDaily
Has WorldNetDaily decided to stop lying about President Obama? On one minor issue, it has.
WND writers have repeatedly suggested or asserted that President Obama cannot be considered a "natural born citizen" because his father was not a U.S. citizen -- in a June 16 column by Joseph Farah, in several news articles, as well as in a promotional flyer.
But that claim has been debunked ... by WorldNetDaily. In an Aug. 10 WND article, Drew Zahn writes that there are "arguments over just exactly what is a 'natural born' citizen" and that "a consensus on the correct definition of 'natural born citizen' has eluded lawyers and scholars for more than 200 years."
WND was scooped on this claim by, among others, Salon.com, which similarly reported this on Aug. 5. Salon cited the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, in which the Supreme Court "looked into the meaning of 'natural born' in the common law and concluded that a non-citizen's mere presence in the U.S. is enough to make their child, if born here, a natural-born citizen."
Zahn curiously makes no mention of the Wong case in his article -- perhaps it would have undercut previous reporting too much. Zahn also made no mention of WND's previous assertions and suggestions that it was fact that both parents must be citizens to give birth to a "natural born citizen," let alone issue corrections for the false claim.
We've updated our compilation of WND's lies about Obama's birth certificate to detail this false claim as well as WND's refutation of it.
