By Lawrence Sellin ——Bio and Archives--May 1, 2011
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"Senator McCain has earned the right to be his party's nominee, and no loophole should prevent him from competing in this campaign."The McCaskill Senate bill, "Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen Act", which she wrote by hand on a notepad after reading the Times article, specifies a new part of the definition of "natural born citizen," which, if the bill had passed, would have included "any person born to any citizen of the United States while serving in the active or reserve components of the United States Armed Forces." (Salon) The initial McCaskill legislation was eventually superceded by Senate Resolution 511. SR 511 was introduced April 10, 2008 by Senator McCaskill and co-sponsored by Senators Leahy (D-VT), Obama (D-IL), Coburn (R-OK), Clinton (D-NY) and Webb (D-VA) and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. It was reported out of committee without amendment by Senator Leahy on April 24, 2008. On April 30, 2008, the non-binding (no force of law) SR 511 was passed by unanimous consent (no recorded vote) stating:
“That John Sidney McCain, III, is a ‘‘natural born Citizen’’ under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of the United States.”Again, strangely enough, the legal basis for SR 511, also contained in the Congressional Record, was provided to the Senate by former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, a McCain adviser, and Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, an Obama supporter. As reported by the New York Times on April 18, 2008:
“Many who have studied the issue say it can only be definitively resolved by a Constitutional amendment.” “Obviously, we are not going to get the Constitution amended in the next two or three months,” said Ms. McCaskill, who was driven to clear up any ambiguity after learning of the potential problem. “We are just trying to send the strongest signal we can as quickly and simply as we can.”So, in April 2008, it appears that a political deal was struck between the Democrats and Republicans that would provide cover for both McCain and Obama on the issue of eligibility. That would also explain the continuing conspiracy of silence by our political elite. Because SR 511 has no force of law, Congress protected itself from legal consequences, but by political fiat they could do a “quick and dirty” amendment to the Constitution. My fellow Americans – we've been had.
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Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a recently retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve. He is a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq.