From Essence By Cynthia Gordy
The Constitution requires that, to be president, one must be a natural born citizen of the United States. Conservative Alan Keyes-who ran against President-elect Barack Obama in the 2004 race for the Illinois Senate, and in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign (Keyes ran on the American Independent Party ticket)-is challenging whether that is the case for our new president. In November, Keyes filed a lawsuit against Obama, the California secretary of state, and others, to stop California from giving its electoral votes to Obama until a birth certificate is produced proving that he is indeed a natural born citizen. ESSENCE.com talked to Keyes about where he thinks Obama was born, why he questions the birth records already provided, and if this whole lawsuit is just an overblown case of sour grapes.
ESSENCE.COM: What exactly do you want to accomplish with this lawsuit?
ALAN KEYES: I had read a little bit about the issues that were being raised about Obama back during the primary season. At first I thought, like a lot of people, "There's nothing to this. It's just a matter of fact. You can establish what the facts are." The Constitution specifies that a citizen who is naturalized, rather than born into the status of being an American citizen, cannot be president. That was done in the beginning because people feared a foreign takeover of the United States government by the process of immigration. Staid as it is, we again are in a situation where a lot of foreign entities have influence or control over U.S. policy.
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