Birther Bill “blatantly unconstitutional”

Mark Hatfield had it all…  94 co-sponsors…  WOW!  Who would possibly think a bill with 94 sponsors out of a House of only 180 could ever fail?  But it’s losing steam in the Georgia House.

Jim Galloway of the AJC reports that 4 sponsors of the bill have asked the Clerk to withdraw their names…  not enough, but a start.

I think that many of those 90 or so sponsors will likely have the same answer as State Rep. Ann Purcell, who happens to represent the area where the Port of Savannah sits.  Purcell has withdrawn her name, reports Larry Peterson of the Savannah Morning News:

Purcell said she signed on as co-sponsor based on a description of the bill, which she hadn’t read.

“When I read it,” she said, “I found it wasn’t what we were talking about. … It goes farther than I want.”

When I first saw this bill, directly after I finished pounding my fist into a wall, I looked at the sections closely and wondered aloud (I have whitnesses) “Where in the Constitution does it say you can’t have ever been a dual citizen and be President?”  Once people figured out why I was banging fists and shouting, we consulted a handy copy of the US Constitution, and guess what…  it’s nowhere.

Thomas Wheatley of Creative Loafing reports on what Loren Collins e-mailed to him:

The bill is blatantly unconstitutional, but for reasons that reporters have failed to note in print. After discussing birth certificates, the bill requires Presidential candidates to provide affidavits that include the following:

48 (B) Recitations in the affidavit attesting that the candidate has never been a citizen of
49 any country or nation other than the United States of America; that the candidate has
50 never held dual or multiple citizenship; and that the candidate has never owed
51 allegiance to any country or nation other than the United States of America;

These are not legitimate Constitutional requirements for Presidential eligibility. Many Presidents and Presidential candidates have been dual citizens at some point in their lives. The current President was a dual citizen until his early 20s, so Hatfield’s bill would necessarily forbid Obama’s name from appearing on the Georgia primary ballot. And that is guaranteed to result in a lawsuit, a lawsuit that Georgia is guaranteed to lose.

Such a fiasco will be a blight on Georgia, not to mention a huge waste of time and money. Laws requiring birth certificates are one thing, but extra-constitutional qualifications grounded in foreign law are beyond the pale. Rep. Hatfield’s bill proposes that Georgia rely not on the U.S. Constitution, but rather on other countries’ citizenship statutes to determine who can and cannot appear on Presidential ballots.

Oh, by the way, in case anyone wants to contact Georgia State Representative Mark Hatfield of Waycross and tell him to withdraw this unconstitutional embarrassment of a bill – you can probably find his contact info here.