The Messiah issued a decree saying it’s time to move past the Wright controversy, and the folks at the Washington Post are all too happy to comply with today’s article (mimicking the New York Times’ efforts from two months ago) questioning whether or not McCain is an actual US citizen.

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.”

I don’t really think the Constitution is ambiguous at all, but given that liberals somehow managed to read a right to an abortion into the founding documents it’s perhaps not surprising that they’re not understanding this.

A “naturally born citizen” means nothing other than someone who was a citizen at the time of birth.  Meaning you were not a citizen of any other country prior to being an American citizen.  Thus, one who is naturalized cannot be President but one who was a citizen from the first minutes of their life forward can be.  This isn’t exactly rocket science.

And does the left really want to push this line of argument?  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 backfire, because all it will do is unite conservatives (who haven’t exactly been paragons of unity of late) in defending McCain against this nasty attack.