Daily Archive

CNN’s “The Cafferty File“:

…Here’s my question to you: John McCain was born outside the U.S. Should that affect his ability to be president?

Very hard-hitting, Murrow-newsman-ish from Mr Cafferty. A shame it’s not on an actually difficult topic. Although, we are told, it appears to be one according to those who don’t know very much certain astute observers:

…There’s been lots of internet buzz about the topic in recent months…

For “internet buzz” definitely means a question is wholesale relevant, apparently. Interestingly, there has also been lots of “internet buzz” about the likes of 9/11 being an “inside job”, and the Holocaust never having happened. Curiously, CNN tends not to address those other trenchant “questions”.

However, since we are informed this must be addressed (because it is a question Mr Cafferty picked up from the New York Times), okay, fine. No one who actually knows anything, seriously believes the Constitution bars the presidency to the born “abroad” offspring of serving overseas U.S. citizen military personnel. Still, Mr Cafferty, and many others, appear to need a quick U.S. citizenship lesson.

The use of the term “abroad” in quotes is deliberate. That’s because U.S. government work station location does not trump U.S. citizenship. Government employees (not just active duty military service personnel) are considered inside “the U.S.”, regardless of where their work happens to take them.

Therefore, U.S. citizen military personnel and their U.S. citizen families based outside of the physical U.S. are technically considered present in the U.S. (Which is how the IRS also sees things.) They are not expatriate. So their children born outside of the geographical boundaries of the U.S. (such as Sen McCain) are therefore considered “born in the U.S.”.

However, even being offspring of a U.S. citizen[s] residing abroad for reasons other than U.S. governmental employment (meaning, a true expatriate) does not rule one out. A child is also a “natural born” U.S. citizen by virtue of even one parent being a U.S. citizen, and the parent[s] also not claiming foreign citizenship for the child. But that expatriate offspring must subsequently meet a 14 year U.S. residency test — meaning return to the physical U.S. for at least 14 years. (Two British prime minsters — Churchill and Macmillan — had “natural born” U.S. citizen mothers. Had their parents chosen U.S. citizenship for them, and moved to the U.S., both constitutionally would have been eligible to have gotten to the White House. Churchill famously made light of how fate had decreed he had not carved out a career instead in U.S. politics.)

So the U.S. presidency is constitutionally denied only to those people under the age of 35 (no one questions Sen McCain on that score), “natural born” citizens who have not been resident in the U.S. for at least 14 years (which doesn’t apply to him either), and those who required naturalization to become a U.S. citizen:

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

What “natural born” means has been a point of contention, but it is perhaps best characterized by what it is not: one is a “natural born” U.S. citizen if one does NOT require naturalization. Thus, as a naturalized U.S. citizen, Governor Schwarzenegger is the best known current example of someone who is barred from seeking the presidency. That bar does NOT apply, however, to the offspring born “abroad” of U.S. citizen military personnel, for they are considered as much “natural born” U.S. citizens under Article 2, Section 1, as is, say, Sen Obama.

And speaking of Sen Obama, the above contrived “controversy” is typical of media coverage of this campaign. It is decreed as somehow uncouth, divisive and even a “fear bomb”, to bring up anything much regarding Sen Obama’s parentage. Ah, but Sen McCain’s parentage and rather routine military birth? Well, that clearly needs the very most microscopic of media scrutiny, of course.

Apparently in all seriousness, the BBC reports:

A man who planned to walk from Bristol to India without any money has quit, after getting as far as Calais, France.

Mark Boyle, 28, who set out four weeks ago with only T-shirts, a bandage and sandals, hoped to rely on the kindness of strangers for food and lodging.

But, because he could not speak French, people thought he was free-loading or an asylum seeker.

Not easily discouraged, Mr Boyle has “stumbled” on a solution:

He now plans to walk around the coast of Britain instead, learning French as he goes, so he can try again next year…

Seems a useful approach, although French tends not to be widely spoken in most British coastal communities.

Nonetheless, once he masters French, he may well be able to walk through France en route to India . . .

. . . presumably without first having to walk through non-French speaking Italy, Spain, or Germany?