McCain a Panama Citizen

You just have to love US politics. They sure know how to dig for problems with candidates and it seems that at every election some candidate or another has something from his past dragged up to cloud his prospects.
The latest seems to be the allegation that John McCain, the aspiring candidate for the Republican presidential ticket, may be a Panama citizen and not even eligible to stand for president. That's what you call a political show stopper. Forget the arguments over policy, forget arguments over a candidates record - just get him ruled out of the running completely. As I said - you have to love US politics - they don't do things by halves.

The argument about McCain runs that he was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone to two US Citizens. However it is argued that although many think the Panama zone was a U.S. territory - in reality, the U.S. had lease rights, but did not have territorial rights.

According to the US Constitution, “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 precise definition of a Natural Born Citizen has not previously been tested in this context in the US Courts it seems. Commonly a natural born citizen of the US is considered to be any person born in one of the actual US States.

The Anti-McCain lobby of course are in no doubt that the circumstances of MCains birth and the Constitution debar him from the presidency. The Washington Post on the other hand cites the First Congress, on March 26, 1790, approving an act that stated, "The children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural-born citizens of the United States."

This is probably going to turn out to be bit of a storm in a teacup. But if the politics are getting down and dirty like this just now just imagine what the actual presidential election is going to be like.

Comments included to date:
Its good to have eagle eyed readers. Veritas78 (who didn't leave a link) spotted that I had mistyped McCains birthday as 1963. Miss Welby points out that this would make McCain a hippy. Maybe this is the next bit of mud slinging at McCain - hey he's a hippy man!

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