Cell 'Phones, Water Bottles, and the Ballot

Mack Hall

Cell ‘Phones, Water Bottles, and the Ballot

Uncountable kazillions of electrons have been blasted into the universe questioning where Barack Not-Allowed-to-Say-His-Middle-Name Obama was born and wondering if the possibility of a foreign birth compromises his eligibility to rule over us all as President of the United States.

Some of Senator Obama’s faithful appear to think he (or He) was born in Bethlehem. This is highly unlikely, but even so it would be irrelevant; his mother was an American citizen and never renounced her citizenship, so Senator Obama is as American as Chicago’s South Side.

If being born somewhere else were a disqualifier, millions of American citizens would not be citizens at all: the children of servicemen, diplomats, employees of multi-nationals, and the occasional ill-timed vacationer.

Although the Constitution says that, among other requirements, a President must be a natural-born citizen, one can only ask what that means. Pretty vague stuff there. Is there such a thing as an unnatural-born citizen?

Further, the first 20-30 American presidents were all foreign-born, subjects of Their Several Majesties of Great Britain and Ireland and Stuff.

The precise number of American presidents under the Articles of Confederation is difficult to calculate precisely; some served twice, and one didn’t serve at all due to illness, being informally and possibly illegally replaced by two substitutes. There could have been as many as nineteen presidents under the Confederation.

The first nine presidents under the Constitution, beginning with George Washington, were all born in the British Empire, and starting life as an imperialist is so not cool.

The first made-in-the-USA president was John Tyler, born in Virginia in 1790. In an aside we may note that he was the busy father of fifteen children by two wives, so perhaps he rather than George Washington should be regarded as the Father of his Country, or at least a great percentage of the population.

Whether or not Senator Obama would be an effective president is up to the voters -- or perhaps up to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or A.C.O.R.N. According to The Washington Times A.C.O.R.N. registered the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada.

This leads to the question of whether or not a football player must be natural-born in Irving, Texas in order to play football there. And, anyway, why aren’t they the Irving Cowboys? Could that too be a false registration thing? A nation waits with bated or baited breath for the answer.

The real issue in this election is not where Senator Obama was born. The real issue is how the typical modern American is going to be able to mark his ballot with his cell ‘phone in one hand, his plastic bottle of fashionable water in the other hand, a tin cricket stuck in one ear, and a bipod or tripod or something stuck in the other ear.

Is the Constitution available as a download?