by Phil Brennan
Obama Is Not Eligible
November 18, 2009
President James A. Garfield once said, "I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error."

If Garfield were alive today he would glory in defending an unpopular truth... which is that Barack Hussein Obama is ineligible to serve as President of the United States... against popular error... which is the incomprehensible claim of sunshine patriots that it makes no difference whether or not Obama meets the "natural born" standard required under the U.S. Constitution.

So, in the Garfield tradition, let us defend an unpopular truth.

In a recent column titled, "Obama's Dual Citizenship," we examined the basis of the claim that Obama is not a "natural born" United States citizen, as required by Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution. To arrive at that conclusion it is first necessary to establish that Obama was born with dual citizenship.

Obama tells us that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961 to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a citizen of Kenya, and Stanley Ann Dunham, an 18-year-old American girl. But, regardless of the place of his birth (some insist that he was born in Kenya), the fact that his parents were of diverse nationality... one Kenyan and one American... provides sufficient proof that, under all of the applicable law, U.S. and foreign, he started life with dual citizenship.

At the time of Obama's birth, Kenya was a colony of the United Kingdom, therefore Obama's father, having been born in Kenya, to Kenyan parents, was a British subject. So what does that mean for Obama?

Part 2, Section 5(1) of the British Nationality Act of 1948, reads, in part, as follows:

"Subject to the provisions of this section, a person born after the commencement of this Act shall be a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by descent if his father is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at the time of the birth..."

Obama's father was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies at the time of his birth. Therefore, under British Law and American law, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born with British citizenship "by descent" from his father, and with American citizenship by descent from his mother.

However, Obama's dual British-American citizenship was short lived. Following Kenya's independence from Great Britain, Kenya's newly-adopted Constitution went into effect on December 12, 1963, when Obama was two years and four months old. Chapter VI, Section 87[3] of the Kenyan Constitution, relating to citizenship, provides, in part, as follows:

"(1) Every persons who, having been born in Kenya, is on 11th December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (Obama Sr.), or a British protected person, shall become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December 1963. Provided that a person shall not become a citizen of Kenya by virtue of this subsection if neither of his parents was born in Kenya. (Obama's paternal grandparents were both born in Kenya)

"(2) Every person who, having been born outside Kenya, is on 11th December, 1963 a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (Obama Jr.), or a British protected person, shall, if his father becomes, or would but for his death have become a citizen of Kenya by virtue of subsection (1), become a citizen of Kenya on 12th December, 1963."