Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily already has a record of ignoring its own reporting on Barack Obama's eligibility to be president in order to peddle more false claims. It does so again in a Jan. 20 article by Bob Unruh.
In addition to swallowing the unsupported claim that Obama poses a "security risk," Unruh uncritically promotes a claim by birther Charles Kerchner Jr. and his lawyer, Mario Apuzzo, that because Obama "admitted a dual citizenship at birth, thus making him ineligible for the office under the U.S. Constitution's requirement that the president be a 'natural born citizen.'"
Unruh makes no mention of its own reporting on the issue -- specifically an Aug. 10 article by Drew Zahn examining the impact of dual citizenship on the "natural born citizen" claim previously made by Apuzzo:
According to Apuzzo, regardless of where Obama was born, regardless of whether he ever releases his long-form birth certificate, his father's citizenship status disqualifies him from being president.
Apuzzo's definition of "natural born," however, has its critics, even among those challenging Obama's eligibility on other grounds.
"There's nothing that I'm aware of that says you have to have two American parents," said the executive director of the United States Justice Foundation, Gary Kreep, whose lawsuit alleges Obama was born in Africa and thus is constitutionally ineligible. "My understanding of it is if you're born in the United States, you're a natural born citizen, period."
Indeed, a consensus on the correct definition of "natural born citizen" has eluded lawyers and scholars for more than 200 years. The Constitution's failure to offer any definition of the phrase whatsoever, the absence of definitive Supreme Court rulings and a wide array of opinions through the centuries have only further confused the question of what "natural born" actually means.
But as we've noted, Zahn ignored an 1898 Supreme Court ruling, in what is known as the Wong Kim Ark case, declaring that a non-citizen's mere presence in the U.S. is enough to make their child, if born here, a natural-born citizen.
