Eligibility's Onus

In a criminal trial, a defendant carries the benefit of assumption meaning he needs no evidence to support his claim. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Thus, the burden of proof (Latin: onus probandi) is said to rest with the prosecution.

Instead of putting of the onus on Barack Obama where it ought to be, our elected leaders, legal system and a decrepit, barkless, biteless, wino (watchdog in name only) media belittle or ignore American citizens who have a constitutional right to see the evidence they demand. This ambivalence toward a key provision in our Constitution by those charged with guarding and protecting it is a moral outrage and equates to tyranny! Article II, Section I, Clause 4 (the presidential eligibility clause), of the Constitution reads:

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.

Despite numerous legal challenges, accusations, and firsthand accounts that raise legitimate doubts about his place of birth, Barack Obama has not produced a state-certified copy of his alleged Hawaiian birth certificate. Instead, he has spent roughly two-million dollars in legal fees to prevent access to it when "pocket change" would settle the matter once and for all. To make matters worse, our Government, the courts, and the media have brushed-off many Americans' pleas for them to investigate the matter more thoroughly. It is fair to say that these institutions have ceded benefit of assumption to Barack Obama and placed burden of proof on birthers. To those who are willing to give Barack Obama a pass on his birth and education records I ask:

• What is Mr. Obama hiding?
• Has our compulsion to be a "color blind" society blinded us?
• Did electing America's first black president prove we are a post-racial society or gullible one?
• Which is more important, being a post-racial society or a free society?
• Are we wiser than the Constitution’s signers?
• Do we really want our troops, our sons and daughters, under the command of a foreign Commander in Chief?
• Are we willing to have our nation transformed into something our forbears would not recognize, by an impostor who has no generational affiliation with it or affinity for it?
• Are we willing to watch a man of dubious citizenship dismantle our way of life?
• Are the personal “benefits” unconstitutional governance might heap on us individually more valuable to us than the time-tested constitutional principles that have prospered us so prodigiously, despite the fact that we have violated many of them for decades?
• Do we want to be known as the generation who threw away the greatest, Providence-inspired form of government in history, in exchange for a promise by a Marxist usurper who rode in on a Trojan horse named “Hope and Change?” 

Since Barack Obama took office, America has bled liberty faster than the Deepwater Horizon has been gushing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. His administration’s policies are doing to America what crude oil is doing to our Gulf States. We cannot afford to wait until November 2010 to stanch the hemorrhaging; November may be too late. We must act now!

Experience has taught me not to flow with the current on issues others are ignoring because most people are wrong most of the time and what most people deem insignificant is often the locus of the crux of a matter. To date, everything conservatives have done to impede Mr. Obama's revolutionary agenda has been flatly ignored, but not the birth certificate issue; it is the one issue that concerns him enough to spend $1,000,000 to see that it doesn't see the light of day.

Granted, efforts to evict Barack Obama from the White House before November 2012 may fail, but if we shine the light of truth on his eligibility, we may put him on his heels and slow the advance of his progressive agenda. We might also reduce his chances of reelection in 2012. As an added benefit, we will educate the public on an important, though heretofore unneeded, Constitutional provision.

One of America's greatest Founders and second President, John Adams, once said, “Facts are stubborn things.” I would add that facts are sometimes frightening things because they make us face things we'd rather not. Has history not shown that sweeping truth under the rug is far riskier than facing it? Will we, like John Adams, defend what is true and just and virtuous about America, or will we allow truth and justice to be cast to the ground to prolong an illusory liberty?

Each state's Democratic Party is required to certify their Party's nominee as eligible to be President of the United States. Aspiring presidential candidates, on the other hand, are not presumed eligible to hold the office until someone proves otherwise; onus probandi rests with the presidential candidate who alleges his constitutional eligibility. Indeed, an aspiring presidential candidate must be presumed ineligible unless and until he produces evidence to support his claim. In other words, no birth certificate, no White House.