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Quick Takes: News You May Have Missed

By: Aaron Klein

Published: April 28th, 2011

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Obama Releases Birth Certificate;

Questions Still Remain

Although President Obama released a purported long-form birth certificate this week indicating he was born in Hawaii, he still might not fit the constitutional eligibility requirement that stipulates only “natural born” citizens can serve as U.S. president, according to this reporter’s recent bestselling book.

An investigation found that according to correspondence from the original framers of the Constitution as well as multiple Supreme Court rulings and the legal writings that helped establish the principles of the Constitution, Obama may not be eligible to serve as president since his father was not a U.S. citizen.

With nearly 900 endnotes, the book, The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists, contains a chapter investigating eligibility issues. The book concludes that Obama may not be eligible regardless of his place of birth, recommending further legislative and judicial debate.

“It is undisputed that Obama’s father was not a U.S. citizen,” this reporter wrote, “a fact that should have led to congressional debate about whether Obama is eligible under the United States Constitution to serve as president.”

Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, to Stanley Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. Dunham was an American of predominantly English descent from Wichita, Kan., and was 18 years old at the time of Obama’s birth. Obama Sr. was a member of the Luo tribe from Nyang’oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya, which at the time was still a British colony.

Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution stipulates that the nation’s elected chief be a “natural born citizen.”

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution specifically defines “citizen” but not “natural-born citizen” – which is only used in the presidential requirement clause. To this day the precise meaning of the term is still being debated.

According to correspondence from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia as well as from the founding framers, “natural born” may mean that both parents must be born in the U.S.

Representative John Bingham of Ohio, a principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment, for example, offered some definition for presidential qualifications in a discussion in the House on March 9, 1866: “Every human being born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the language of your Constitution itself, a natural born citizen.”

Also, The Law of Nations, a 1758 work by Swiss legal philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, was read by many of the American Founders and informed their understanding of the principles of law, which became established in the Constitution of 1787.

De Vattel writes in Book 1, Chapter 19, of his treatise: “In order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.”

However, some Supreme Court rulings disputed the meaning of “natural born” with some concluding it means anyone born within the U.S. while other cases found both parents must be U.S. citizens to fit the presidential requirement.

New Egyptian Government Refuses To

Share Intelligence With Israel

The new Egyptian government has refused to share important intelligence information with Israel, including details of a terrorist plot against Israelis thought to be imminent, this column has learned.

Last week, officials in Jerusalem warned of the possibility of Hizbullah terrorist attacks against Israeli targets overseas, saying “a planned attack is already in motion,” Israel’s Channel 2 reported.

Security officials believe Hizbullah is not planning an attack so large that it would lead to another war with Israel, but they said the Iranian-backed group would attempt a hard hit on overseas Israeli targets in the immediate future.

In light of the immediate threat, Israel requested an exchange of information on Hizbullah with Egypt’s intelligence apparatus, but Cairo refused to cooperate, according to security officials.

The officials said such information sharing was routine under the previous regime of President Hosni Mubarak.

Danny Danon: Israel Should React To Unilateral

Palestinian Steps With Annexation

If the United Nations unilaterally declares a Palestinian state, Israel should respond by immediately annexing the Jewish communities in the strategic West Bank, declared a Knesset member from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party.

Danny Danon, the deputy speaker of Israel’s parliament, pointed out that the 1993 Oslo Accords restrict both Israel and the Palestinian Authority from taking unilateral action outside of negotiations.

However, he contended that if the PA follows through with seeking a UN declaration of a Palestinian state, and the international body approved the motion, the Jewish state should take unilateral measures of its own.

“We should [then] announce that we are annexing the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, immediately. The same way [Prime Minister] Menachem Begin did it with the Golan Heights and we did it in Jerusalem, we should do the same with the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria.”

Danon was speaking on this reporter’s WABC Radio show.

The Likud Knesset member was referring to the Israeli annexation of the eastern sections of Jerusalem, which contain the Temple Mount, after Israel recaptured the territory in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1981, Israel annexed the Golan Heights, which looks down on Israeli population centers, after neighboring Syria twice used the plateau to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state.

Danon told Klein that any UN-created Palestinian state would be “like a state on Facebook.”

“They will get a lot of ‘likes,’ ” he said. “People will support them. Countries will support them. But on the ground we will have to make sure that we control the borders. We control the security issues.”

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for Internet giant WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York’s 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m.

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About the Author: Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief and senior reporter for WorldNetDaily.com. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 770-WABC Radio, the largest talk radio station in the U.S., every Sunday between 2-4 p.m (CHANGE TO 7-9 p.m.). His website is KleinOnline.com

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