Obama not British enough, says Supreme Court!

In the Obama citizen stakes, several wannabe troublemakers have issued or attempted to issue lawsuits claiming Barack Obama is not a US citizen according to Federal election law requirements. The US Supreme Court has rejected a claim that Obama was British at the time of his birth. Quite right too. All this "British Obama" nonsense could muddle the feeble-minded severely into thinking they had obtained a kind of Lenny Henry substitute as Commander-in-Chief. From Dudley to D.C! A kind of King Ralph in reverse.

No, it's all schoolboy-type malevolence. Leo Donofrio, the retired New Jersey lawyer who thought this up, should know better. Hawaii became a state in August,1959. Obama was born in that state in August, 1961, two years later. Any legal eagle with even the gravest myopia would be able to spot the time lapse. If a baby is born into the USA, regardless of parentage, it becomes an American. This is known as birthright citizenship. How this lawyer thought otherwise..... well, he did. His flimsy case was built on the concept that Barack Obama Senior was a Kenyan. Part of his case read "Since Barack Obama's father was a citizen of Kenya, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of Senator Obama's birth, then Senator Obama was a British citizen 'at birth', just like the framers of the Constitution, and therefore, even if he were to produce an original birth certificate proving he were born on US soil, he still wouldn't be eligible to be president." That, sir, proves nothing!

What a waste of time. Just because you are born somewhere does not imply citizenship like this. Barack Obama could well claim that he was British but why would he want to. He hardly sounds it, he doesn't think it, and he has never lived there. In a convuluted way he may be able to convince Jacqui Smith that he is the real thing, but really, it's fantasy stuff.

So the Supreme Court was right to reject this lawsuit. I hope they suggested Donofrio receives counselling because nobody would want his counsel in a court!

How American are Americans?

I've met so many different types of Americans. All see themselves as Americans. Well, there's one I met on a boardwalk in Florida who was previously British in that she had assumed citizenship about ten years before I met her. She said "I am now an American, but I still think I'm a bit British. In fact, the local British Consul told me it wouldn't make any difference, because you can't stop being British". Actually, I think you can. You can stop being anything and start being something else. It happens all the time.

In a country that was formed by immigration, there is a grading. Some are more indigenous than others. A grand lady told me she was a Daughter of the Revolution. I was told these were women who could trace ancestry back to the founding fathers. The way she told it, there was a kind of purity about it. Others are only just becoming citizens today.

But not all Americans are as american as the most american Americans. Take Bob Hope. He was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, South London. He went to the USA at the age of four and ended up as a presidential entertainer and nation's favourite. But he wasn't home grown. He became an American. Same with Jerry Springer, Cary Grant, and Ray Milland.

Some become Americans later in life, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's a whole variety. But the most american of all Americans are those who are aged 35 or older and are natural born citizens. A sort of Grade A Fancy! Only these can become the President of the United States of America. Maturity and native status combined.

So why all this stuff? Well, some legal eagle has again popped up with the idea that John McCain is not in the Grade A Fancy league. He's in the level just below! This is because his mother gave birth in the Panama Canal Zone. This fact is not enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen” according to an analysis by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, a law professor at the University of Arizona.

McCain is not eligible, so he says. This is even though the law was amended in 1937 to take account of such occurrences. McCain was born in 1936.

It is a load of hokum of course. Not legally, but practically so. “No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there’s a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside,” said Peter J. Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University.

McCain is safe. Nobody will test the law. But it still means that some Americans are not as american as all Americans should be or think they are. It's a version of primus inter pares, except the primus is far more that one, and on different levels!