Say Anything Blog

Fresh off smearing Senator McCain with an insinuated, and thinly-sourced, allegation of a sex scandal the New York Times is now apparently going to run a story questioning McCain’s citizenship status according to the Drudge Report.

See, John McCain was born in the then-American controlled Panama Canal Zone which was, technically, outside the borders of America.  Which means, according to those pushing this conspiracy theory, that he’s not a naturally-born American and thus is ineligible to be President.

Here is the citizenship and age requirements for President from Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution:

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.

Again, McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone.  But he was born on a US military base, Coco Solo Air Base, to his father who was a deployed Navy officer at the time.  His mother was deployed with him, and both were US citizens.  If someone is born abroad to two people who were US citizens at the time of the birth, and had lived in the US at some time prior to the child’s birth, that child is a born citizen.

Now I’ll grant that this isn’t exactly a clear cut case.  The Constitution isn’t clear about citizens who are born abroad, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on it, but there is a lengthy precedent of people in McCain’s situation being granted birthright citizenship.  And McCain’s case itself is a sympathetic one.  After all, we’d have reached a pretty dark day in America when a veteran who served his country as McCain did and was born on a US military base to two American citizens one of whom later became a Navy Admiral (and was himself the son of a Navy Admiral) isn’t considered an American.

If the liberals push this it’s going to back fire, because all it will do is unite conservatives in defending McCain against this nasty attack.

Update: Here’s a link to the Times story.