They first eagerly floated the possibility back in February, and now they’re back at it again:
In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.”
The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.
“It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy,” Professor Chin said. “But this is the constitutional text that we have.”
Several legal experts said that Professor Chin’s analysis was careful and plausible. But they added that nothing was very likely to follow from it.
“No court will get close to it, and everyone else is on board, so there’s a constitutional consensus, the merits of arguments such as this one aside,” said Peter J. Spiro, an authority on the law of citizenship at Temple University.
Mr. McCain has dismissed any suggestion that he does not meet the citizenship test.
In April, the Senate approved a nonbinding resolution declaring that Mr. McCain is eligible to be president. Its sponsors said the nation’s founders would have never intended to deny the presidency to the offspring of military personnel stationed out of the country.
A lawsuit challenging Mr. McCain’s qualifications is pending in the Federal District Court in Concord, N.H.
Could the NYT be more obvious in its repeated attempts at casting doubts on McCain’s natural born US citizen status? On the other hand, of course we know that the NYT would want to be fair about the issue and write about similar questions that have been brought up about Obama’s natural born US citizen status. For the record, I found only one instance of it being mentioned - and it was a brief mention on one of their blogs. There’s probably nothing to that story either, but so what? If the NYT is going to continue to explore the tired angle that McCain is not legally eligible to be president, why not do the same for Obama?
/Rhetorical questions.
More: The LAT prints its own hit piece on McCain by dredging up his 1980 divorce.
This is such tripe. McCain’s parents were both natural born citizens so that makes him a citizen no matter where he was born. Unlike BO, his Dad was a Kenyan which gives BO dual citizenship which means he is not actually eligible to be President, but people will still vote for him. - Lorica
Comment by Lorica @ 7/11/2008 - 9:51 am
I’m shocked, SHOCKED that the New
York TimesSedition Slimes would dump on the guy they endorsed all spring like this.Comment by steveegg @ 7/11/2008 - 10:24 am
Typical of the Times, it’s sad to say.
Comment by Anthony (Los Angeles) @ 7/11/2008 - 10:36 am
Next be looking for somebody to unearth a naturalization certificate showing McCain was born a Communist Muslim in Moscow, the love child of Joe Stalin and Lillian Hellman.
And claims casting doubt on the document’s authenticity on the grounds that Stalin was never known to sign his name inside a happy face, and that Hellman did not usually dot her “i”s with little hearts, will be dismissed as Swift Boating from the VRWC.
And somebody just try explaining away the YouTube video bound to surface of McCain standing, Zelig-like, at Hitler’s side at the Nuremburg Rallies.
Comment by Steve Skubinna @ 7/11/2008 - 3:08 pm
Hey, you fascist wingnuts, I just heard somewhere that McShame was really born in Russia, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I thought you AmeriKKKans all wanted your Goosestepper-in-Chief to be some super Xtian white supremacist flag waver, man!
Hypocrites.
Comment by Sneery McLeftypants (using Steve Skubinna's connection) @ 7/11/2008 - 3:13 pm
Sneery, what are you doing in my den? You said you needed to use the bathroom! Now, if you’ve finished you need to mow my side yard before your Dad comes by to pick you up. He just called and said you left pizza boxes all over the family room and you have to clean it up before your Mom’s reading club shows up.
Comment by Steve Skubinna @ 7/11/2008 - 3:17 pm
Is Sneery McLeftypants Steve Skubinna’s sockpuppet?
Or is it the other way around?
Or are both of them ST’s sockpuppets?
Or are Sneery McLeftypants, Steve Skubinna and ST all Mwalimu Daudi’s sockpuppets?
Or are Sneery McLeftypants, Steve Skubinna, ST and Mwalimu Daudi all Karl Rove’s sockpuppets?
Or are Sneery McLeftypants, Steve Skubinna, ST, Mwalimu Daudi and Karl Rove all sockpuppets of Tickle Me Elmo?
Inquiring minds wanna know!
Comment by Mwalimu Daudi @ 7/11/2008 - 9:31 pm
Hey MD, Sneery’s a neighborhood kid who got grounded after the protest at the corner Seven-Eleven (don’t ask because I can’t figure it out, and not even Sneery can give a coherent explanation of what he was doing).
Anyway, his Dad says even though he’s grounded he can do odd jobs if we want to hire him, mostly because he wants a new Wii. Either that or he wants to impeach Bush (so far he hasn’t let me in on his plan to do that). I figure, give the kid a break, mainly because his Dad’s an okay guy and doesn’t deserve to have Sneery hanging around cranking Rage Against the Machine (you don’t want to know what he said when I pointed out how much money those guys made through capitalism).
Whatever… the kid does bear watching, though. You hire him to wash your car, you better be checking all the time that he’s really doing that. Which reminds me, I have to take him out some lemonade and cookies, he’s been weeding out front all morning… or he was… now where’d that kid get to this time?
Comment by Steve Skubinna @ 7/12/2008 - 2:15 pm