Birtherism, or: doesn’t anybody actually read what the law says anymore, or: it doesn't matter where Obama was born.

I can’t believe we’re even talking about this still. CNN has the “scoop:”

A new CNN investigation reveals what most analysts have been saying since the “birther” controversy erupted during the 2008 presidential campaign: Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Period.

So what?

The U.S. Constitution says only “natural born” citizens can become president — a vague clause that some members of the birther movement contend disqualifies Obama because, they insist, he was born outside the United States.

Skeptics contend, among other things, that Obama was born in his father’s home country of Kenya. Potential GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump recently seized on the issue, saying he had doubts about Obama’s background.

Ah, fer cry-eye. You don’t have to be born within the U.S. to be a natural born citizen. You can be born overseas and still be a U.S. citizen at birth.

That’s the law.

Even CNN is screwing this part up. I wrote this over a year ago:

Obama was born in Hawaii. Even if he wasn’t, though – even if he was born in Kenya – he’s a U.S. citizen by law. From the State Department’s web page on the citizenship status of children born abroad:

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at …provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child’s birth. (..For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, is required for physical presence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.) The U.S. citizen parent must be genetically related to the child to transmit U.S. citizenship.

Obama’s mother was born in Kansas, and lived in several different states, including Hawaii, from birth (1942) until the year she met Obama’s father (1960) and for several more years after that.

Therefore, according to U.S. law, it doesn’t matter where Obama was born. And just because some dang Kenyan politician is flapping his gums doesn’t change that.

One more time: it doesn’t matter where Obama was born.

Obviously, the plain language of the law won’t be enough to dissuade the black helicopter, Trig Trutherism, Bush-planted-the-explosives-that-brought-the-Towers-down types. But, sheesh. At least let’s debate the right thing.

It doesn’t matter where he was born. If you want to “prove” that Obama wasn’t a citizen at birth, then you have to either prove that his mother wasn’t domiciled in this country for “a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen,” or that Ma Obama wasn’t “genetically related” to cute li’l Barry.

Via Memeorandum.