Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Couple of questions for Obama "birthers"

Setting aside the fact that every last iota of credible evidence says Barack Obama was born in Hawaii ...

1. Where were the "birthers" in 2000 and 2004 when Texas's electors illegally cast their votes for two inhabitants of Texas, thereby making either George W. Bush's presidency, or Dick Cheney's vice-presidency, constitutionally illegitimate? If constitutional qualifications for election to office didn't matter then, why do they matter now?

2. Why are military "birthers" so concerned that their Commander in Chief may be constitutionally unqualified? They've been fighting two constitutionally unqualified, i.e. undeclared, wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq) since 2001 and 2003 respectively. If the Constitution doesn't matter when it comes to sacrificing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives on the altar of the military-industrial complex, why is it suddenly of paramount importance when the issue is which yahoo (from among a rigged selection of thereof) gets to hang out at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four years?

Bonus Question: Can "birthers" name a president since, say, Grover Cleveland*, who hasn't treated the Constitution as at best an annoying inconvenience to be circumvented at every turn, and at worst as low-grade toilet tissue to be used thusly and then disdainfully discarded? Why the double standard for Obama?

--
Cleveland's predecessor in office, by the way, was Chester A. Arthur, a dual (US-British) citizen by birth. A few years later, America elected a president (Woodrow Wilson) who had been born in the US, but who had subsequently been a citizen of another nation (the Confederate States of America) for four years, being re-"naturalized" at the end of the Civil War. And John McCain was born in Panama. Nothing new under the sun in terms of the "natural-born citizen" controversy.

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