Sheriff Joe Arpaio says that he will hold a press conference at 3 pm Eastern Time today to announce the "preliminary results" of an investigation by a special "Cold Case Posse" into the President's eligibility to be President. There are a lot of weird things about this, but one of the weirdest is the following:
Arpaio has said he took deliberate steps to avoid the appearance that his investigation is politically motivated. Instead of using taxpayer money, the sheriff armed it out to lawyers and retired police officers who are volunteers in a posse that examines cold cases. Other posses assist deputies in duties that include providing free police protection at malls during the holiday season or transporting people to jail.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Um ... okay, but doesn't feeling like you'd better use volunteers (and I can just guess what their politics are) rather than public money for this "investigation" suggest precisely the opposite of it not being political? If this was really something that was remotely within the purview of his duties as Maricopa County Sheriff, wouldn't it be entirely appropriate to spend public money on it?
As of yet, there's no official word about what this "investigation" "found," but World Nut Daily seems to be hinting that there will be a doubling down on the crazy theory that even if the President was born in Hawaii, he's STILL not a natural born citizen, since his FATHER wasn't a citizen:
[Jpe] Farah wrote recently that the underlying question to be determined is whether the U.S. Constitution remains the law of the land, or whether it has become “an archaic old document that needs to be amended.”
“At its core, it’s really quite simple: Does Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution dealing with who can serve as president of the United States simply mean that any citizen age 35 or older is eligible? If so, why did the founders use a different term altogether – ‘natural born citizen’? What is a ‘natural born citizen’? Is it anyone born in the United States? If so, why have candidates born outside the United States been deemed eligible? Do we owe it to America’s future to go back in history to determine what that term actually means?
(Emphasis added.)
http://www.wnd.com/...
Since Joe Farah (and maybe Joe Arpaio) seem to be confused about what "natural born citizen" means, and how it can mean that anybody born in the United States is a natural born citizen even if some people born OUTSIDE the United States can also be natural born citizens, let me explain it for them:
I. Natural born citizen (citizen at birth, rather than by naturalization)
A. Anybody born in the United States (at least since ratification of the 14th Amendment, and with narrow exceptions for those who aren't subject to the jurisdiction of the United States -- in other words, children born to foreign diplomats); or
B. A person born outside the United States to an American citizen parent or parents, as Congress may from time-to-time permit.
The lunacy of suggesting that somebody who is, under the 14th Amendment, a citizen from the instant they are born is somehow not a natural born citizen seems to me to be, well, just that -- lunacy. The ONLY thing these folks have going for them on that theory is an old Supreme Court case (the citation for which I can remember off the top of my head), not involving who could be elected President, that FOR SURE somebody born in the U.S. to American citizen parents is a natural born citizen, regardless of who else might be. It's not even an obiter dictum, since even that would require some indication in passing, not necessary to the decision of the case, that being born in the isn't enough to be a natural born citizen.
Of course, who knows? Sheriff Arpaio may announce that he's located the original Kenyan birth certificate. Or maybe that the 14th Amendment was never validly adopted, and that under the Dred Scott decision, nobody who looks like the President can EVER be a citizen, natural born or otherwise. But it should be worth stocking up on popcorn to see the freak show.