Is Obama Impeachable?

Is Obama Impeachable?

by Paul R. Hollrah

Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution tells us that “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In the history of the United States there have been only three Presidential impeachment proceedings:

Following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his successor, Andrew Johnson, served some two years, seven months, and six days before the first articles of impeachment were lodged against him.

Richard Nixon served four years, three months, and ten days before the Washington Post published a report tying the Watergate burglars to his 1972 reelection campaign. There were immediate calls for his impeachment.

Bill Clinton served five years, six months, and twenty-eight days before perjuring himself before a federal grand jury and before a federal judge. There were immediate calls for his impeachment.

In more recent times, Democrats seized upon the Iraq war as a means of doing political damage to George W. Bush. And although Democratic congressional leaders had been privy to the same intelligence reports that the Bush Administration used as the basis for the invasion of Iraq, their support for the war quickly turned to calls for Bush’s impeachment. Bush was in office for two full years on the day that American troops invaded Iraq and Democrats began calling for his impeachment.

Now it appears that Barack Obama may be setting a new record of sorts. And although it is unclear what impeachable offense he may have committed… other than financing his campaign with untold millions in illegal foreign contributions smuggled into the country and millions more in illegal contributions distributed through American Muslim conduits… Obama occupied the White House for less than nine months before the first calls for his impeachment were heard.

But the question arises, is Obama impeachable? In order for a president or a vice president to be impeached, they must first hold office legitimately. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that a candidate for president or vice president must be at least thirty-five years of age and a “natural born” citizen of the United States. In other words, if suitable grounds could be found for impeachment, is it possible to impeach an individual who occupies an office extra-legally?

Many of those who question Obama’s eligibility are convinced that he was born, not in Hawaii, as he would have us believe, but in Kenya. His paternal grandmother and an older half-sister insist that they were present at his birth in the Coastal Hospital in Mombasa on August 4, 1961. Is it true? A Kenyan birth certificate, complete with newborn footprints, has recently surfaced and has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit challenging Obama’s eligibility in federal district court in Santa Ana, California. That case is scheduled for trial in late January 2010.

If the footprints on the birth certificate turn out to be Obama’s, we will have conclusive proof that he was not born on American soil. And since his father was a British subject and his mother was not old enough at the time of his birth to automatically confer American citizenship on him, we can then be absolutely certain that Obama is a usurper and does not meet the Constitutional requirements to serve as president. Until a court orders full discovery, the only thing we can be certain of is that Obama probably won’t be running around barefoot, except in his own White House bathroom. For now, the Kenyan birth charge is only an interesting supposition.

Others are convinced that Obama became a citizen of Indonesia in 1967 when his mother married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro and the family moved from Honolulu to Jakarta. A document exists which indicates that Obama attended primary school in Indonesia under the name Barry Soetoro, that his nationality was Indonesian, and that his religion was Muslim. Is that document authentic? Did Obama’s stepfather adopt him upon his arrival in Indonesia? If so, did he give up his Kenyan and/or his American citizenship in order to become a citizen of Indonesia?

These are all interesting questions for which we have no definitive answers.

At the age of ten, Obama was sent back to Hawaii to be raised by his maternal grandparents. What was his citizenship status at the time? And when he enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979, at age 18, and at Columbia University in New York in 1981, at age 20, what citizenship did he claim on his enrollment documents? And if he applied for student aid at Occidental or Columbia, did he claim U.S. citizenship or did he claim status as a foreign student?

These, too, are interesting questions, but Obama has taken steps to insure that the American people never get answers to them. On January 21, 2009, his first full day in the White House, he signed Executive Order 13489, barring access to any and all documents relating to his birth, his citizenship, his passports and visas, and his education.

So what do we actually know about this man who purports to be the President of the United States, other than the fact that he is sublimely naïve, totally inexperienced and unqualified, and grossly inadequate? What do we know about Obama that would convince us that he is ineligible for the office he occupies and that he must be removed for the good of the country?

For starters, we know for certain that he held British citizenship during the first two years and four months of his life… from August 4, 1961 until December 11, 1963… and that he became a citizen of Kenya on December 12, 1963, the day that Kenya won its independence from Great Britain, until at least his 21st birthday on August 4, 1982. Whether or not Obama also held U.S. citizenship during those years depends entirely on the place of his birth… Kenya or Hawaii… and that question has not been satisfactorily resolved.

Those who require independent confirmation of Obama’s British and Kenyan citizenship may wish to consult The British Nationality Act of 1948, Part II, Sections 4 and 5, and the Kenyan Constitution, Chapter VI, Sections 87[3] (Citizenship) and Section 97 (Dual Citizenship).

Part II, Section 4 of the Nationality Act provides the basis under which Obama’s father became a British citizen… having been born in Kenya, a British colony… while Section 5(1) of the Act provides the basis under which Obama held British citizen by descent from his father.

Chapter VI, Section 87[3](1) of the Constitution of Kenya provides the basis under which those who were born in Kenya and who were British citizens on December 11, 1963, the day before Kenya won its independence from Great Britain, automatically became citizens of Kenya.

Chapter VI, Section 87[3](2) of the Kenyan Constitution provides the basis under which a British citizen, born in a country other than Kenya (which may have been the case with Obama if he was born in Hawaii), gained Kenyan citizenship on the day that Kenya won its independence.

Chapter VI, Section 97 of the Kenyan Constitution governs the question of dual citizenship. This section provides that any individual holding citizenship in Kenya and any other country automatically loses his/her Kenyan citizenship on their twenty-first birthday unless they have formally renounced their citizenship in that other country and taken the Kenyan loyalty oath.

So it is clear that Obama was, for the first twenty-one years of his life, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Great Britain and a dual citizen of the U.S. and Kenya. He may also have been given a two year grace period in which to make up his mind regarding American or Kenyan citizenship. If he was born in Kenya, he would not have enjoyed American citizenship in any case.

If the founding fathers intended that only “natural born” citizens should serve as president or vice president… where “natural born” is defined as: a) one who was born to parents who were both United States citizens, no matter where the birth occurred, or b) not a dual citizen with potential or implied loyalty to another country… then Barack Obama is clearly not a “natural born” U.S. citizen and can lay no claim to the presidency.

So the question arises, can a president or vice president who does not meet the Constitutional requirements for their office in the first instance be subject to impeachment? And if Obama is ultimately proven to be ineligible, by what process could he be removed from office?

In the interest of an orderly transition of power, the process used to remove Richard Nixon from office may serve as a model. In that instance, a number of prominent Republicans, including Senator Barry Goldwater, called on the president and urged him to resign. Sadly, statesmen of that caliber are rare in Democratic ranks. Not even Diogenes, who wandered the highways and byways of ancient Greece with a lantern, searching for an honest man, would be able to find a man or a woman with that level of integrity among the current crop of Democrats.

The debate over Obama’s eligibility is far more than just an “academic” exercise. Regardless of his self-serving view on the matter, his status as a “natural born” U.S. citizen is one that must be examined and resolved. If he does not qualify as a natural born citizen, then every one of his acts in office… every bill signed into law, every appointment, every act of every appointee… will immediately become null and void. We cannot allow him to do that to our country.

Paul Hollrah is a writer living in Oklahoma.