New York Times at it again: McCain's Canal Zone birth

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.
United States Constitution, Article II, Section 1.

Here they go again. The New York Times, picking their cue from loony-left blogs, is now posing questions on whether John McCain, who was born on a US military base in a territory, the Panama Canal Zone, which was then a US possession, whose parents were US citizens, and whose father was an officer in the US Navy, is a "natural born citizen.

McCain's a natural American to me.

But it wouldn't hurt to clarify the eligibility requirements for president with a constitutional amendment. When the founding fathers wrote the constitution, they were living with the recent historic memory of three foreigners ruling from Windsor Castle--William III, George I (who barely spoke English), and his son George II, who spoke it, but with a heavy German accent.

The founders wanted to avoid this situation, and also, since the republic was barely a decade old, there was the understandable fear that a foreign US head of state could work from within to destroy the then-fragile nation.

We've matured as a people and a nation, so I think we can open up the eligibility to have someone who, for instance, has been a United States citizen for twenty-five years, to be able to serve as president.

McCain responded to the "accusation" appropriately:

"I have absolutely no concern about that. An American born in a territory of the United States, whose father is serving in the military, (that) could not be eligible for the Presidency of the United States is certainly not something our founding fathers envisioned," McCain said aboard his plane today, noting that 1964 GOP nominee Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona while it was still a territory.

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