Foreign Policy

Timing really is everything, isn't it? Nine months ago there was a segment of the populace that was convinced that Barack Obama was a Muslim. A Radical Muslim. That translates pretty quickly to "terrorist." This particular rumor got so wicked that it even got to John McCain, who defended his opponent as "a decent man, someone you don't have to be afraid of as President." That was in October.
Now that he has been President for six months, there is still a part of America that harbors some pretty significant fears about Barack Obama. Being a socialist got some traction for a while, but the fact that he is an alien is most terrifying. Not the ray-gun toting, eat-your-face kind. The kind who would be constitutionally barred from becoming President of the United States. From Article II, Section 1: "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States." The fact that state officials in Hawaii have twice issued official statements declaring Barack Obama a real and true American citizen, having been born in the Aloha State, hasn't slowed the jaws of many of the talking heads. Maybe we made a mistake all those years ago allowing a fiftieth state. And ten Republican members of Congress co-sponsored a bill that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate. I'm looking forward to that new portion of the Inaugural Festivities that will include the Chief Justice asking for some I.D. before administering the oath of office.
What's curious to me is that no Republicans have seized this as an opportunity. Maybe being an American citizen isn't such a big deal after all. The Constitution is a living document, after all, and should be open to re-interpretation. If you weren't a born a citizen of the United States, at least you should live your life as the best possible example of that ideal, like a certain Austrian-born body-builder. Now that's what I call an alien hominid.