5 Feet of Fury

Diana West: ‘Warning — You Are About To Read a Forbidden Column’

West writes:

There is a second issue to consider that also has nothing to do with what is commonly meant by the “birther” issue. Having weighed the arguments, it seems to me that by virtue of having a British subject for a father, Barack Obama Jr. is constitutionally ineligible to be president of the United States, no matter where he was born.

With a British father, Obama cannot meet the constitutional requirement of having been “natural born,” which is a different and more restrictive category than “native born.” Similarly ineligible, I would add, are Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and, alas, Ted Cruz of Texas, both of whom have parents who were not citizens when they were born.

So, getting back to the Obama case, tell me where the “racism” is in these concerns. Where is it? Identity theft per se is hardly a pathology of black America. Meanwhile, British paternity, even if it does, in Obama’s case, come via Africa, is the very disqualifier the founders had in mind on crafting the “natural born” criterion more than two centuries ago to guard against a president with divided loyalties. Where is the racism in trying to address these weighty matters of the Constitution, law and state?