Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his July 29 WorldNetDaily column regarding Barack Obama's birth: "Who are the two U.S. citizen parents to whom he was born – an absolute requirement to be a 'natural born citizen' circa 1961?"
In fact, it's not. As the Farah-founded Western Journalism Center detailed:
Orly Taitz asserts that “to be president there have to be two parents who are citizens.” This is false. Here is Blackstone’s classic exposition in 1765 of the legal meaning of the term from the Commentaries on the Laws of England.
William Blackstone, Commentaries 1: 354 361–62
Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it…all children, born out of the king’s ligeance [i.e on foreign soil], whose fatherswere natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.” [The italics are Blackstone's]Blackstone explicitly grounds natural-born status on location (jus soli), not parentage, except when the child is born abroad. The notion that both parents have to be citizens is false. All children born on American soil are natural-born subjects or citizens.
Given that Farah has provided no credible evidence that Obama was not born in the U.S., this is not an issue.
Consider this to be just another birther lie from Farah and Co.
Farah adds: "But clearly, this is not a left-right issue. This is not a conservative-liberal issue. This is not a Democrat-Republican issue. This is not an ideological issue. This is a matter of what's true and what's not." We know how Farah and WND rate on that last statement.
