"Are you saying that if I maintain that Barack Obama was born in Kenya that I am a racist?"

[Jim Lane]

59. Wrong! This is an error, and I wish progressives would stop saying it.

At the time that Obama was born, the law was different from what it is now. Under the law in effect in 1961, if Obama had been born in Kenya, with a noncitizen father and an eighteen-year-old citizen mother, he would NOT have been a natural-born citizen. (For foreign-born with one citizen and one noncitizen parent, the law then was that the citizen parent could convey U.S. citizenship at birth only if he or she had resided in the United States for at least five years after attaining the age of fourteen. Stanley Ann Dunham was a bit too young to meet that standard.)

The psychological danger is that, if people keep repeating the it-doesn't-matter-if-he-was-born-in-Kenya mantra, then that becomes the issue that people focus on -- and it's an issue we'll lose, because it does matter.