Uhmmm... I'm sorry, the last time I looked, a US Military Base overseas,
like a US Embassy is United States Territory, subject to the same laws and
Citizenship as the Continental US. Especially if it was inside the Panama
canal zone....

This sounds like a non issue....

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-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Lyons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 2:59 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: McCain may not be eligible for the presidency

Since he wasn't born on in the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/01/AR2008050103
224.html?nav%3Drss_politics&sub=AR
and for the wrap challenged: 
http://antiwrap.com/x481b63cb855ae

McCain's Birth Abroad Stirs Legal Debate
His Eligibility for Presidency Is Questioned

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 2, 2008; A06

The Senate has unanimously declared John McCain a natural-born citizen,
eligible to be president of the United States.

That is the good news for the presumptive Republican nominee, who was born
nearly 72 years ago in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone, then
under U.S. jurisdiction. The bad news is that the nonbinding Senate
resolution passed Wednesday night is simply an opinion that has little
bearing on an arcane constitutional debate that has preoccupied legal
scholars for many weeks.

Article II of the Constitution states that "no person except a natural born
citizen . . . shall be eligible to the office of president." The problem is
that the Founding Fathers never defined exactly what they meant by "natural
born citizen," and the matter has never been fully tested in court. At least
three pending cases are challenging McCain's right to be sworn in as
president.

Jurists on both sides of the political divide, consulted by the McCain
campaign, insist that the issue is clear-cut. They argue that McCain is a
natural-born citizen because the United States held sovereignty over the
Panama Canal Zone at the time of his birth, on Aug. 29, 1936; because he was
born on a U.S. military base; and because his parents were U.S. citizens.

But Sarah H. Duggin, an associate law professor at Catholic University who
has studied the "natural born" issue in detail, said the question is "not so
simple." While she said McCain would probably prevail in a determined legal
challenge to his eligibility to be president, she added that the matter can
be fully resolved only by a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court
decision.

"The Constitution is ambiguous," Duggin said. "The McCain side has some
really good arguments, but ultimately there has never been any real
resolution of this issue. Congress cannot legislatively change the meaning
of the Constitution."

Senators sympathetic to McCain's position, including Democrats Claire
McCaskill (Mo.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), dropped an earlier attempt to
quell the eligibility controversy with legislation. McCaskill acknowledged
in an interview that there is "no way" to completely resolve the question
short of a constitutional amendment, a cumbersome process which could not be
concluded before November.

She described the nonbinding resolution, which she sponsored, as "the
quickest, clearest and most efficient" way for the Senate to send a message
to the courts that McCain has the right to be president.

One person who disagrees with that premise is New Hampshire resident Fred
Hollander, who has filed a suit in U.S. District Court claiming that the
Republican candidate is "not a natural born citizen." In an attempt to prove
his argument, the 49-year-old computer programmer filed a subpoena last
month seeking McCain's birth certificate.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees citizenship services,
declined to hand over copies of the document, saying the subpoena was
improperly served.

In his autobiography, "Faith of My Fathers," McCain writes that he was born
"in the Canal Zone" at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Coco Solo, which was
under the command of his grandfather, John S. McCain Sr. The senator's
father, John S. McCain Jr., was an executive officer on a submarine, also
based in Coco Solo. His mother, Roberta McCain, now 96, has vivid memories
of lying in bed listening to raucous celebrations of her son's birth from
the nearby officers' club.

The birth was announced two days later in the English-language Panamanian
American newspaper. A senior official of the McCain campaign showed a
reporter a copy of the senator's birth certificate issued by Canal Zone
health authorities, recording his birth in the Coco Solo "family hospital."

Curiously enough, there is no record of McCain's birth in the Panama Canal
Zone Health Department's bound birth registers, which are publicly available
at the National Archives in College Park. A search of the "Child Born
Abroad" records of the U.S. consular service for August 1936 included many
U.S. citizens born in the Canal Zone but did not turn up any mention of John
McCain.

Possible discrepancies in the bureaucratic paperwork are of little concern
to Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor who looked into the case at the
McCain campaign's request. Tribe examined the issue along with Theodore B.
Olson, his onetime nemesis in the 2000 Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore.

Tribe said it would be "astonishing if the recordkeeping practices of Canal
Zone [officials] could have any bearing on eligibility for the U.S.
presidency."

The key constitutional issue is whether the Canal Zone was part of the
United States at the time of McCain's birth. In a memorandum, Tribe and
Olson cite a 1986 Supreme Court ruling stating that the United States
"exercised sovereignty" over the 10-mile-wide area between 1904 and 1979,
when it was handed back to the Panamanians. Hollander and others challenging
McCain's eligibility argue that the zone was never part of the United
States.

Duggin, the constitutional law scholar, said the sovereignty question is
"more complex" than Olson and Tribe concede. People born in some U.S.
territories, such as American Samoa, are not recognized as citizens of the
United States.

According to a State Department manual, U.S. military installations abroad
cannot be considered "part of the United States" and "A child born on the
premises of such a facility is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United
States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth." Tribe said
the manual is an "opinion" with no legal status.

There are few precedents for someone born outside the 50 states running for
president, let alone becoming president. The best example the McCain camp
has been able to come up with is Vice President Charles Curtis, who served
under President Herbert Hoover and was born in the territory of Kansas in
1860, a year before it became a state. The 12th Amendment requires that vice
presidents possess the same qualifications as presidents.

Several prominent politicians have run for the presidency without having
been born in the United States, including Barry Goldwater, who was born in
the territory of Arizona in 1909, three years before it became a state. Mitt
Romney's father, George Romney, ran in 1968, even though he was born in
Mexico. Since neither Goldwater nor Romney won the presidency, the "natural
born" clause was never tested.

Duggin believes that Hollander and the other plaintiffs are likely to have a
hard time establishing their own eligibility, or legal standing, to
challenge McCain. She said it will be difficult for them to demonstrate that
they have been "disenfranchised" because of the mere presence on the ballot
of a candidate with debatable constitutional qualifications.

But she said the matter should be sorted out before the election, rather
than afterward: "Imagine what would happen if the courts were to overturn an
election simply based on eligibility. It would be a disaster. After what
happened in 2000, people would completely lose faith in the electoral
process."




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