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Iran has shot off some missiles, and the lied about how many, by faking the image with Photoshop or some program like it.  Of course, we all know the ICBM’s Iran is developing are for generating electricity, right?

This is all getting out of hand.  The New York Times reports that McCain’s legal problems regarding his eligiility to be President are worse than we thought.

The US Constitution declares that you have to be a ‘Natural Born’ citizen to be President.  The Federal laws determine the definition of ‘Natural Born’.  According to Professor Chin at the University of Arizona, the law doesn’t clearly make McCain eligible.  The article goes on to say this simply doesn’t matter because the courts will not want to handle the issue.  This seems very odd, but apparently makes sense to the legal in-crowd.  Prof. Chin points out that a law passed when John McCain was 11 months old made him a citizen, and he concludes that McCain was not a citizen at birth.

There is an argument that since there are only two ways to be a citizen, be ‘Natural Born’ or be naturalized, and since neither Obama nor McCain were naturalized, then they must both be Natural Born Citizens, or not citizens at all.  This may be a pernicious argument, but it may hold up in court.  This opens up the possibility that one or the other of them is not a citizen at all.  They are both US Senators, but I don’t think there’s a law that says being elected Senator makes you any kind of citizen.  But I’m sure people are looking.

When we get around to the “Politics of Personal Destruction” phase of the next Presidency, this will all come up again.  There’s always the possibility that a serving US President will be thrown in prison; That seems to be the goal of about half the bloggers, anyway.  Which half of the bloggers depends on which party is in the White House, of course.

I’d like to repeat my earlier prediction that this US Presidential election will go to the courts, and that means the Supreme Court.  However, the Supreme Court would have to dance some fancy steps to argue that Guantánamo was Constitutionally part of the US (and therefore under it’s jurisdiction) while the Canal Zone was not.  Even though the US control of Guantanamo is the same now as the Canal Zone was back then.  But come to think of it, they’re pretty fancy steppers over at SCOTUS.

UPDATE: If you actually go over and read Professor Chin’s analysis, you’ll see that my analysis above is rather, uh, naive.  Consider it for entertainment value only.

Despite being a “Democracy”, Mauritania has a long-standing problem with slavery.  Whole families are born into slavery, and don’t know anything else.

Background 1: Hawaii, like many (most?) US states, has two kinds of birth documents.  One is a certified computer printout of their records, Hawaii calls this a “Certificate of Live Birth”.  The other is a reproduction of the hand-written form filled out in pen and ink when the baby was born, Hawaii calls this a “Birth Certificate”.

Background 2: The USA has 2 kinds of citizenship, ‘Natural Born’ citizens and ‘Naturalized’ citizens.  Only ‘Natural Born’ citizens can be President.

The whole Obama-Birth Certificate-Certification of Live Birth thing has got me thinking again.  Without a court order, the only way to get any of the birth documents from somebody born in Hawaii, like Obama, is to ask them.  Hawaii keeps them secret.

So, for a Presidential candidate, the campaign is the only source of documents.  The Presidency of the US is easily worth billions of dollars; More so for any foreign power you’d care to name.  For this much money, you can get birth documents as good or better than those produced by the State of Hawaii.

If a Hawaiian wins the election, they are more likely to be challenged (because their birth documents aren’t public).  The political parties will eventually figure out to avoid nominating Hawaiians.  This will have a chilling effect on the basic civil rights of Hawaiians.

The State of Hawaii may have inadvertantly made it exceptionally difficult for a Hawaiian to be President.  Does Hawaii have the constitutional power to do this?  Probably not.  I wonder if the US Supreme Court will force Hawaii to open it’s birth records to the public.

Would a politician or political party con their way to the Presidency?  Would some districts (like, say, Chicago) stuff the ballot boxes?  Can you spell gerrymander? Do you know of anyone so clueless that they still trust computerized voting machines?

Will people be skeptical?  If Obama wins, will he be challenged?  Do the Democrats still bring up the “Stolen” election of 2000? Will the rumors persist?

Unless the State of Hawaii coughs up the documents, this will be a sword hanging over any Obama Presidency.  The current governor of Hawaii is a Republican; Hiding any documents she has could make her a Republican hero.  But some of the state employees must be Democrats; Will they leak?  Would you trust leaked documents?  If the Republican governor of Hawaii, testifying against interest, certifies Obama’s birth documents in public, under oath, then maybe the issue will go away.

Bill Clinton was impeached.  There’s an impeachment movement against George W Bush.  If the impeachers get to work on Obama, the birth document thing will come up again.

However, this will not be an issue in the campaign, as McCain’s birth documents aren’t in such good shape either.  While the basic logic applies to both candidates (in terms of rumors, impeachment, court challanges), in Obama’s case there are documents just beyond reach, in the files of Hawaii; it’s conceivable that he’ll be proved ineligible.  In McCain’s case, there is no further discovery available; What you get is what you got.  Another difference is that in McCain’s case, the facts are agreed but the law is at issue; In Obama’s case the law is agreed but the facts are in dispute.

One more thing:  In Arizona, they have a ‘Voter ID’ law, you have to have documented ID to vote.  It’s constitutional, last I heard; the SCOTUS accepted it.  So what ID do you need to run for President?  If the rules for the electoral college vary from state to state, could the ID requirements vary too?

Details: I don’t know of any other Presidential candidate who has been asked to provide birth documents,   I am not a lawyer or a professional document analyst.  A computer image is not a real birth document.

Update: According to this Wall Street Journal article, Barack Obama sponsored the Senate resolution declaring John McCain a ‘Natural Born’ US citizen.  I just ran across it.